At long range the pistols lack accuracy so firing more than one shot at a time will likely cause you to miss. At long range you want to shot a single shot (zooming of coarse), then correct your aim before firing again. However when shooting at your enemy's head be careful as the pistols bounce up allot when you fire them so you will need to correct you shot every time. And medium range you will want to aim-down-the-sight, and shoot at the target's head. At close range with the pistols you are best not zooming, and just firing as many shots into your target as fast as possible.

They are to be used when you main weapon is out of ammo and you do not have the time to reload it. The pistols are your side-arm and due to their low damage and lower rate of fire they should only be used as a fall-back weapon, unless you are a sniper and ill equipped for CQC or going for the pistol combat badge. The pistols are all statistically identical, so they are all grouped together.

It shows you when and how to use the game's different weapons. This is a guide on the proper usage of the weapons of BF2, you could just use the ones in the wiki but those are waaay outdated.

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