Art is right in that Dave3006's statement represents a gross generality. Dave is right to a certain extent, but also wrong as well. Everything comes down to situation context and needed application. In WWI, Hiram Maxim's machine guns did not need to be that accurate as their purpose was to simply hose down advancing troops as they emerged from the trenches. Accuracy was not terrific and quite often the gun was not aimed by the barrel or sights, but by watching the points of impact. If the gunner's aim was off some, then he just walked in the rounds as needed.
I would not even begin to question a need for accuracy in most situations, but there are times where accuracy is not nearly as important as sustained fire power. Take the North Hollywood bank robbery. This is a cool example. The bad guys did not actually have more fire power than the police. There were two guys with automatic rifles against some 150 officers firing pistols and shotguns initially. The number of 150 was the number given at one point by a police spokesperson when asked how many officers were engaged in the gun battle. There were an additional 250 or more involved in trying to provide back-up, support services, and securing the area. So depending on how you look at it, the bad guys were facing 75:1 fighting ratio against them and 200:1 total against them. With such overwhelming numbers, obviously the bad guys were be taken out very quickly, right?
The bad guys only needed to be reasonably accurate so as to effectively remove officers from battle and managed to score hits by shooting through vehicles the officers attempted to use for cover. Their needs were not to completely kill everyone, just to suppress the officer's offensive abilities and the bad guys did this very well for nearly 45 minutes. In this case, the bad guys had the guns and ammo for a lengthy engagement and did not need to aim their rounds with a great deal of accuracy and made shots well beyond the normal range expected for an AK-47. Shooting was both sighted and unsighted, much of the shooting simply being suppression fire. Civilians and officers were either unarmored or lightly armored. The bad guy rifle rounds would penetrate and did penetrate the officers' ballistic vests. Great accuracy was not needed by the bad guys while using automatic weapons. The bad guys were actually very well prepared for the type of engagement they might encounter.
The situation from the officer's side was just the opposite. The officers had handguns and shotguns that would not penetrate the body armor worn by the bad guys. To their advantage, the officers had vastly superior numbers, had the bad guys surrounded, and were able to fire at the bad guys from several directions at once. However, since the bad guys were armored and the engagements took place at some distance, shotguns were ineffective and pistol rounds on the body were not effective. More than anything else, the officers needed a gun that could produce very precise shooting at long range, in excess of 100 yards, something they were completely unable to accomplish with handguns fighting against automatic rifles. None of the officers scored a head shot from distance. One bad guy was killed by a combination head shot from and officer and by shooting himself in the head after he abandoned his AK. The officer's shot was from a distance of something like 10 yards.
So, in the same situation, you had one side that desparately needed longer range accuracy and did not have it when needed (the cops) and one side that did not need much accuracy and were able to hold off vastly superior numbers for a very long period of time (the 2 bad guys).
