That's always a factor but if you have a cheap ,crappy,tomato stake gun then I don't care how good a shot a person is, the gun is still going to shoot like a cheap,crappy tomato stake gun. I have one I ought to know. Then I can take a well built well designed gun like my Knight or my Triumph and shoot over 200 yards with no problem . So I agree with the previous posts in regard to barrel to stock and rifling, etc. I do like experimenting with loads and finding the best one but I don't like wasting time and money trying to get something to shoot that simply won't shoot. My Triumph will shoot anywhere from 90 to 130 gr with excellent accuracy and 200, 250, 300 gr bullets and a variety of different ones. My Knight was a 4 shot sight in. While the right load for a gun is a real accurate load ( MOA), a quality gun shoots a lot of loads that are deadly for hunting,( bigger group but still in the kill zone) in my opinion of course. If you start with quality then the shooter becomes the final factor. The gun will only shoot as good as the person. Most of mine shoot much better than I can ( with the exception of one)