Low Bore Axis--how important is it?

[TCinVA]

Two years????? Crimony.

Hell yes...because picking up weapon A and firing two mags through it on a timer does not a test make. My beef all along has been whether or not this particular stat makes a practical difference in anyone's shooting. To determine that with any level of actual credibility would take a serious test with a lot of data that can be used to iron out good days and bad days on the range to produce a useful measure of whether or not low-bore-axis gun A produces better results than higher-bore-axis gun B.

...and even then I can think of at least 1/2 a dozen potentially confounding variables that would render that test utterly useless in making an objective determination about bore axis. (Differences in trigger characteristics, increase in skill, for example)

I hold that it is damn near impossible for anyone to credibly argue that their performance with any handgun you can name is a result of the bore axis of the pistol. Why? Because there are so many variables involved in shooting different handguns that it's essentially impossible to pinpoint this particular variable as being the one that's making any sort of difference. Theoretically getting the bore as low as possible is a good thing that should mean the muzzle rises less and the front sight will be back in the rear notch sooner.

Whoopee. What measurable difference does that make in someone's performance in a match? On a stage? Hell, even simple split times on a wide open target while using the sights? Todd by this point has accumulated data on literally hundreds of people running the FAST, right? The skill level of the students has varied considerably and if we were to look at all the data from the FAST drills for all those students (which is, AFAIK, the only database like that extent) could we really conclusively identify bore axis as the primary variable that explains a difference in the performance of students? I doubt it.

Instead we're left with people who "feel" a difference without ever offering up useful data that can even begin to quantify the difference that it might make. I've been in the bore axis discussion on other sites and despite a bunch of angry arguments from true believers, I seem to be the only guy who ever offers up anything as simple as actual split times as an attempt to quantify what difference it could potentially make to the seeker of information trying to decide what they should do. More than half the time the person asking the question is a typical handgun buyer who is looking for a concealed carry or home defense pistol...which makes the numbers of people that bring the bore axis idea into the debate even more ridiculous because they're repeating what is to them almost invariably nothing but an article of faith.

On a list of stuff one should consider when selecting a handgun I'll go ahead and throw out there the idea that bore axis should be considered on the list of importance somewhere around the area of whether or not the color of the weapon matches your outfit. If one of the real experts out there has collected data in his/her personal shooting or with students that proves I'm wrong on this, by all means share with the group.

EDIT -- and as for the quote from LAV and Ken, I've had the pleasure of training under both men and seeing lots of other people train under both men. Neither ever told a student they needed a gun with a lower bore axis. If you were to pose the same question to them I'd wager that both men would rank bore axis pretty low on the list of importance, especially since both come from a background of using firearms as a tool of high-intensity personal interaction.

[ExMachina]

You know, the bore axis thing annoys the living piss out of me. I can't seem to go anywhere without hearing some dude blather on and on about it and insist that he's "faster" with a low bore axis pistol as opposed to a high bore axis pistol. I propose a new universal forum law when discussing bore axis:

Before you can use the term "bore axis" in an argument about why X handgun is better than Y, you must have a record of your performance on a number of standardized drills performed over at least a two year period using a high and low bore axis handgun so you can tally a useful average of your performance with both weapons that is presented to the reader so that he/she can decide whether or not that .02 of a second difference you might squeak out with such an effort really matters in their consideration.

...and to save time, Robb Leatham and Ernie Langdon have both won USPSA production titles using handguns with a higher bore axis...and most limited and open class shooters seem to prefer handguns that have a higher bore axis, especially if they come with a lot of bullets and very light triggers. So it seems that even amongst the most elite ranks of handgunning where you may actually be able to find people with sufficient skill that every other possible variable impacting performance can be eliminated, nobody really gives bore axis much thought. I mean, really...when was the last time some of you competition shooters were on the range and heard the grand masters talking about bore axis? When was the last time somebody showed up to a clinic with Robb Leatham and was told "What you need is a pistol with a lower bore axis!"

The amount of electronic ink spilled on the internet about the topic is inversely proportional to the practical difference it makes in the results that Mr. Average Pistol Buyer will get out of a purchase...which at this point must mean that if it was quantified on a pie chart it would share the same sized slice as the number of people out of 1,000 who would celebrate a half billion dollar lotto win by mutilating their own genitals with a grapefruit spoon. In my opinion, this is yet another example of whatever Sith master Glock hired in their marketing department early on telling the gun world that these aren't the droids they're looking for.

well, that's a very nice rant on why you hate it when people bring up the topic , but care to share exactly why you think the relationship between bore and hand is not an important element of good/fast shooting?

you mention Rob Leatham. but you cannot tell me that shooters like Rob Leatham don't care about having a high grip on a gun because he (along with Brian Enos) pioneered the modern, high-hand, thumbs forward grip. Rob has also done several instructional videos that talk about the importance of getting the hand high onto the gun. maybe he never used the term "bore axis" but he certainly seems the value in minimizing the distance between the top of his hand and the barrel of the gun. other shooters and shooting instructors do as well.

and that's why i asked the question in the first place--a high tang grip is widely recognized to be important in maximizing leverage on a handgun, yet novelties in gun frame design (changes that try to enhance this high hold) are seen by some as being merely cynical marketing strategies. the truth, i'm learning, lies somewhere in between.

