“1 MOA All Day” is one phrase that makes many people’s skin crawl. I’m not a long-range shooter, so it doesn’t necessarily affect me the same way. However, I do see it as part of gun culture that leads to unrealistic accuracy expectations. I started looking into this when I saw a series of comments on a YouTube video about the weapon’s accuracy. The weapon achieved 2.5 MOA with Winchester M855 ammo.
That’s pretty good, and the shooter in the video stated as such. The comments would have you believe it’s atrocious. The number of people talking about how their AR can shoot 1 MOA all day woke me up to the phrase. In reality, I highly doubt the commenters could shoot 1 MOA all day with their ARs, especially with Winchester M855. I think we have some seriously unrealistic expectations from our rifles.
1 MOA seems to be the standard people expect, and it’s not entirely realistic.
1 MOA All Day- Right?
The United States military expects 4 MOA from an M4 rifle. That would rock the world of YouTube comments. It’s true that your base-level M4 lacks a free-floating barrel and is firing the cheapest US Contract ammo out there. Plus, government contract barrels aren’t exactly refined. When the military needed more accurate weapons, guns like the SPR/Mk 12 series were fielded with match-grade ammo.
Most guns aren’t capable of consistently hitting 1 MOA. Consistently is the keyword. Sure, you might shoot an occasional MOA group, but that’s far from the standard with most guns, especially mass-produced guns. When we shoot three shots and measure our group it’s not telling of any accuracy standard.
If we want consistent MOA, we should be shooting more than three rounds, and it should occur in the majority of your groups. No mulligans, no ‘I threw that one’ etc. If you shoot five rounds or ten rounds, it should still be 1 MOA.
The Reality of 1 MOA
To reliably and consistently shoot 1 MOA, you need three things:
A 1 MOA Rifle
1 MOA Ammo
1 MOA Shooter
Those are your necessities. You can help improve your accuracy potential with all sorts of accessories and techniques. Everything from a prone position to sling tension helps, but we can get into some really crazy stuff. Tripods, lead sleds, sandbags, and more can help eliminate human error, which is often the biggest error.
I’m a 1 MOA shooter….with a tripod. Seriously, I might score the occasional 1 MOA group with nothing more than a prone position, but to consistently do so, I often need a little help. I’m working on it, but that’s what I can do.
Most AR-15s and most affordable bolt action rifles aren’t 1 MOA guns. It’s massively impressive that most bare-bones ARs and mass-produced bolt actions are already accurate guns by most metrics. They might not be 1 MOA guns, but they are crazy accurate for their affordability. We live in an era as gun owners where an accurate rifle can be had for 600 dollars.
That accuracy might result in a 2 to 3 MOA gun, but that’s still way more than enough accuracy to hit a man-sized target at 500 yards. The idea of an inch at 100 yards doesn’t apply to most guns and most ammo. If you look at the ARFCOM 1 MOA All Day Challenge we see the type of rifles that achieve that level of accuracy.
They are high-end guns with high-end ammo. Some ammo is even hand-loaded by folks whose expertise level I don’t really understand. What you don’t see on the list of winners and those who met the challenge is your average AR or bolt gun.
Expecting Accuracy
Accuracy expectations have to be tailored to the gun. It isn’t easy to get superb accuracy from a gun with a long-stroke gas piston system. It’s not impossible to get MOA accuracy from an AR, but it’s not the standard. Realistic expectations regarding accuracy are best set before you start shopping. Getting 1 MOA gun and ammo is easy if you’re willing to pay for it, but being a good shooter takes a bit more practice.
