This is actually cool to know, at least it makes a lot of the war movies we watch more believable in a not getting shot or killed by enemy fire viewpoint.
There may, however, be another reason. In his book On Killing, Lt Col Dave Grossman says that such behavior is typical of most armies. He quotes a US medic in Vietnam who had to crawl onto battle fields to help wounded soldiers, “What always amazed me is how many bullet can be fired during a firefight without anyone getting hurt.” Equipment can play a role, but there are also psychological factors, Grossman explains. Soldiers have an innate aversion to killing, he says, and will intentionally miss or just not shoot to avoid killing.
Might sound implausible, but there is quite a bit of data to back it up. During World War II, US General S.L.A Marshall interviewed soldiers after battles and found out that only 15 to 20 per cent even fired their weapons. Another amazing factoid: After the US civil war battle of Gettysburg 27,500 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Ninety per cent of these were loaded, almost 50 per cent had more than one bullet and 25 per cent had 3-10 bullets in the barrel! In other words, instead of shooting, many soldiers just kept on loading. Another one: in World War II, less than 1 per cent of all US fighter pilots accounted for 30-40 per cent of all aircraft shot down.
Some of aversion could be defused through racism or prejudice – 44 per cent of Americans said they “would really like to kill” a Japanese soldier, but only 6 per cent said the same about Germans.
The US army has tackled this problem through socialization, conditioning and training. They now teach their recruits to kill, they desensitize them and dehumanize their enemies. Apparently, this has allowed them to boost firing rates from the 20 per cent in WWII to 50 per cent in Korea and 95 per cent in Vietnam. While I would be very careful about these stats, it looks like there is sufficient evidence there to be able to say that most people need copious coaxing and coercing to kill their fellow man/woman.
via Congo Siasa: Why are Congolese such bad shots?.