[Failure2Stop]

I think that the real benefit to TCinVA's test parameter is that by the time the shooter fires that much ammo he is virtually guaranteed to realize that it's the shooting that will make a true improvement in performance, and he will decide to keep getting better at shooting instead of simply inflating his internet pseudo-ego, and will abandon the effort to "prove" something he had already mistakenly decided on.

Now, I have shot a lot of pistols to a fairly decent degree of proficiency, AND I was an advocate of low-boreline pistols from before the time I spent that much time on different platforms, so for me to alter direction was not based on silly knuckleheads at the gunshow, but rather from direct evidence that despite the logic of physics, the higher bore axis guns were not that much slower in my hand...as in, "at all". Follow that with the experiences of people that I know that are very good shooters, and their experiences also seem to follow the pattern.

Personally, I vote to close this thread immediately and sticky it for the betterment of the gun-advice community before some well-meaning simpleton comes in to lecture about "what we will do in a real fight", despite their lack of the same or any kind of performance beyond self-fellating forum posturing.

TC, good posts.

[TCinVA]

well, that's a very nice rant on why you hate it when people bring up the topic

I don't hate it when people bring up the topic...I hate it when the conversation gets stupid. On lots of forums it often gets stupid. Thankfully it won't here because the staff title allows me to mercilessly crush stupid.

The question is perfectly understandable given the level of misunderstanding out there about this issue, and given that it's been an element of marketing from the aforementioned Sith lords.

you mention Rob Leatham. but you cannot tell me that shooters like Rob Leatham don't care about having a high grip on a gun because he (along with Brian Enos) pioneered the modern, high-hand, thumbs forward grip.

They pioneered that grip on guns that did not have a low bore axis as a feature of mechanical design...and I know at least Rob Leatham has managed to win a couple of titles with an XD, which has a very high bore axis.

The fact that they came up with techniques that when properly applied offer maximum control of a handgun does not really translate into this gun is better than that one because it has a lower bore axis. If you attended one of Robb's clinics I don't doubt that he would spend a lot of time working on your grip to get it as good as possible because as it turns out when you grip a gun the way Robb teaches you to do it you can control just about any handgun pretty darn well. I doubt you'll ever find him telling a student "Dude...what you gotta do is go out and buy a handgun with a lower bore axis!"

a high tang grip is widely recognized to be important in maximizing leverage on a handgun, yet novelties in gun frame design (changes that try to enhance this high hold) are seem by some as being merely cynical marketing strategies. i the truth, i'm learning, lies somewhere in between.

My contention is this:

The bore axis designed into a pistol is not measurably linked to the performance you will get out of a handgun, even if you are more skilled/talented than the vast majority of people who will ever pick up a handgun.

While I can demonstrate the impact a bad physical grip has on a handgun easily with just about any shooter, even with the most skilled shooters in the world I'd be hard pressed to come up with a test that could isolate the bore axis of a handgun as having a measurable impact on the performance they got out of the gun.

It's a great deal like discussing terminal ballistics in handguns. There are people out there who think that less than an extra .1" of difference in bullet diameter is the difference between blowing a bad guy into a million pieces and having him continue to attack you in an unstoppable terminator-like manner. That extra .1" of difference in bullet diameter has generated the needless waste of untold quadrillions of electrons over the years, but when you look at bullet holes in the lab and in real people it becomes clear that the arguments are inversely proportional to the actual differences.

It persists as an issue in the collective consciousness because it's easy for people to latch on to as an explanation for phenomena they don't really understand.

[ExMachina]

TCinVA, I posted my last poast before i read your last post. i like your split time criteria.

so how about what Todd recently had to say:

...but when I compare it [Glock 17] to my personal gold standard of pistols, the HK P30, I’m not really seeing a huge difference… at least, not one that isn’t attributable to the additional 75,000 rounds of practice I’ve had in the year and a half since the P30 test ended. The Glock has a lower bore axis, and that means it takes less effort to track the sights; the Glock has a shorter reset and that means it takes less movement to fire a followup shot. But those differences aren’t translating into huge obvious gains for most drills. Is my Bill Drill faster? Yes. But more comprehensive tests like the F.A.S.T., Hackathorn Standards, and Dot Torture aren’t turning in dramatically better numbers.

it makes perfect sense to me that familiarity with a particular gun is going to be the largest determinate of split times. but is the G17's low bore axis a non-issue? Todd at least hints at the possibility that it might have come into play (though he in no way implies that it is the deciding factor). so perhaps you would at least allow that a low bore axis might be a little more important than the color of the gun?

