Clearly I haven’t shot anything irl ever and don’t know much about weapons either. Oh and relax, I’m not planning on shooting anyone.
Question comes after videogames, which can sometimes have both weapon types used interchangeably and/or behaving in a similar way.
I would personally believe guns are easier, and that the only advantage a bow would ever have is that they’re not as noisy. But I hear people say aiming with a bow is easier. I guess the type of bow and gun used would also weigh on the matter?
Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet arsenal nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947, more commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov.
It’s the world’s most popular assault rifle, a weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple nine pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood, it doesn’t break, jam, or overheat. It will shoot whether it’s covered in mud or filled with sand.
It’s so easy even a child can use it, and they do.
The Soviets put the gun on a coin, Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people’s greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure; no one was lining up to buy their cars.
~ Lord of War
guns are much easier to aim and use. technically a bow is quieter, but guns can be made to be fairly quiet and are generally much less bulky than bows. generally speaking, guns are point and click. bows are dependent on how you hold the bow, how you hold the arrow, and the form with which you release the arrow (letting the bow move the right way and amount is involved). on top of that even the quietest configuration of a gun will have more power per size than a bow because gunpowder is very energy dense and the barrel of a gun is a great way of focusing that energy into a projectile.
Aiming a bow is pretty easy, and it doesn’t require that much strength
(Obviously I’m not talking about a medieval British longbow)
fire arms.
Hands down.
Lets just put it this way. you don’t hear about toddlers accidentally killing their parents because they got into the parent’s bows and arrows.
Bow is too slow to be useful against a home invader. And you need a lot of strength to pull the thing (not sure what its called) back to make it ready for the next bolt. Good for zombie apocalypse scenarios tho.
Modern guns a extremely precisely engineered devices that are incredibly easy to use, for better or worse. I know modern sporting bows are also but it’s no contest in my opinion.
I’ve shot both, bows as a complete amateur and relatively competent with a rifle. There is no question that a modern gun is way easier to pick up as an amateur and hit what you want to hit and I cannot possibly believe there are anything other than extremely niche uses where a bow is superior.
Bows are simpler logistically. Nock an arrow, pull, aim, release (“fire”). Guns have more steps up front typically but also make the round-to-round process simpler.
Both have sights that are comparable in complexity.
Form is similarly important for both.
Skill curve is similar for both at the higher end. I think bows are a little more intuitive for beginner through novice (subjective of course).
Size can vary wildly for both.
Bows need more physicality typically, so they’re a little harder in that way.
Feel free to follow with questions if you like. I have some hobby experience with bows and have trained professionally (military) with firearms.
An untrained bowman will have a hard time to hit a stationary target 7m away. A revolver will hit most of the time and even without any training you will find it easy enough to load the weapon. Maintaining a bow is not much easier than a revolver.
Having been new on both weapons and also having trained people that were brand new on both weapons, I will say that most beginners cannot hit something that far away with anything. What I meant by “intuitive” is that if you miss with a bow, you can see exactly where the arrow went and if it’s too low you can be like “I need to shoot a little higher”. Sometimes it is harder when you’re firing ammunition because they tend to disappear.
Loading either weapon isn’t necessarily complicated, but it is more intuitive on a bow. For revolver you will need to pull the release, rotate the assembly out, remove old rounds, insert new rounds and reverse disassembly. For a bow, you just put an arrow in and pull it back because the previous arrow is already gone. For some firearms, loading correctly can be fairly tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing. For example, if you load an M16 and don’t remember to shake the rounds to the back of the magazine, it can jam the weapon.
100% firearms. They are so easy that literally (sadly) toddlers have used them and killed with them. A bow takes some practice and skill, almost all basic guns you can use and hit close by targets with, after like 5 minutes of practice.
Plus a gun doesn’t require draw strength
It still requires strength to chamber a round. The firearm was already loaded with any kid that’s accidentally used it.
It is a lot less though than a bow.
Absolutely a gun. The thing they don’t tell you about bows is that you have to be the one to draw back the bowstring, and you need to exert enough force on that bowstring that your stored potential energy sends an arrow flying. If you’re physically weak, good fucking luck. Yeah, maybe if you’re strong enough or use a compound bow to reduce the amount of strain aiming is easy, but in my experience, it’s pretty rough getting to a point where you can conveniently draw, aim, and fire a bow.
