On the Accuracy of Stormtroopers

Well reasoned. [Link]

Stormtrooper accuracy is something of a joke on the internet. They never seem to hit any important person when they shoot at them, missing constantly. There's a Cracked article on it, for god's sake. Everyone has heard the joke.

It's a complete and total lie, and it ignores the relevant details of the events.

To prove that they are, in fact, crack shots, watch the opening sequence in A New Hope. Here we have a number of stormtroopers charging into a narrow breach into heavy fire, yet they are able to gun down more rebel soldiers in cover than they take in casualties! This is not amateur night here--these are stone cold killers, destroying their foes mercilessly. They are so effective that the defenders fall back almost immediately.

Then, the next time their accuracy is mentioned, it is in the examination of the corpses of a bunch of child-sized aliens. That's right, they were able to kill a number of small targets with expert precision. Now, it was off-screen, but you cannot get that kind of consistency and precision randomly. It beggars the imagination to think that their aim is terrible.

So why can they never hit Luke and Leia in the Death Star? They were ordered not to. The escape was allowed--recall that Tarkin and Vader discussed exactly that the minute the Falcon left. They needed the princess to go to the hidden fortress so they could track them there. She already had refused to give them accurate coordinates, even as her homeworld was destroyed before her eyes. She would never break, never talk. So she had to escape.