Successful companies that stand the test of time are often born out of a passionate few that have the audacity to imagine an alternative world, where things can be different in a way that is markedly better than the status quo. We have witnessed powerful waves of change sweep through the music and media markets with the introduction of streaming services, health and fitness space with the launch of gym-in-a-box style offerings and finance with online payments and trading apps just to name a few. The common denominator for those new century consumer applications is DIGITIZATION.

On the other hand, the firearms and shooting sports markets have a long history that is intertwined with Homo Sapiens, the ultimate tool making species. Our unending search for more security, survival and comfort led us to the invention of firearms and ultimately to the classic pistol designs that legends like John Browning and Eugene Stoner gave to the world. Ever since, people have been wondering what the next breakthrough in shooting technology will be as advances in firearms have been more incremental in nature. There’s cause to believe digitization will play a major role in delivering positive change in this corner of the global economy as well.

Looking at industry stats, some 32% (81.4 million) Americans reported that they personally owned a gun as of 2021. The pandemic has only accelerated gun ownership with more than 5 million Americans choosing to join the ranks. Approximately 50% of those gun owners go to over 16,000 firing ranges with a certain frequency (13% often, 40% sometimes). Add on top the nearly 18,000 police agencies in the United States and it’s not hard to figure out that the need for good firearms training is truly immense. However, despite the prevalence of firearms among the U.S. population, systematically tracking marksmanship performance remains a “hit-and-miss” exercise involving many error-prone, tedious tasks. Those few that are truly motivated utilize data log books that can be very time consuming to update and analyze. Worse yet, most others don’t make any real effort to stay on top of the ways they can improve their shooting skills. Contrast that with experts tell us good marksmanship requires A LOT OF REPETITION and PURPOSEFUL TRAINING. 

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Target Shooting in America, 20 million American shooters spent $16.9 billion engaging in target shooting. Without a set process to identify areas to improve and they lack a good understanding of ways they can get better. The most recent NSSF firearm and ammunition retailer survey found that about 47% of first-time gun buyers in 2021 inquired about professional firearm training and approximately 43% of this consumer segment signed up for such training if the retailer offered professional training options. Professional marksmanship instructors, however, are far too few in comparison to the practitioners of the sport so self-learning or shooting with peers dominate the typical firearm owner’s real life experience. Even if they go for an in person class, those offerings mainly focus on the crucial topic of firearm safety and marksmanship skill development tends to take a backseat due to time limits. This suboptimal situation prevents many from making the most of their time and money spent at the shooting range as they resort to manually collecting targets and using cumbersome notebooks or spreadsheets at best. Whatsmore, during outdoor shooting drills, resetting targets can be laborious, disruptive, and down right dangerous. Past that hurdle, the average shooter finds that it’s not trivial to analyze their pile of targets to find out how they can consistently improve their marksmanship skills. All of these factors point out to the glaring need for affordable solutions that provide effective, consistent reinforcement of good marksmanship habits — especially for new gun owners. 

At AccuShoot, we firmly believe that the world doesn’t need better firearms, it needs better marksman! And the best way to deliver this step function change is to start digitizing marksmanship. Everyone who owns a firearm absolutely would benefit by more training. Whether gaining or maintaining proficiency, consistency is paramount since good marksmanship is a perishable skill. Exactly three years ago from this date, having been long time firearms owners and shooters themselves, the AccuShoot co-founders foresaw that the future of marksmanship would require a data intensive approach and set out to make that dream a reality. Behind the scenes, AccuShoot leverages state-of-the-art machine learning and computer vision to enable a simple, hustle-free target shooter experience. AccuShoot can monitor target and shooter in real-time, tracking shooter evolution over time, and recommend relevant drills. AccuShoot’s intuitive iPhone app is now accessible on the App Store around the world and makes an ideal shooting range companion with an active subscription. In its simplest form, AccuShoot requires only a smart phone, a tripod, and a supported target. Once set up, AccuShoot becomes part drill sergeant part spotter, providing drills that test your limits of speed, accuracy, or both. Some of AccuShoot’s many innovative capabilities include:

• Real-time Target Scoring: Just point your iPhone to it and start recording and scoring your shooting sessions in real-time. Shooting long range? No worries! You can use products like MagView , Novagrade , or Phone Skope to connect your iPhone to your favorite spotter scope.

• Digital D.O.P.E. (Data on Previous Engagements): AccuShoot does all the record-keeping for you for each and every shot and session. In the end, you have a wealth of very detailed information that paints a much more accurate picture of how your performance changes over time.

• Advanced Group Analysis: Automatically performs complex computations to quantify how tight your shot groups are based on multiple settings. You can conveniently access all the details about how you performed in any given session.

• Performance Prediction (Through the free AccuShoot Desktop App): Using your D.O.P.E. AccuShoot builds an advanced statistical model that constantly predicts your shooting performance under different stress situations. This personalized model works for different distances and types of guns while tracking your performance over time so you can quantify the impact of your training.

• Social Rankings: AccuShoot will let you compare your performance against your friends and, if you feel confident, even with the sharpest shooters on the platform. The dynamic leaderboards will allow you to double the fun by competing with your friends, or better yet, against fellow shooters with publicly shared sessions.

• Picture-based Sessions (Through the free AccuShoot Desktop App): If you happen to have plenty of physical targets from past shooting sessions sitting in your garage, you can start analyzing them using AccuShoot’s picture-based session feature to digitize your marksmanship history. AccuShoot lets you upload a clear picture of your target and does all the hard work of scoring it for you.

• Digital Locker: Choose from our catalog of guns or add your own maker, model, and gun metadata before you record your sessions. Then, compare your performance across different guns. You can keep your locker completely private, share with friends or everyone based on your privacy preferences.

• Granular Privacy Management: Share what you want with who you want! It is up to you to decide with whom you want to share your session results. That can be all your friends, every AccuShoot user, or nobody else if you wish to keep any or all of your sessions private.

Interested in being part of our journey to lead law abiding citizens, law enforcement and military members to marksmanship mastery? If you have an iPhone, download the AccuShoot app from the App Store today and purchase a subscription with Apple Pay. You can also make your purchase on the AccuShoot website by providing a valid credit card. Subscriptions cost either $15/month or $150/year depending on your preference. Our Android version is currently in development. However, Android users can already sign up on our website and upload pictures of their targets to hand score them allowing them to start digitizing live fire sessions. We also encourage all of you to visit our regulation crowdfunding offering hosted on Netcapital and see if it makes sense for you to own a piece of the AccuShoot revolution as it unfolds.

In the coming weeks, we will publish new blog posts covering the background stories of the AccuShoot team and the innovative features of the AccuShoot app in more depth. Stay tuned and AccuShoot!