Take the ak for exemple, the front sight is like 4 centimeters above the barrel, how is that accurate? Do you just have to compensate for that? Also aplies to scopes, some of the sight quite high on the gun
Edit: i already know they make arcs because of gravity and the angle of the barrel
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Because the sights (or scope) are pointed at the same thing as the barrel. They are not *parallel* to the battle. You could have them ten inches to the right if you so pleased. They are adjustable to allow the accuracy of them to be refined. The adjustment allows for positioning of usually the back sight to change the angle needed for a more precise shot.
The bullet has weight. Gravity says it must go down. The sight takes that into consideration. If you are shooting further distances you adjust the sight accordingly.
You don’t have to compensate for anything, just think about it, hoe far is the top of your head to your nose? About that same distance, same thing with the entire chest, the distance overall doesn’t really make a big difference, and even if it did, the marksman could still compensate for it
It’s a known offset and then you are zeroing the optic to the point of impact at a known distance. Depending on the scope and ammo you can very precisely determine the bullet drop compensation needed. The trijicon acog for instance has versions for specific calibers and the hashes are marked for specific distances so you can very easily shoot at different distances without having to re-zero the optic.
A weapon will be zeroed, either at the factory or by the user.
This process involves aligning the sights properly with the location the bullet will be at a certain distance.
A gun can only be zeroed for one specific distance at a time, and to aim precisely, the zero must be adjusted for different ranges.
While the sight may be a few inches above the bore axis, at a hundred yards (a typical zero distance) this can be compensated for by a slight adjustment of angle.
>Take the ak for exemple, the front sight is like 4 centimeters above the barrel, how is that accurate? Do you just have to compensate for that? Also aplies to scopes, some of the sight quite high on the gun
Sights don’t run parallel to a barrel. They are accurate and *only* accurate for one specific distance and only if gun and sights are pointed at that distance horizontally. A gun sight that has been adjusted to a point at 50m will only let you hit targets at exactly 50m distance accurately.
You “site it in” as we call it.
Your scope has a set of knobs to adjust the alignment along the horizontal and vertical axes, so you go to the range, put your crosshair on the target and shoot, then check where your shot actually lands relative to where you aim, for example, if your shot lands high and to the right, you adjust it up and right, then shoot again, adjust again, rinse repeat until your shot lands where the crosshairs are. You can also adjust for different ranges because bullet drop is a thing, for instance my dad sites his hunting rifle in to hit dead center at 200 yards, so at closer range the shot will land slightly high, and beyond 200 out to say 300 he just has to aim a couple inches higher, as the “kill zone” on a deer (or a human for that matter if you were using a gun for self-defense) is a roughly 6-8″ wide area, so if your bullet lands an inch or so high or low it’s still a kill.
So first it’s important to realize that a bullet is not a laser. It will fly mostly straight but it is effected by gravity. So the path a bullet takes will form an arc. The faster a bullet travels the longer that arc will be.
Now imagine a line going through that arc starting from the gun. This is the aim line or where the point of aim will be relative to the path of the bullet. When sighting in a rifle we “zero” it. That the sight are aligned at a target at a distance where the arc of the bullet and the aim line spend the most distance as close as possible. This ends up meaning a line that intersects the arc in 2 places. It leads to only a couple degrees of variation from the point of aim. From the zeroed distance, all the way out to just beyond the second point of intersection the bullet will stay well withing what one would consider a “hit” for what they’re aiming at.
Sights are adjustable. You adjust your sights so that the bullet goes where you are aiming. If somebody else used my weapon they would have to adjust the sights.
The sight is angled slightly to compensate for that.
Even if the sight was literally in the barrel looking through a transparent bullet, you would still need to point the gun slightly up to shoot something far away. Gravity would pull the bullet down.
So people will adjust the sight so it compensates for both the offset and the gravity so the sight lines up with where the bullet will go at a certain range.
You ever play a shooter game with a sniper rifle?
Notice how there’s usually a lot of horizontal lines or notches or stuff?
Those are the lines on where you should aim. You guess how far the target is, then use the appropriate line to shoot.
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