How are most sights so accurate on guns, even though they’re a few inches above the barrel?

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How are most sights so accurate on guns, even though they’re a few inches above the barrel?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Height above the barrel is a feature. Bullets fly in an arc, just like throwing a ball. If your sight was exactly the height of the barrel, you’d be accurate only at the end of the muzzle and the bullet would fall below your line of sight at every distance beyond that.

In practice, your sight line is straight (we’ll ignore gravity curving light for the distances we’re describing) and your bullet is an arc that starts below the line of sight, rises to meet it, surpasses it, and then falls beneath it. Most sights have the ability to adjust the angle of your straight sight line somewhat, so that your bullet flight arc can be close to your sight line for a greater portion of the bullet’s flight distance.

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