How are most sights so accurate on guns, even though they’re a few inches above the barrel?
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Well, they’re actually not. The difference between the height of the barrel of the gun and the sight/optic is called Height-over-bore, and sights and optics have to be regularly adjusted to make sure they’re actually aiming right, this is called sighting. This difference in height means that inherently it’s impossible for any sight or optic to be accurate for all ranges, so usually what’s done is that a few presets are chosen or some optics offer adjustability that remains accurate as long as the gun has been sighted properly at some benchmark range.
Let’s take for example the HK G3, because it has a very intuitive and easy to understand stock iron sight as well as a wide effective range. If you look up a picture of the gun you can see that in the front of the barrel there’s a very typical ring with a small iron vertical pin in the center. In the rear there’s a [rotating drum sight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heckler_%26_Koch_rotating_drum_sight_pictures.png). The lowest setting has a V shaped notch, which is usually sighted for 100 meters. If you align it as is shown in the picture, and the gun is sighted right, then it should be accurate for 100 meters. But you can also rotate the rear drum sight 90 degrees which then has a small pinhole. There’s three total, each a bit smaller than the other and in a very specific position in the drum sight. These are sighted for 200, 300 and 400m respectively. They’re not very easy to use but it’s a decent system for stock iron sights. It’s up to the shooter to determine the approximate distance from the target, select the closest sight range and make any necessary adjustments. This is where actual gun training comes in, since someone who’s been trained sufficiently with a specific gun and sighting system, can make the necessary adjustments to aim a bit higher or lower intuitively, since they’re familiar with the gun and its ballistics.
In close ranges sights don’t have to be perfect, because it makes little difference in where the bullet will land. As long as your aim is on a target you’ll probably hit it. But at longer ranges these slight differences become more and more pronounced. So basically guns are not really perfectly accurate, there’s obvious limitations to the abilities of an optic to cover all ranges and it’s up to the shooter to make necessary adjustments.
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