'@simval84' To go further, even today accuracy in the average battle is estimated to be extremely low; like 1 in 147 low. So the "inaccurate" musket contends with "inaccurate" modern rifles.
But this is due to a lot of factors, like "shooter and target are behind cover" and "shooter can only poke his head up for a split-second to lookaimshootDUCK!" But even then guns and people are rather inaccurate. It's why machine guns were such a revolution; if one in a hundred bullets is going to hit, fire a thousand as fast as possible.
I believe a large part of guns in Japan had to do with the fact that they were peasant weapons. A "proper" soldier from the right caste was supposed to follow his training, use his Bushido and all the cultural mystique attached to it. When you had no real battles or wars to fight you didn't use guns much because they were flippin' expensive and not "cool". When you were throwing a full-size army at a problem with your shiny new guns you used a levy of peasant conscripts who lacked training but had numbers. In both cases you believed the vague cultural idea that true warriors had magic powers (think like anime shows where a katana cuts a bus in half) and that guns weren't really a part of that.
Then there's armor-piercing (which arrows could do, but not as reliably as guns). Archery having a higher accuracy cap than guns but a much higher training requirement. And many other things besides. But this is wordy enough.
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'@simval84' To go further, even today accuracy in the average battle is estimated to be extremely low; like 1 in 147 low. So the "inaccurate" musket contends with "inaccurate" modern rifles.
But this is due to a lot of factors, like "shooter and target are behind cover" and "shooter can only poke his head up for a split-second to lookaimshootDUCK!" But even then guns and people are rather inaccurate. It's why machine guns were such a revolution; if one in a hundred bullets is going to hit, fire a thousand as fast as possible.
I believe a large part of guns in Japan had to do with the fact that they were peasant weapons. A "proper" soldier from the right caste was supposed to follow his training, use his Bushido and all the cultural mystique attached to it. When you had no real battles or wars to fight you didn't use guns much because they were flippin' expensive and not "cool". When you were throwing a full-size army at a problem with your shiny new guns you used a levy of peasant conscripts who lacked training but had numbers. In both cases you believed the vague cultural idea that true warriors had magic powers (think like anime shows where a katana cuts a bus in half) and that guns weren't really a part of that.
Then there's armor-piercing (which arrows could do, but not as reliably as guns). Archery having a higher accuracy cap than guns but a much higher training requirement. And many other things besides. But this is wordy enough.