Annie Oakley could hit a coin tossed in the air three times with a rifle bullet before it hit the ground.
In the movie Shane, Joey watched the bullets hit the can three or four times. There were people in those days who could shoot better than anyone competing in the Olympics today.
I realize a 44 calibar pistol could break your wrist if not held properly on discharge. My bosses say Annie Oakley and the Buffalo Bill circus shows were stunts; the sharpshooting exploits are fables and fantasy.
There are reasons why police officers are not trained to shoot like this, ever. Because no one can, or ever could shoot like they say some of those cowboys did in the West. This is my bosses line of thinking.
I want to prove my bosses wrong. Where are the facts.
No cites but there a handful of old timey western sharpshooters, quick draw artists who make the fair circuit and occasionally pop up on talk shows and the like.
The reason why police officers are not trained to shoot like that is… it’s not f-ing practical and not all of them could do it anyway.
When ever has a cop had to put three bullets in the exact same spot, or keep a can up in the air by continuous bullets… or shoot three targets from a speeding vehicle (a car taking the place of a horse)
Those are tricks and stunts… not legit crime fighting techiques.
“For seventeen years Annie Oakley was the Wild West Show’s star attraction with her marvelous shooting feats. At 90 feet Annie could shoot a dime tossed in midair. In one day with a .22 rifle she shot 4,472 of 5,000 glass balls tossed in midair. With the thin edge of a playing card facing her at 90 feet, Annie could hit the card and puncture it with with five or six more shots as it settled to the ground.”
There is something wrong with that description. I know a fair bit about guns and it really doesn’t matter how good a shot she was. The guns themselves weren’t that accurate back then. You couldn’t reliably hit a dime at 90 feet with any gun even if it was standing still and you were God. The bullets are going to veer off slightly from shot to shot and that is greater than the width of a dime at 90 feet.
Cutting edge target rifles today can be at least that accurate but they weren’t in the late 1800’s. That is when the modern firearm was coming of age. There have been many improvements in powder and barreling since then.
I have no doubt she was a good shot. Maybe she was a great target shooter but some of that stuff had to require the use of stunts and cheats or the feat was greatly exaggerated.
The mandatory requirement that most every PO put in a certain amount of time shooting his or her firearm is the type of training I’m referring to. When called to use the firearm, most if not all police officers are not well trained to do so. Even if said PO is military veteran, they are not trained to hit the hand, for example, and attempt to wound instead of just whatever happens, wherever the bullets happen to go into the body is the best or all one can do. Training for the specific type of response is deemed unnecessary.
I know I can split a playing card in half edgewise at 30 feet with a .38, because I’ve done it. Repeatedly. But that was under controlled conditions, and stationary, with a modern pistol. I seriously doubt Annie could do it with a Colt, especially hitting it 5 times before it hit the ground. Basic physics says BS on that.
No, they are not. And the reason is that under a high-stress real life situatuion where the use of a firearm is required, NO ONE can reliably hit a small, mobile target like a hand. The consequences of missing a dime in a circus act are nil. The consquences of missing someone’s gun hand when they are shooting at you is DEATH. Police officers are trained to aim for the center of mass–the chest and torso. The already know when they’ve decided to use their weapon that they are more than likely to kill their target. That’s why it is called “deadly force”.
I have to respectfully disagree, Shagnasty. I think something less than a cutting edge target rifle could hit a dime sized target at 30 yards. You can bet Oakley didn’t have some rusty old rifle from Grandpa’s tool shed, but a finely tuned custom job. I have no cite, but I don’t think high end rifles and ammo were all that bad in the 1880s. Buffalo hunters routinely made long and accurate shots, and one of them, Billy Dixon, famously killed an Indian at 1500 yards at Adobe Walls in 1874. OK, so wiki says it might have been 1000, but still a hell of a shot. Granted, hitting a dime at 30 is different than killing an Indian between 1000 and 1500, but the point is we aren’t dealing with a 17th century blunderbuss here.
There are lots of trick shooters today. Tom Knapp is one. Since he is pitching shotguns for Benelli these days, he does mostly scattergun feats, but as I recall, he is darned deadly with a pistol and rifle too.
I don’t mean to imply that all guns were primitive crap back then but we have come a very long way since then in terms of cutting-edge target rifles. Modern guns were just coming of age and the really good ones were still a few years away.
Also remember that the dime is likely spinning. It would be on edge for some of those shots (unless, like Chuck Norris, she just waited). I still find it really hard to believe that someone could consistently hit a dime presented on edge at 90 feet even if it was stationary in the air and the shooter was shooting from a bend. How can you even see the freaking thing that well? There is no way someone could hit a moving dime with a moving gun consistently at 90 feet.
Annie Oakley wasn’t required to hit her targets as they were shooting back at her, while she was running for cover, shitting her pants, and having her life flash before her eyes.
Also, smokeless powder wasn’t invented until 1888. That was really a key driver for modern quality guns with good accuracy. Black powder guns tend to get fouled all to hell and have other problems that would generally interfere with extreme accuracy.
Cops aren’t poorly trained to shoot, per se.
EVERYONE shoots like they were poorly trained in a real-life gunfight. The stress of the situation does that. If you look at the hit to miss ratio in any deadly shooting not carried out with a sniper rifle, you’ll be impressed at how inaccurate every shooter out there is.
Rifled barrels had been around for more than 150 years by the late 1800s, Shag. I’m quite certain that hitting a dime at just 30 yards was possible for a skilled shooter.
Let’s all understand that everyone in this forum understands that every situation a law enforcement officer encounters is unique. And by training I’m saying exactly this: in a simulated real-life training environment any law enforcement officer is capable of aiming their firearm to hit the hand, for example, or up in the rafters like Shane did ( a number of times Shane did this.) No law enforcement officer training will instill police officers with this capability. Why? Because it is deemed not necessary.
And if in certain circumstances the officer chooses not to because of stress or whatever? fine, I say shoot to kill if that what it takes to capture. But if every po had this capability as per training, some if not all of these flukes and wierd encounters :smack: PO’s sometimes are involved with wouldn’t happen.
The ability to maim if you want to, through training.
I know that rifled barrels have been around for a while but there have been many, many improvements since. The 1880’s were a little early to be talking about modern era firearms. Modern guns depend on smokeless powder, really good design, and really good precision machining to be that accurate.
Besides, we are talking about a dime thrown in the air at 30 yards.
What does the Chief of the police department you work for think of this idea?
How about your departments training supervisor? What about the city/district attorney of your jurisdiction?
I used to shoot leaves off of trees by shooting the stem with a bb gun at ranges of 30ft or more pretty easily (pistol) and you have to remember that these people live by their guns, they worked with them day in and day out. if you take someone with natural talent and put them in to a massive amount of practice of course they will get really really good.
while I agree a lever action would be pretty much impossible (at least incredibly difficult) we dont actually know at this point what kind of gun she was shooting.
I don’t have a cite for this, but I read or saw somewhere that Annie Oakley used shotshells instead of regular bullets for some of her trick shots. That makes hitting moving targets much easier. Of course you can’t split a card with shot.
Perhaps someone else can provide mor information about this.