A few of us at the shooting range were sitting around chewing the fat and someone asked if any of us had ever bought a new pistol that wasn't as accurate as the shooter !! And what could be the cause of that ??

not where the sights were just miss adjusted but a pistol that just shot all over the target in no recognizable pattern .. and shot that way for anyone shooting it ..

His son bought it for Christmas and he hasn't been able to sight it in because it shoots over about a 12 to 14 inch pattern at 5 yards .. using good ammo not reloads .. This guy is a decent shot and have seen him shoot 2-3 inch groups from further then that distance with other pistols ..

So what can cause a pistol be so inaccurate ?? Not going to start a maker/model war and will not say the manufacturer other to say is a major brand and is a 9mm pistol ..

Edit : should have added its a auto not a revolver ..

With a semi auto it's probably loose barrel lockup with the slide.

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

To answer your question, no, I have not yet purchased an inaccurate handgun. There could be a number of factors that are contributing to the dilemma. Yes, it could be loose lock up. I would be more inclined to suspect the barrel. The rifling may not be deep enough, or it is possible that the bore diameter is out of spec. Either way, this purchase would definitely be on the way back to the manufacturer for diagnosis and repair, especially if it were sold as new!

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Judge control not gun control!

I've had a few.The ones I couldn't figure out were sold.

Too many to list. All Rugers and one Colt Combat Commander. I sold the Colt the next week after shooting it. Both my son and I have been through a multitude of Rugers. He's an officer in the military with two combat tours under his belt. We sell them off after trying to hit a big tree with them and failing most of the time. Both of us have sworn off Rugers for life.

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Dr. B

A Colt Lightweight Commander 70 series. Most other handguns save one revolver could out shoot me.

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JOSHUA 1:9

All of my firearms shoot better than I do . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Only one, a stainless Series 80 Colt Government. I fitted a new Ed Brown oversized barrel bushing to it and greatly improved the accuracy.
Still not a match gun but accurate enough that I am not embarrassed to shoot it in front of other people.

A good many years back a friend bought a brand-new Colt Combat Commander that couldn't keep all of its shots in a bushel basket at 5 yards. Upon not-so-close inspection I discovered the barrel had no rifling.
The folks at Colt were most happy to get it back...

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Pisgah

I was a believer that all modern guns were relatively accurate until I shot my Taurus PT58SS (.380). It was new to me along with a new CZ-83 and a Beretta 94F that I took to the range together for the first time to shoot any of them. At 7 yards, I shot in a 3 inch group with the CZ and Beretta. I was lucky to be in 6 or 7 inches with the Taurus. I was all over the place - no pattern at all. It is the least accurate handgun I own. I'm not Taurus-bashing, I have a PT92AF that is very accurate.

Over the decades I've had a few that did not group tight enough for me to want to continue owning them but none were anywhere near that bad. The few times I saw bullets tumble end over end I do not recall them grouping that bad. At least the large size NRA Conventional Pistol target caught the vast majority of them at 25 yards. When gas checks separate from the bullet the gas checks group better than that.

It is warranty repair time.

Personally, I have never understood the "more accurate than I am" statement.

What difference does that make? Don't you want the most accurate gun regardless of how well you shoot? So if you shoot 5" at 15 yards, that means that you accept anything that shoots 4" at 15 yards? The aggregate group size would be 9". If your gun shot 1" at 15 yards the aggregate would be 6", much better than 9". I have just never got that.

I've never had a commercial production gun that would be what I call horrible. Some surplus guns with dark bores, yeah.

....that weigh 13 oz. soaking wet. I read the spec sheet and it said, "The gun should be accurate up to seven yards." Obviously, it was NOT meant to be a target pistol

PS I discount Hickok45. He was ringing the gong at 80 yards with pocket pistols.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

To answer the OP's question, yes every single gun I buy has accuracy issues, It can't be me so , I'm blaming the guns. That's my story and i'm sticking to it. I also get a lot of bad ammo.

Both inaccurate guns that I have owned were 22 revolvers.
Interchangeable cylinder models that were useless as 22 LR.
22 Mag cylinders shoot very well though.
I have heard that this is common in that design.
Ruger and Heritage versions.

Only one really inaccurate gun out of the 100+ I've owned. I purchased a new Colt Commander in 2007, it shot about 3" left from the start. Several other people shot it, same performance. Nothing wrong with the sights, it just grouped 3" left. The groups were actually pretty tight, just in the wrong place. I sold it after a few weeks and haven't bought another new Colt... until today. Just put a new .38 Super on lay away.

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Wheel guns are real guns.

I've often said, I've never seen a gun that didn't shoot straight. But I've seen many people that can't shoot a gun straight.

