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“MOA of a handgun”
- Thread starter TXAZ
- Start date
PocketCamera
Moderator
only for contenders and things that are actually short barreled rifles.
Jim Watson
New member
Pistol accuracy is usually given in X inches at Y yards.
Maybe because the numbers in minutes of angle would be discouragingly large compared to the "sub MOA" advertising for rifles.
A target pistol shooting X ring groups of 1.5" at 50 yards is very good but is "only" 3 MOA.
Maybe because the numbers in minutes of angle would be discouragingly large compared to the "sub MOA" advertising for rifles.
A target pistol shooting X ring groups of 1.5" at 50 yards is very good but is "only" 3 MOA.
stinkeypete
New member
Bullseye competition is at 50 yards (or 50 feet) indoors and match grade pistols are often graded at group size at 50 yards but sometimes as moa. As mentioned, 3 moa is very good for centerfire. Rimfire... mine is better than that.
Olympic competition is at 50 meters... and the silhouette guys shoot way way farther.
The industry has cleverly grown handgun shooting sports that emphasize shooting lots and shooting fast over shooting accurate because they can make more money that way. Accurate takes a lot of effort.
Olympic competition is at 50 meters... and the silhouette guys shoot way way farther.
The industry has cleverly grown handgun shooting sports that emphasize shooting lots and shooting fast over shooting accurate because they can make more money that way. Accurate takes a lot of effort.
MOA if provided and accurate is a more direct comparison. Especially if the ranges are different.I've always measured group size in inches, don't know where all the hoopla about MOA comes from.
Quick: 2.5" at 30 yards vs 3" at 50 yards. What would be the measure for both at either distance?
Practical difference? I won't make a claim.
People I know of - that are capable of doing something like that just flat out don't care about such things.I hadn’t heard of measuring handgun accuracy in MOA, vs a “x” group at Y yards.
They tend to express accuracy in terms like - "I hit _____ at _____" <--fill in the blanks.
Since people would generally not believe it possible to do that - they just scoff it off.
"minute of bad guy"
ever hear of that one? Folks will shoot at a gun and if it's good enough without formal testing they'll say, "Well, it's good enough for minute of bad guy".
It's a lot harder with a pistol to isolate how accurate the actual pistol is versus the person behind it. So it's harder to say this is a _ MOA pistol, when my wrists, eyesight, trigger control etc do way more to affect each shot. You'd need a Ransom Rest, which is something I'm surprised more people aren't into. If they are, they aren't posting these tests online.
ever hear of that one? Folks will shoot at a gun and if it's good enough without formal testing they'll say, "Well, it's good enough for minute of bad guy".
It's a lot harder with a pistol to isolate how accurate the actual pistol is versus the person behind it. So it's harder to say this is a _ MOA pistol, when my wrists, eyesight, trigger control etc do way more to affect each shot. You'd need a Ransom Rest, which is something I'm surprised more people aren't into. If they are, they aren't posting these tests online.
As confused as many people are at what MOA actually is with a rifle, it would be 10 times worse using it for a handgun. If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read someone say "My rifle shoots 6 MOA at 600 yards" I could retire by now. They mean to say 6 inch groups at 600 yards, which is ~1 MOA.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read someone say "My rifle shoots 6 MOA at 600 yards" I could retire by now. They mean to say 6 inch groups at 600 yards, which is ~1 MOA.
I don’t know....I see a lot of folks that 6moa at 600 yards would be about right!
They're pretty expensive.You'd need a Ransom Rest, which is something I'm surprised more people aren't into.
You'd need a Ransom Rest, which is something I'm surprised more people aren't into.
They're pretty expensive.
And a Ransom won't tell you how you interface with the gun: grip size vs. your hand, sights and how you see them, grip tightness, trigger placement...all have a decided effect on the gun's grouping ability. A Ransom is useful for testing the mechanical accuracy of the gun/load combination, however.
Testing for me entails sitting with my back to a support, while extending the gun out between my upraised knees; gripping with the same force and hand placement that I use while shooting from field positions. Over the years, this position (copied from one of the pics in Keith's "Sixguns"), has allowed me to test load combinations, and set my sights for my eyes...in use, that back rested position is more accurate for me than shooting off bags, and also zeros to the same impact point as my standing, two-handed offhand position...I'm zeroing the gun AND testing the load combination, you see....
Best Regards, Rod
1 MOA is approximately 1” (1.047 inches at 100 yards).
Therefore, if you are shooting 4” groups at 25 yards, the MOA that you can do with that gun is 16.
The standard “average” for a man is 18” across at the shoulders. That is still a hit.
