Reading comments on this provokes a few thoughts. I doubt anyone knows the ratio of shots to kills on the battle field, regardless of which war we are talking about. Stuff happens, equipment and tactics change. Case in point is found in the introduction of automatic and semi-automatic weapons on the battlefield. One of the advantages our troops had in WW2 was the Garand which was deployed against enemies using bolt action guns. Enemy forces spent more time ducking than our lads did, and died far more frequently.
Vietnam came along and brought with it the reintroduction of the Gatling style guns, using both small arms ammo and cannon ammo. To correct a misconception earlier, the USAF and USMC miniguns fired 6K rounds per minute to the best of my knowledge and the Army guns had selective fire at 2K and 4K rpm. We rarely used the 2K option as it tended to jam the feeder delinker fairly often. Mentioned tactics earlier, and to illustrate that we often did "recon by fire" with the choppers, sole purpose being to provoke the enemy into returning fire. It worked fairly well and we always had them outgunned. How many did we kill? Nobody really knows and that is a hard fact. I shot a lot of ammo over there and most days don't know that I killed anyone. OTOH, I zipped 3 with one pull of the trigger one day, that with a 20 round mag. Had a door gunner that was a bit of a sniper with the M60 that nailed a dozen with less than 50 rounds. So what's the ratio? WGAF? You divide all the known enemy casualties by all the rounds manufactured, differentiate those killed by small arms fire from those splattered by HE or nape delivered in all manner of forms, and on the best of days you're guessing about the whole thing.
As too cowboys not being good shots in general, I see nothing unexpected in that judgement and despite the lack of spurs and saddles, the average gun owner these days can't shoot worth a damn. I've been seeing that truth for the last 40 years of so at various ranges and afield from Georgia to the Florida Keys. I see youngsters with ARs that can't hit the paper at 50 yards with monotonous regularity. Some are so profoundly ignorant about every aspect it is fairly easy to intervene and put a smile on their mug. Show them how to get the gun on target, how to hold it, squeeze it and so forth. They discover that Hollywood really is a load of buffalo chips. I see oldsters with the same ignorance as well, albeit much more rarely.
Precision shooting is not instinctive, most if not all of you wankers know that. If you run across a dummy that will let you help them out, do that and perhaps you'll both feel better for the ride home.
