Your AVERAGE factory rifle of today, I.E. big box brands, are usually capable of 1" groups for the most part. And you will occasionally get one with better than average craftsmanship that will get to 1/2" C-C grouping. Your higher end rifles tend to be put together with much more attention to tolerances therein making for much better performance. I hear/see sometimes people claiming the rifles of today's manufacturing are better than those of the older times. I have to STRONGLY disagree when it comes to rifles made from around the late 1930's to the mid to late 1960's. Back then your rifle makers paid so much more attention to detail and cared much more for the quality of their work to be seen and appreciated by the customers. I have several old rifles from Winchester and Browning that will all EASILY hold to a 1/2"-3/4" group any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

As Jeep pointed out, I also have many rifles with custom barrels, blue printed actions and all that other jazz that will easily hold 1/2" and under.

More often than not, it's not the rifle but what it's being fed. I've had, and still have a few, rifles that wouldn't shoot factory ammo of ANY brand worth diddly but some work at the loading bench brought out a rifle that is unmatched! Had a few that wouldn't even make for good fence posts they shot so bad until a little love at the loading bench cured them.

Then you have scope bases, rings, and the scopes themselves to consider. Cheap scopes, poorly fitted bases and rings are the bane to many shooters and more often than not it's the rifle that gets the blame. Ran in to a fella at a range in PA once that was about to wrap a really nice old model 70 30-06 around the post. I saw him shooting and could pretty much tell it wasn't bad form or flinching causing a shotgun pattern on his 50 yard target. He jumped up and said "first person to hand me a $100 dollar bill can have this fine looking shotgun!" I whipped out a bill and said SOLD but you can keep that Simmons scope. I took the scope off for him and he said "that's nice of you since I really like that scope" I said "you won't when you put it on another rifle and get the same crappy groups" I mounted the scope from my own 30-06 (Nikon Monarch) that I had brought to the range, barrel sighted it (pulled bolt and centered the target down the bore then dialed in the CH's) then proceeded to shoot a one hole 3 shot group at 50 Best $100 bucks I'd spent in a long time! Needless to say the fella was a might pissy but I think he learned a lesson that day