My P220 had no trouble on steel 8” wide by 12” high. I almost always hit at least 7 out of 8. Other guns are not so easy to shoot that with.
Therefore, if you are shooting 4” groups at 25 yards, the MOA that you can do with that gun is 16.
The standard “average” for a man is 18” across at the shoulders. That is still a hit.
My P220 had no trouble on steel 8” wide by 12” high. I almost always hit at least 7 out of 8. Other guns are not so easy to shoot that with.
stagpanther
New member
My personal experience about handgun accuracy--no matter the model-- boils down to one thing: mostly how well you can maintain a consistent hold from shot to shot freehand.
stinkeypete
New member
1 moa is one minute of angle.
A minute is 1/60th of a degree, an old unit but still sometimes used in surveying and in ship navigation.
The rest is basic triangle trigonometry from high school Geometry... 9th or 10th grade: If an isosceles triangle is drawn from the chamber to the most extreme of the group, what is that angle in minutes?
So a kid will draw the perpendicular bisector of that triangle and say "Well that's 100 yards or 3600 inches."
Then one takes half the group dimension... say the group is 6 inches.. take 3 inches... then say Tan(angle/2) = opposite over adjacent ...
Tan (angle/2) = 3/3600
arctan(tan(angle/2)) = arctan 3/3600
angle /2 = 0.04775 degrees
angle = 0.09549 degrees
know fractions and basic pre-algebra to solve .09549 = m/60 or press the "convert to degrees minutes and seconds" button then convert the seconds back in to decimal minutes...
5.73 minutes
Anyways, once the kid takes precalculus they might learn that the sine of an angle is very close to the angle for very small angles, and if you tilt the picture just a little you can convince yourself that the whole thing works out very close to the dispersion of the group (remember it was 6 inches?) at 100 yards. 6 inches is 5.73 moa at 100 yards but hey, just call it 6... and the proof of that is something I didn't figure out how to do until I took a course in numerical methods in the physics department where you look at the accuracy of all your measurements and determine that... it's not just lazy, it's true... your 100 yards might be off by as much as a foot so what the heck, call it 6.
I've shot a lot of handgun targets at 50 yards because that's regulation distance for NRA Bullseye. Saying you can hit a pizza pan at 25 yards is... well.... us kids are shooting at pie plates at 50 yards. It's a lot more challenging. The guys shooting at steel rams have even a bigger challenge!
A minute is 1/60th of a degree, an old unit but still sometimes used in surveying and in ship navigation.
The rest is basic triangle trigonometry from high school Geometry... 9th or 10th grade: If an isosceles triangle is drawn from the chamber to the most extreme of the group, what is that angle in minutes?
So a kid will draw the perpendicular bisector of that triangle and say "Well that's 100 yards or 3600 inches."
Then one takes half the group dimension... say the group is 6 inches.. take 3 inches... then say Tan(angle/2) = opposite over adjacent ...
Tan (angle/2) = 3/3600
arctan(tan(angle/2)) = arctan 3/3600
angle /2 = 0.04775 degrees
angle = 0.09549 degrees
know fractions and basic pre-algebra to solve .09549 = m/60 or press the "convert to degrees minutes and seconds" button then convert the seconds back in to decimal minutes...
5.73 minutes
Anyways, once the kid takes precalculus they might learn that the sine of an angle is very close to the angle for very small angles, and if you tilt the picture just a little you can convince yourself that the whole thing works out very close to the dispersion of the group (remember it was 6 inches?) at 100 yards. 6 inches is 5.73 moa at 100 yards but hey, just call it 6... and the proof of that is something I didn't figure out how to do until I took a course in numerical methods in the physics department where you look at the accuracy of all your measurements and determine that... it's not just lazy, it's true... your 100 yards might be off by as much as a foot so what the heck, call it 6.
I've shot a lot of handgun targets at 50 yards because that's regulation distance for NRA Bullseye. Saying you can hit a pizza pan at 25 yards is... well.... us kids are shooting at pie plates at 50 yards. It's a lot more challenging. The guys shooting at steel rams have even a bigger challenge!
As long as it is understood that it is not approximately 1" at any other range than 100 yards.After all the math is done, MOA is approx 1" at 100 yards. It's a lot simpler for us Rednecks to use inches, I don't care what the range is.
At 25 yards, 1 MOA is about 0.25".
At 200 yards, it's about 2".
At 400 yards, it's about 4".
In fact, the benefit of speaking in terms of MOA is that you don't have to specify the range. Saying you have a 4 MOA pistol tells the story. But if you say a pistol is a 1" gun and don't specify the range, the listener has to guess.