the lack of accuracy

It just means he wings you instead of making the head shot. That's all. He's still hitting the target, just farther away from the center.

It just means he wings you instead of making the head shot

Ah. I thought she meant friendly fire.

I thought she meant friendly fire

There might be some of that, too. But only if you're standing right next to the person being fired at. A typical target has concentric rings, bullseye highest, outer ring lowest. You don't have to get all bullseyes (that would be the 300), but you can't be all in the outer ring and still qualify. Plus, we had to night qualify, which was 5 shots (out of 6) in a human silhouette with no external light source.

I'm going to have to see if I can qualify one of these days. Hubby says I shoot better than he does, but I want a number.

I was gonna say. It's not the headshot I'm worried about; it's missing the target entirely and hitting me instead. Or, himself. I want my "marksmen" to be noticeably better at hitting their marks than someone who's only held a gun twice!

Clearly, I need to hang out only with experts.

I want my "marksmen" to be noticeably better at hitting their marks than someone who's only held a gun twice!

Let's hope most police get to the firing range a little more often than I did! Actually, by the time I was done with playing MP, I'd had to requalify 2 more times and was up into the low 200's. And in 9 months, I'd never had to draw my weapon. People were pretty safe around me. We were in more danger from the nut jobs who decided they didn't like being on limited duty for medical reasons and went into the office to shoot up the training equipment.

t insert standard whine about wishing I could find a way to play with the kind of guns my characters would use

Hell, Susan, so would I!

I mean, if I had infinite resources, I'd so go to England just to hang with Napoleonic War re-enactors and load and fire a Baker rifle and whatever kind of pistol a cavalry officer would own. How am I supposed to write with vivid sensory detail about this sort of thing if I've never fired anything other than my cousin's BB gun when I was 9?

Never mind that I write about things I've never seen or done all the time, and have no desire whatsoever to climb the rigging of a tall ship, which is sure to feature in my next story (I can't even climb a ladder, really--it's a phobia thing). I've developed gun-lust. But only for guns approaching their bicentennial.

Could you see if there's any local museums or state historical societies that have something similar to the Baker rifle? Even if you can't fire it, you might be able to handle it so you can get the feel of it.