Keith, errors accumulate.
LOL - He didn't smoke his lunch.
Let's say you lock a gun in something like a ransom rest, absolutely solid, and crank off six shots at a target with the gun totally mechanically frozen in place.
And the group comes out to 1.5" at 50 yards.
Now take another gun, and through some miracle of the gunsmith's art (not to mention truly anal handloading), you get a gun that'll shoot all six rounds into a single hole of the bullet's diameter at 50 yards. Call that "the miracle gun".
Put the "miracle gun" in the hands of a decent shooter, and he shoots groups 1.5" wide - we know it's "his error" causing the groups versus the gun, which is somehow "perfect".
Now give the "decent shooter" the ordinary gun that itself does 1.5" groups even when locked in a vice.
What happens?
The gun's inherent flaws COMBINE with the shooter's inherent flaws. You're gonna see 3" groups.
Follow? In theory, a really good gun will improve ANYBODY's groups. However, a beginner doing dinner-plate-sized groups isn't going to be well-served by having $500 worth of gunsmithing done to make his gun more accurate. Most of the errors going on are his fault, unless he's gone and bought a REALLY crappy gun
. Odds are, he'd have been way better off spending $500 on training, or a buttload of practice fodder...to eliminate the biggest cause of errors - his own ability.
But once most of your own errors are dealt with, you'll start to see noticably improvement with an exceptional gun. (This is all a good thing, because the good gun probably has a real light trigger that is better left to experienced shooters for safety
).