Well, let me help you out. Every gun I have ever owned, from a rest, with the sights aligned, without human interaction other than pressing the trigger in a manner that does not change the alignment of sight, bore and target, will shoot a better group than when I hold that same handgun or long gun in my hands, without support. I make it worse, not better, and I am smart enough to realize that a reasonably well manufactured firearm with reasonably well manufactured ammunition is never the problem with accuracy. I am . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

I had been an S&W revolver guy for many years. So when the new S&W hi-cap 9s came to market I decided to try one. Hey,it's a Smith! I bought a spankin new 459 in nickel.Good looker..nice fee and balance.Good price! Let's see how it shoots. The first few mags were pretty wild..I figured it just needed some barrel seasoning. Nope. That thing scattered rounds like a 12 gauge. I tried different holds..different loads..nothing could make it print. It got sent back to S&W and came back "fixed", and as a bonus.. with a flashy big 3 picture poster with my guns serial number signed on it.Nice freebie...but that 459 and I never got along.Just no magic.Finally sold it. The new owner loved the poster..may even have made the sale. Up to that point in my gun life I had never encountered anything I couldn't shoot well. Just one of those things in life that you just move on from.It did spoil my appetite for autos till Sigs and Glocks came along.

When I was young and foolish I bought a Colt Targetsman .22 LR. It wasn't anywhere near as accurate as I had been led to believe it would be. I bought it brand new for $125.00 and a year later sold it for $185.00.

I then took some of that money and bought a Ruger Mark I with a 5" bull barrel and adjustable target sights. I still own the Ruger and it still shoots great. I do, however, sometimes regret selling the Targetsman, but only because of the value I'm sure it's gained.

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Join the NRA today

A Colt 1991A1. Out of the box it was a 4-5" gun at 25 yards. At the time I could shoot a 1 to 1-1/2" group with one of my revolvers and my Ruger MKIII.

A match barrel and bushing fixed it. The groups shrunk by half.

Don't think so. I bought a Kel-Tec P32 that I couldn't hit with worth a damn, but the problem was that it simply didn't fit my hand. I could NOT squeeze through that long trigger arc without pulling the perfectly decent little pistol off target.

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Oh well, what the hell.

thanks, muss. that has always been my understanding.
when a gun shoots better than i do, that means from a rest it shoots well.
it's very important to have a gun that shoots 1'' groups at 25 yards, from a rest.
that gives you something to work towards.
i bet someday i'll get a 1'' group freehand, soley by accident.
if i live long enow....
i do have a gun that won't do that. a single 10, but i knew it was a plinker before i bot it.
i use it for point shooting.

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susie

"Hav you ever bought a pistol that wasn't accurate??"

Yeah, every single one of them.

Until I learned to shoot them.

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What, me worry?

Yes. I bough a used 625 at a very good price some while back. It spit badly and was not very accurate at all. The forcing cone was cut very badly and the breech end of the cone was cut at a significant angle. It was clear just on basic visual inspection. Barrel was set in one or two turns (I forget which), the forcing cone was recut and the breech end was trued. It is now probably the most accurate revolver I own. It definitely shoots way better than I can hold.

All of the Tupperware and springs semis I ever bought, which were quickly sold. Made me swear off anything that's not steel and wood...

At my age, anything with a handle and a barrel shoots better than me

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John

Browning HP GP model. 6-8" group was all I could get out of it. Even had a gunsmith work on it and still couldn't do any better.

Not quite totally on topic. I was given a 1940's Iver Johnson Supershot Sealed Eight 22. This person acquired it in a poker game. Said it could not hit the broad side of a barn and he was right! After careful examination the front sight was bent left and the rear sight cockeyed and almost falling off the gun. This baby had been through the wringer in it's life time...lol. I straightened the front sight and the rear sight so that it was secure and would function (adjust) properly. The darn thing is super accurate now, surprised me. I also have to shoot low velocity thru it as the high velocity stuff is kinda tough to extract. It now resides in its original hand tooled holster in my safe as a conversation piece.

I briefly owned a Ballister Molina Colt 1911 clone which was used of course. I couldn't hit a standard sized target(keep it on the paper) at 25yds. I routinely get decent groupings at this range with other pistols I own. Traded it off at the next gun show. It was too ugly and clunky for me to even want to mess with it.
Jim

Thanks for the replies .. pistol has already been sent back to manufacture .. so we'll see what they say in a couple of weeks when it returns ..

I must be lucky as all that I have owned have been accurate and can't really say one is better then another .. I do have my preference to which one I like to shoot more then others .. but they all group about the same .. from a Beretta to a Sig or my S&W Compact and others ..

I have not owned one, but I have sure shot one.

Fall of 1978. Going through Military Police Officers Basic at Ft. McClellan, AL. Time for qualification with the 45. Were qualifying with old M1911A1's. Took aim at center of mass. O(ne round and no hole in target. Second round, same thing. Looked closely at target and holes were at the bottom right hand corner.

Being a pretty good shot , I had to aim for the top left hand corner to get a hit in the black. When you shook it, you could almost play "Jingle Bells" it rattled so much.

Worst shooting gun I ever shot.

