The Skinny On Short Barrels

Short-barreled rifles are better than long-barreled rifles. Short rifles are easier to carry and handle, faster and more maneuverable and more accurate across the board than those with longer barrels. Yes, that's what I said. More accurate.

Here's the reason. All other things being equal--and by that I mean equally well-specced chamber and bore, equally well-bedded action and barrel, equally clean and crisp trigger and equal barrel weight/diameter profile--a shorter barrel shoots tighter groups than a longer barrel.

The reason is simple. A shorter barrel is stiffer. It doesn't flex, writhe or vibrate as much as a longer barrel while the bullet is passing down the bore. It's less affected by disharmonic resonance. The only way to make a long barrel as accurate as a short barrel is to make it equally stable--either by making it fatter (and heavier), or by installing some type of harmonic tuning device, like Browning's superbly engineered BOSS system.

In my experience, most shooters haven't understood that long-barreled varmint rifles are fat to make them stiff, not to absorb heat. This misconception may be changing, since shorter, lighter "walking varmint rifles" are steadily increasing in popularity. More shooters seem to be awakening to the fact that a short, slim-barreled rifle can be as accurate as a long, fat-barreled rifle, and is a whole lot easier to pack around. I first realized all this in a moment of amazed delight about twenty-five years ago, the first time I ever fired a fifteen-inch Remington XP-100 pistol chambered for 7mmBR at a 200-meter target. Three shots went 5/8 of an inch. My best varmint rifle was not that good with my best handloads.

Of course, there are some balancing factors to consider. One is projectile velocity. All individual bullet configurations have an optimum velocity range and rate-of-spin, a "sweet zone" where their particular weight, configuration and ballistic characteristics provide the most stable and consistent flight characteristics. Individual cartridges also require sufficient bore length for consistent round-to-round ignition, depending on their case dimensions, capacity and propellant burn rate.

These things vary load-to-load, and if a barrel is too short, bullet velocity will vary widely shot-to-shot and the bullet may not properly stabilize, minimizing the desired effect on the target. In general, long-action cartridges require somewhat longer barrels to optimize than do short-action cartridges.

Heat can also be a factor. In heavy-fire situations a light, short barrel gets hotter faster than a long, heavy barrel, and point of impact may wander from original zero. In practical terms, however, this is a concern only in an all-day prairie dog shoot or long rapid-fire match competition, and a long barrel can in fact drift more than a short barrel when it finally does heat up, simply because it is longer.