A friend has fits of remorse if he throws a round outside a 12 inch circle
at 1000 yards firing offhand (standing, no support) using an old Garand with
iron sights. Another whacked several Iraqis at nearly twice that range with
a .50 cal sniper rifle. They're what I call good, but it took alot of
training and practice.

I'm a mediocre shot by those standards. I'd need a scope and some support to
hit anything at 1000 yards. I can however lay round after round on a
man-size target at 50-100 yards with a pistol, and twice that with a rifle.
I have conscientiously spent many many hours firing literally 1000s of
rounds to achieve even that moderate level of skill.

I doubt that many pirates have bothered to practice that strenuously and
hence doubt their ability to shoot even as poorly as I do. In fact, I
suspect they shoot even worse than NYPD officers. One would be pretty safe
so long as they were trying to hit you - given the percent of bullets that
hit their target in typical shoot outs.

"JAXAshby" wrote in message
...
yeah, sure, right, ubetcha. every pirate/thief on the planet has the
reaction
time of a snail, and shoots with the accuracy of an 8 year old girl on a
badmitten court.