EDIT: @ TCinVA, again I missed your last post! i agree that discussions on this topic tend to become inexplicably heated on other boards. that's one reason that i thought i'd register here--the discussions seem to stay more reasonable

[beltjones]

I'm a Glock shooter, but I swear the next time I hear someone in a gun store offer up the bore axis as a major selling point I'm going to say, "If Gaston Glock wanted you to grip the gun high and take advantage of the bore axis, then why did he put saw teeth on the underside of the slide?" Then I'll show them my massive callous / scar tissue at the base of my thumb. "Look away! I'm a monster!" I'll scream.

Then I'll take them over to the Taurus 24/7s.

[DonovanM]

It persists as an issue in the collective consciousness because it's easy for people to latch on to as an explanation for phenomena they don't really understand.

I am so stealing this. It applies to so much.

[fuse]

TCinVA, I posted my last poast before i read your last post. i like your split time criteria.

so how about what Todd recently had to say:



it makes perfect sense to me that familiarity with a particular gun is going to be the largest determinate of split times. but is the G17's low bore axis a non-issue? Todd at least hints at the possibility that it might have come into play (though he in no way implies that it is the deciding factor). so perhaps you would at least allow that a low bore axis might be a little more important than the color of the gun?

EDIT: @ TCinVA, again I missed your last post! i agree that discussions on this topic tend to become inexplicably heated on other boards. that's one reason that i thought i'd register here--the discussions seem to stay more reasonable

Hate to keep beating a dead horse, but in order to see these very slight differences like ToddG has that he MIGHT be able to attribute to bore axis (he correctly does not definitively say any one variable is responsible for his slightly varied numbers) you must be a very, very, very good shooter. There is no way around this prerequisite. Very, very, very good shooters tend to not be concerned with such minutiae. They are, however, typically concerned with practicing alot with what they have and improving with it.

"but he shoots 50k+ rounds a year, and I only get to shoot 1.5k. Wouldn't a low bore axis gun help me maximize my potential?"

Seems very unlikely. If world class shooters see only slight differences, what are the odds of you seeing a big difference?

there is no substitute for practice

Sadly it seems that most any thought about bore axis/caliber/trigger reset etc etc tends to quickly go from "interesting" to "distraction".

[TCinVA]

TCinVA, I posted my last poast before i read your last post. i like your split time criteria.

so how about what Todd recently had to say:

Look carefully at that statement again:

Todd keeps insanely detailed records of his performance on standardized drills...to the point where he gets all frowny-faced on you if you're running the timer for him and you accidentally zap the times for the drill because you don't know how to work whatever timer he's using this week because the last ones were spawns of Satan sent to earth solely to vex him. So we're talking about a shooter who was A. far more skilled with a pistol than most shooters to start with (just objective fact whether anyone likes the guy or not) B. kept insanely detailed records of his performance with a number of different handguns C. who had an additional 75,000+ rounds of practice (what literally is almost 5 years of training ammo for even some of the most dedicated shooters) and yet he still could not identify the bore axis as a significant contributor to the very slight increase in performance because there are simply too many variables that can play into the outcome.

You might also note that Todd has noted increased performance with the Grip Force adapter in place than without it...which actually makes the bore axis a bit higher on the Glock pistol. If the bore axis was really the secret sauce that wouldn't be the expected outcome.

but is the G17's low bore axis a non-issue? Todd at least hints at the possibility that it might have come into play (though he in no way implies that it is the deciding factor). so perhaps you would at least allow that a low bore axis might be a little more important than the color of the gun?

No, and for a couple of reasons:

1. Comparing it to worrying about the color of the gun was a stroke of rhetorical genius, in my opinion, and there's no way I'm giving that up.

2. If the contribution it makes is so minor that even someone with those kind of detailed records and almost 150,000 rounds downrange through a high bore axis pistol (the P30 and the HK45 combined) in between what will likely be around 150,000 rounds through low bore axis pistols (M&P and Glock 17) all within a few years time can't really state that it's making a practical difference in his shooting....well...it's really difficult to argue that it's a metric anyone should be concerned with. It's the best case scenario for being able to demonstrate that a low bore axis pistol allows X% faster performance, and yet the numbers don't seem to make a compelling argument for it. The best you can get is a maybe if you're hovering at a number of trigger pulls that exceeds what 99.xxxxxx% of people will ever be able to do through a handgun in a lifetime.

EDIT: @ TCinVA, again I missed your last post! i agree that discussions on this topic tend to become inexplicably heated on other boards. that's one reason that i thought i'd register here--the discussions seem to stay more reasonable

So far it has been. A discussion can be intense, but still reasonable assuming everyone involved displays good sense.

[John Ralston]

The fact that Todd's record for the FAST is with the P30 should eliminate much of the debate.

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