The shooter knows what is necessary, often far better than the gunmaker.
The shooter has to use the firearm, and often finds details in them, which are very beautiful perhaps, from a mechanical point of view, but which are very awkward or even impossible from the practical shooting point of view. A noisy bolt action for example.
The shooter knows what he wants but cannot put it into practical shape; the gunmaker, if he is not a shooting man as well, does not know of this want.
The best way out of the difficulty is for the shooter to collaborate with the skilled mechanic and then between them they can evolve something really useful. This is the way most improvements are evolved, the shooter constantly testing the invention and pointing out its faults to the gunmaker who alters till the thing works well.
If an expert mechanic (even if he is a gunmaker), who is not a shooting man tries to invent a firearm improvement by himself, and he finds it works in the workshop, he thinks that is all that is necessary, and the invention is a failure as no shooting man will use it.
The expert shot who is unmechanical, cannot put his ideas into practical shape, and if he does not go to a gunmaker and ask his help, the invention never takes shape; in this way some invaluable inventions never see the light, for want of a little mechanical knowledge.
But there is a third type of inventor, who is absolutely hopeless and the despair of any shooting man he shows his invention to.
This is the man who knows nothing about shooting but he has his own ideas as to how shooting is done, and is too conceited ever to try to learn anything.
He is the type of man who says “Oh, we will muddle through.”
Such a man has a vague idea that, as he himself cannot shoot, therefore his own individual difficulties if he tried to handle a firearm are the difficulties which all shooting experts labour under.