After 20yrs as an instructor, I would disagree that riflemanship and marksmanship skills are dying. My experience and observation is absolutely the opposite. More people own and use firearms today than ever before, and GOOD information and access to GOOD instruction is easier than ever before. In generations past, a new shooter effectively had to find a direct mentor to introduce them to these skills, today, there’s far more access to this information. Instead of being mislead by a well-meaning neighbor or uncle or father who KINDA knows how to shoot but tells a newbie they don’t need a $200 scope or tells them a deer won’t notice the difference between a 1” group and the 3” group they’re shooting, a new shooter has access to fundamental information, and access to universal standards to measure their performance by which the rest of us live by. We have more broadly spread knowledge and understanding of external ballistics and better access to ballistic calculators than ever before - whereas a generation ago, fathers and grandfathers might have told a new shooter, “sight in 1” high at 100, that’ll be good out to 300.”
Hell, in one of my long range classes, an older “student” there with his teenage son said his father had told him shooting 1,000yrds was impossible, because there’s no bullet left. The bullets are moving so fast that they grind themselves away on the air so there’s nothing left that far... I honestly expect that was an excuse someone came up with to excuse why they completely missed a target at long range at one point, and for some reason, it stuck. Guess how that father had raised his son to think about long range shooting - both were in disbelief when 20 rounds into a range session, I had them hitting targets at 600yrds, and within a couple hours, 1,000.
I would go so far as to use the fact we THINK rifles are getting more accurate “due to the accuracy of modern machining processes.” I say we THINK that because we sure seem to say it often online these days (myself included, but I’m working on that), but in my experience, not many rifles actually seem to represent that fact. I truly believe the average shooter 1) didn’t expect/demand tiny groups in the past, and 2) couldn’t shoot for **** as a result. When a new shooter in 2019 buys a rifle, shoots a 3” group, and sees online that it should shoot under 1”, they ask questions in places like this to help themselves improve. In the past, a family member might have coached them (good or bad) to improve a little, or they might have just said, “it’ll still kill a deer,” and the newbie might have picked up and gone home, happy with their sub-standard results. I’m absolutely not convinced new common rifles actually shoot any better than the common rifles of the past. But I HAVE taken a lot of crappy scopes off of older rifles which were so bad, a guy could barely see a 200yrd target.
I have also had to coach a dozen or so shooters that they can’t expect small groups when they mix and match brands of ammo within the same group - even of different bullet weights!!
Folks didn’t know any better in the past because they only had access to the knowledge base of the people around them, and bad advice and low acceptable standards were spread all over our Nation by well-meaning folks who really didn’t know any better.
So I’d happily defend that we are better shooters as a country in 2019 than we were 20-40yrs ago.
