Here's another stray thought for the benefit of the anti-gunners here...
There actually are pistols which you could hit things with at 100 yards, but dealing with them pretty much defeats the purpose of pistols. You'd need a wheelbarrow or a knapsack or briefcase to carry the things around with.
What about the ordinary pistol which the ordinary criminal or the ordinary citizen who gets one of these concealed carry permits might buy? What are the chances of hitting anything with it? The answer is that from twenty or thirty feet away the chances are reasonable, but it gets worse very quickly from there.
In particular, in any sort of a duel at 50 - 100 yards between a man with a (normal) pistol and a man with a modern compound bow, the man with the pistol is basically dead.
http://highcountryarchery.com/bow_sidewindercg.htm
That would be a HighCountry bow with a carbonfibre riser and heat-treated limbs. Set at 80 lbs, it could shoot very close to 400 feet per second and, with a sight radius of 30" instead of the four or five inches of the typical pistol, could very easily hit a soccer ball at 100 yards. The arrow would be in flight less than a second, not appear to rise more than about five feat over the taret before falling into it, and the whole thing would make less noise than any kind of firearm with any kind of silencer.
And the only American laws which govern its use are the same laws which prohibit people from murdering eachother with knives and forks. Uncle Sam does not give a rat's ass about it.
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