Grinds My Gears: No Zero

I read a lot -- non-fiction and fiction, the latter in several genres.

My "light" reading tends toward thrillers of various sorts, from spy novels to legal potboilers to police procedurals to "guy or gal wandering around and getting into hairy situations" stuff like.

Many, maybe even most, of these novels, for obvious reasons, reference firearms. Some do a better job of getting those references right (Stephen Hunter's novels in which the protagonist is sniper Bob Lee Swagger, for instance, go into loving and seemingly correct detail quite often). Some do a worse job. Sometimes a bad job.

Here's one thing that bothers me in many of those novels, even the ones that get shooting technique, etc., mostly right:

The protagonist is in a situation requiring gun work. He or she is a skilled, experienced shooter. The shooting technique is well-described.

BUT! The shooter picks up a random rifle -- maybe off a bad guy's corpse, maybe from the closet of a fellow protagonist, whatever -- engages in proper known-distance shooting technique (good sight picture, good stock weld, proper eye relief, stable position, etc.; Breathe, Relax, Aim, Stop, Squeeze), and puts his or her first round in the chest, or even the head, of an antagonist at, say, 300 meters.

Do you see the problem here? I'm no sniper, but I was a trained marksmanship instructor in the Marine Corps, and what I just described doesn't happen except under a very unlikely set of circumstances: That the rifle's sight or scope just happens to already be battlesight zeroed to the standard (for the M16A2, the last rifle I taught, anyway) 300 meters that the individual shooter requires.

That would be insanely unlikely to happen to me. I don't remember the dope on the last M16A2 the Marine Corps issued me (it's been more than 25 years), but it was a crap ton of clicks on the rear sight, likely for the simple reason that I learned to shoot right-handed and right-eyed even though I am left-handed and left-eye dominant.

Even for a right-handed, right-eye-dominant shooter shooting right handed and right-eyed, any random rifle is almost certainly not going to put its first round right where a dead-center sight picture or scope crosshair shows the round hitting at any significant range.

I suppose some writers know this but decide they can't let it interfere with the flow of action, while perhaps other writers aren't really familiar with firearms and skip to the good part (the combat shooting) instead of researching the work that goes in before the shooting starts. But it bugs the shit out of me every time I see it.

That is all.