I've owned and shot well over 100 handguns in the past twenty-nine years. Only one was glaringly inaccurate, a Series 70 Colt Combat Commander 9MM. Five to seven inch groups at 25 feet, not yards, were the best it could muster. Targets at 25 yards looked like a sawed off shotgun fired buckshot at them. I had other shooters try the pistol with the same or worse results.

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Virtue,Liberty & Independence

1969 qualifying with the 45 in Elmendorf AFB, Ak they gave me a pistol that wasn't quite that bad but shot about 6 inches low .. did the same thing as you did .. I had to aim high on the target to hit the black .. least it grouped fairly good after I figured where to aim .. and was sloppy as you said your usage was .. you could shake the pistol and it would rattle like there were loose parts in the grip .. that was probably the worst pistol I have ever shot ..

I talked to the RO and he said they were re-qualifying a lot of soldiers going to Nam and every one going out to a site in Alaska also ..He thought some of the M-16's and 45s they had were from when they were first issued and that they were never really cleaned properly as there just wasn't time for the number of soldiers being trained using them .. they rushed 25 through the pistol range at a time and there was a huge group waiting the day I qualified ..

Yep, a S&W 317 with 3" barrel. And no, it wasn't because I couldn't hold that little airlite ******ge still either. It was likely because it had a ding in the barrel crown that was there before they painted the gun during manufacturing. I hadn't noticed it until it had already been back to S&W twice - the first time for spitting powder in my face, the second time for not being able to lower the rear sight enough to hit point of aim. Sold that *** at a $200 loss at the next gunshow.

I never purchased one, but I had one given to me as a gift.

Years ago, my late aunt's boyfriend, a retired Chicago cop, gave me what he thought was a Colt M1917 revolver. This was in thanks for fixing her PC.

The gun is nickel or chrome plated and does not have any "U.S. Property" marks. Also the ejector rod button is non-standard for an M1917.

Upon taking it to the range, I discovered that it was WILDLY inaccurate, frequently keyholing at 50' with both 230gr. ball and 200gr. LSWC bullseye handloads.

The bore is in great shape. The forcing cone was cleaned up by the guy (now deceased) who used to work on my guns.

Eventually, we came to the consensus that the gun was actually a commercial New Service (manufactured around 1919, I think). The odds are very good that it started out as a .45 Colt. Since the gun had been taken off of a Mexican criminal some time in the 1960s, we surmised that at some point the gun had been converted in Mexico to .45acp by replacing the cylinder. However when the gun was made, .45 Colt and .45acp had different bore diameters, ~.454-.455 for the former and .452 for the latter.

The bullets are probably bouncing down the barrel.

I tried to get a .45 Colt cylinder for it, but if you can find one, they're the price of a new Glock.

Penn Bullets and others make .45 bullets in larger than standard diameters. Some day I may order some and see if that fixes the problem. It's a neat looking gun though.

Those old 1911's we had in the Corps were in the same shape as the two above posters mentioned. Once POI was attained, the coaches would allow us to put a black "paster" up on the target for POA.
Of course, there were a whole bunch of jarheads that couldn't get a group. LOL

Had a Taurus Millennium Pro .45 ACP that was wretched. Could barely keep it on a 21"x24" pistol Rapid Fire target at 15 yards. And that was with slow, deliberate fire!

I've got smooth bore muzzle loading pistols that do much better.

Seems that Taurus liked to run the bores on the small 24/7 type pistols on the big side. I measured several and the best was 0.455" Mine was about 0.460", so the bullets just sort of rattled down the barrel.

Temporarily swapped out a full size barrel from a regular 24/7 (Thanks to Dave P.!) into the wee 1k Pro and it shot pretty well.( Internal dimensions on the full size pistol was much more what you would expect in a .45 ACP.) But not enough to scrap another pistol to get it's barrel!

My last of a string of "Taurus Disappointments". Haven't had another in about ten years.

Years ago I purchased a brand new Sig 225. That thing was so inaccurate and inconsistent that even from a rest it was all over the 6" bulls-eye at 10 yards. Got rid of it after a few months at a loss

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John

I guess it's been about 20 years ago I purchased a Taurus PT945. I liked the slim profile. The gun did not shoot well. It's one of the few guns I traded away.

My PT945 was not more accurate than I am.

From a rest, the PT945 was less accurate (repeatable) than other handguns of mine while shooting offhand. For my measure, that tells me that the PT945 was less repeatable than I am.

It's true that no matter how horrible a handgun shoots it will shoot less horribly removing human error. But that does't mean the handgun is more accurate than the shooter. All that says is that a rest is more steady and thus more repeatable than offhand. That's not a measure of the repeatability of a particular handgun versus the repeatability of the shooter.

I had a number of them. Some of them were cheapo 25 acp's that would keyhole the bullets at 50 feet, but some were much more expensive.

I had a S&W 4506 that I bought second hand. The fellow I bought it from said it wasn't very accurate, and boy was he correct. I had a S&W 4006 when they first hit the market and it was pretty terrible as well. Some of the problem with it may have been that early factory 40S&W ammo though.