The Sharpes rifle would hit brass buttons on an officer's coat at 600 yards. (that is where the term Sharp(es) shooters came from) They did a demo of that for President Lincoln. That would be tight grouping as brass buttons were only about one inch diam. You had to handload it for that. Annie Oakely also handloaded her own ammo BP as she found that factory ammo was inferior.
The plus factors that contribute to accuracy are long barrel, heavy barrel, free vibrating barrel (one that is only fixed at the base, and does not touch the stock along the length), twist of rifling, design of bullet, evenness of bullet weights, precision of powder charge, tightness of action (gas leakage is bad), and even-burningness of powder.
Then for free shooting there is the balance of the rifle, weight and trigger pull. Too light a weapon and the kick will affect accuracy. The right balance will allow the rifle to be aimed with little drift. (the M1 carbine was great for this) A smooth release of trigger pull will let the rifle stay on target.
With some changes in trigger design, suppression of flash and noise, recoil aborption, and barrel suspension, the accuracy of rifles for the average shooter could be improved greatly. (when most people squeeze with their grip the muscle tensing makes the rifle shake. This is a mistake. Triggers should be pulled softly. In other words index finger trigger pulling is probably a wrong muscle contraction considering the same muscles are being used to steady the rifle.
A soldier is frequently scared, breathing hard and woozy, then you ask him to do a delicate task of balancing and holding the rifle oh so lightly on target when the damn thing weighs eleven pounds. It's hard to do accurate shooting being rested, kneeling, and not being charged or dodging bullets. Even then the sight wanders all over the target. And you pull and the sight jumps. 3 shots go off and the rifle climbs 8 inches. Add to that you cannot focus on two things at different depths at the same time (iron sights. Peep sights are better optically but you get parallax if you don't align right. No wonder the soldier misses under battlefield conditions. It's a wonder he can hit the broad side of a barn door. We need to try something else. Further improvements in scope ranging could be done that are easy to do, could make good shooters out of many. The BDC scope of Bausch and Lomb was a real pig. I could have done way better. Shooting at moving targets could even be implemented with some minor technology that would be reliable and quick under all conditions. Most rifle technology is 100 years old. We could make great strides here. You cannot tell me that accuracy is not a good thing to implement. What it seems mil thinkers want is to make the soldier miss creatively!
Soldiers in Afghanistan frequently start shooting at 3/4 's of a mile. It's all desert plain and broad mountain passes. All mountain troops like the Swiss and Austrians emnphasize long shooting accuracy. The Swiss demand 600 yard target shooting open sight at tiny targets. The Austrian army rifle was a mauser with a 30 inch 8 pound fat barrel. With the exception of marine marksmen our guys are not equipped to return fire with anything but a fixed machine gun like the M60. Any you ain't gonna lug that and 5000 rounds in the mountains. If you sent me into Afghanistan I would throw away the m16 and even the M14 and take a long barrel 1907 Springfield, carbon fibre stock. and fit it with a fast 3 to 16 bino zoom scope and a laser/passive rangefinder that operated with a thumb wheel and compensated for direct hold automatically with rangefinding. Up down hills is a big problemo in Afghi country, I would take a sunto inclinometer and put it in plane with my scope. I would then have it read out in scale divisions per range/degree. Its easy to make a scale that for each degree has a side scale for one hundred to 2000 ranges. Sunnto could even make it auto ranging with the scope controls i.e it selects viewers for different ranges. For close in work, I would use a M1 carbine with a muzzle brake, a spring on the barrel and stock, and rechamber it to take 30-06 light loads to say produce 2600 FPS with a 150 grain bullet. It would not be the end of the world if you mixed ammo.
Finally I would gold plate the front sight of the iron sights and pay the soldier one ducat in gold for each ten Taliban terrorist he kills.
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