Meanwhile, a .22 rifle barely has enough kick for a child to feel. A shotgun or any higher calibre rifle might give a teenager a bit of a sore shoulder. Movies exaggerate it a little bit, but it really isn’t that much harder than “point and click.” The answer is gun by a mile.
Source: I had a lot of ranged weapons training in the Scouts. If I had to choose one, I’d go with hatchets.
Anyone can pick up a bow and fling a few arrows downrange with minimal coaching but becoming proficient takes longer with archery than with a rifle. IMO, shotguns are even easier: cover the bird with the muzzle and slap that trigger. Dinner is served.
As anecdotal evidence: If you get skunked during rifle season you’re a chump, bow hunters EXPECT to get skunked
Guns. The advent of firearms revolutionized warfare to the extent that no other military arms mattered, and no other training mattered.
Before firearms were adopted, it would take a good ten to twenty years to raise a standing army, and retinues would still need a few months of training to not be slaughtered within the first battle. With firearms you just need a week or two and any peasant with two arms became an effective soldier.
Contrasting this, bowmen weren’t peasants. They did not return to their family when there wasn’t war. They were trained from around the age of seven to around the age of 15, and after this would be a professional soldier until they retired or died; training every single day (except Sundays or Saturdays depending on religion). They were paid to be bowmen, nothing else. Even if a peasant could use a bow, say if they were a hunter, they would never qualify for military service. Its that big of a difference in skill.
As to their differences in effect, range and force.
The weakest powder musket equals a ~80lbs draw war bow. Both can pierce plate armor on a good day, but the former can do so from a longer distance and again with decades less training. As guns get more advanced, their range and penetration increases massively, whereas most archers will be unable to draw a 120lbs or higher bow, meaning there is a maximum distance and effectiveness of bows that is almost comically lower than weapons.
To keep with freedom units, a deadly long range bow shot tops out at around a quarter mile with a high draw weight long bow. That’s about the absolute max, assuming the victim is wearing no armor. The current record for a sniper with a gun is around 1.5 miles, with the target wearing body armor.
That’s not really true, early firearm existed alongside bows for centuries before they became dominant.
I have little experience but have fired each and your instincts are right. gun much easier. now because my experience is low maybe large kickback firearms are worse than bows but I went regularly to an archery range but only for like some months and I can say I never got that good with hitting close to a bullseye but with a rifle it was not hard to get better than that the first session. Your example though is video games so im not sure if run and gun might be different. I mean when you are not moving and aiming the sites work pretty well (presumably if calibrated right but I have never done that and assumed whoever did it did a good job) but like if your running around shooting things then I dunno maybe the bow could be better but I doubt it.
Having hunted with a bow for years; a rifle is 100X easier to use, with range and accuracy an order of magnitude better.
Why the bow preference then?
I think most places have a longer hunting season for bows
I consider bows more fun. If I want food on the table the gun is better. However the legal bow season is often much longer and that makes the bow more likely to put food on the table if you can hunt everyday. (hunting is in large part waiting for the animal to come by)
We have an insane number of deer around here and with a rifle it’s not exactly hunting when I can step out my back door and fill all my tags with a mag dump. Bow hunting is more sporting and makes me better.
I use a rifle for elk and moose (and boar), but using a bow on those is borderline insane, and there’s not as many of those around.
Gun is far easier to hit your target with. Crossbow is compareable with much lower range but a bow, wether it be long, recurve or compound is quite hard.
I shoot as a hobby and I’ve dabbled with archery
Bows take strength to use and are also harder to be consistent with. The way you nock the arrow on the string, keeping constant pull while aiming and inconsistencies in the arrows all play a part. Rifles aren’t nearly as bad as long as you have good fundementals.
Ballistics are a big deal with ranged weapons. Arrows don’t go very far or very fast so you really need to know how the arrow will arc and account for that as you aim. The farther the shot the more wind, drop etc will have to be factored into your aim. Elevation matters too if you’re on a hill or in a tree stand or something.
I’m going to make up a number but let’s say 50 yards would be a tough shot for a bow to hit something consistently. For a rifle that is no problem and most rifle bullets’ paths won’t start to arc or get blown by wind significantly until it has travelled several hundred yards.
I find that long range shooting with a bolt action “feels” roughly the same as shooting archery. You really need to focus and make sure you’re doing everything right for good results. But that also makes it that much more satisfying when you do well!
