参考
Now, how could they possibly stand up against one of the crack armies of Europe? Well, it's always the, it's always fascinating and foolish to try and say how and why a war was won. But through the maze of strategies and politics, there are two or three things that strike me as decisive.

For one thing, the British used smooth-bore muskets, which spread their fire not exactly at random but they allowed for a lateral error of 3 feet in less than a hundred yard range. You see the British infantryman was not expected to pick off individual targets; he stood shoulder to shoulder, with a hundred of his fellows and they sprayed in the general direction of the enemy.

Now, the Americans had smooth-bore muskets too. But as the war moved into the interior, the British came up against the frontiersmen and they were not men who used guns for sport. Their very existence depended on shooting their food on the wing, saving their families by picking off Indians in night raids, and they needed a weapon that was lighter and more accurate. And this was it, the so-called Pennsylvania flintlock.

It was developed for them by German settlers in Pennsylvania, gunsmiths who'd doubled the length of the barrel, and grooved it to revolve the bullets so as to keep it on line. Hence, from this rifling of the barrel, we get the word, rifle.

They were supposed to be shorter men in those days, but they must have had arms like apes. Look at the length of this thing, fifty-eight inches. Anyway, there it is, the Pennsylvania flintlock. It did awful damage to / shoulder-to-shoulder infantry. A Pennsylvanian Tory, who had seen this weapon at work, wrote a letter to a London newspaper. And this is what he said:' This province has raised a thousand riflemen, the worst of whom will put a rifle ball into a man's head at 150 or 200 yards. Therefore, advise your officers who shall hereafter come out to America to settle their affairs in England before their departure.

What demoralized the marching lines of the British was this reputation for sharp shooting. It was magnified in England into a Witch's Curse, and there were some lively desertions among men drafted for service in the colonies. This is, I think, on the whole, a true American myth, that legendry reputation for spotting the bull's-eye which began with the embattled farmers and was sustained down the next century and a half by Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley and Sergeant York.