[snowman]

I have never shot anything at 15 yards, just to damn close. Add another 5 feet and make it a std 50 foot and use 50 foot slow and rapid fire pistol targets. Good shooters, and there are quite a few of them out there, can put 9/10 to 10/10 into the X ring, thats the goal to shoot for. Sounds hard or maybe impossible but with practice you can do it.

As to a gun, a cheep gun will permanently screw up your ability to shoot. A good quality gun, with clean, smooth, crisp trigger pull is absolutely necessary. Without good trigger pull you will learn nothing about your own ability. Poor repeatability is a curse. A cheep gun, even with good trigger pull will not put a bullet in the same place twice. In fact a good gun will show how bad std ammo can be. The best gun will only hold about a 9 ring with crappy ammo. Quality ammo will hold the 10 ring, target ammo, thats good target ammo will hold the x ring and the best target ammo will stay in the same hole. Take that great ammo and put it in a crap gun and you might even not hold the 8 or 9 ring. A really cheap gun can almost put bullets off paper! You cannot learn on such a gun.

I just checked current prices. In my humble opinion a good used gun will run about $500, a good new one over $1000. About $2500 for a new quality target 22 or 45. A quality non target gun about $1200. A quality 10 foot gun about $600, ie what a cop might use for a backup or if he is cheep his primary gun. Just remember, do you really want to get that close the bad guy?