Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Accuracy in a short barelled handgun

Hi everyone, i hope im not beating a dead cow here, but ive been wondering about short barreled handgun accuracy. Lets say if you have some kind of vice to hold your handgun, can a 2 or 3 inch barrel hand gun with adjustable sights, shoot just as accuratly, as say a 6 or 8 inch barelled gun ? If so, even at longer ranges too ? Im talking about any short barreled gun, revolver or semi auto. Thanks all, i know it sound stupid, but i just wanted your imput.

yes if you can hold it on target

Every barrel is a law unto itself to some degree. But everything being equal, barrel length has no discernible impact on mechanical accuracy of a firearm.

Sight radius is the only factor that makes it appear that the longer barrel is more accurate. We just can't shoot the short barrels (short sight radius) as accurately.

My father-in-law watched me shoot a woodchuck at 75 yards with a S&W 2.5" Model 19. Two shots, two hits.

When I was at G&A back in the '70s I did my accuracy testing using a combination of a Ransom rest, shooting over sand bags, and firing using a two hand modified Weaver stance. The rest inevitably gave the tightest groups (useful for determining what ammo worked best in the gun) while the sand bags usually provided the most accuracy. Shot from the Ransom rest handguns with barrel lengths of less than 4-inches were usually as accurate as those with barrel lengths of four or more inches. But, as Kevin and LastRound have both pointed out, as barrel lengths decrease so does the sight radius with the result that accuracy also declines.

For example, I regularly shot Expert with my 4-inch S&W Mod. 13. Swapping over to my 3-inch Mod. 13 I usually shot Sharpshooter, although there was virtually no difference in the way the guns grouped at 25 yards when fired from the Ransom rest.

Another plus for those who spend much time shooting short barrels, is that the shorter the barrel, the less noticeable the bobble of the front sight in the groove. This doesn't equate to greater intrinsic accuracy, but greater confidence in taking the shot. With a longer barrel, one "waits" for the perfect sight picture. This may take a little while with the bobbling of the front sight. With the shorter barrel comes the illusion of greater steadiness and the shot will be taken with greater confidence, and often sooner.

Concur with OW above. If fired from a mechanical rest, pure technical accuracy won't be affected by barrel length. The problem comes when we start talking practical accuracy with a human eyeball trying to align sights with a short vs. long sight radius along with human hands and arms supporting the firearm.

Thanks for the feed back guys, I guess I was thinking a longer barrel might add more stability to the bullet, as apposed to a shorter one, and thus creat a more accurate gun. Dan, I never thought about it that way, but with longer barrels I also tend to try to sight it in too long.

The main advantages to the longer barrel is increased velocity (due to increased time the bullet is under pressure of expanding gases thus overcoming inertia/gaining velocity) and increased sight radius. Increased sight radius is what makes a gun more practically accurate, although it doesn't much affect mechanical accuracy. In other words, a three inch barrel and a six inch barrel are capable of the same level of accuracy if placed in a vice, but generally not so if a human being is aiming it off hand.