If I understood correctly, the BR bullet can occur anywhere in the radius of the margin of error. This is great to know because it explains a lot of frustration by revealing the reason that you cannot consistently beat an opponent, atleast when they are outside the "hitscan" radius anyway. There's no telling what quadrant of the target your 2nd and 3rd bullets will fall into, so the last trigger pull of a BR battle (where both hit all their shots) can be a "crap shoot". This is problem is magnified in the competitive world where individual bullets count. So, my opinion is that Halo 3 lacks the consistency for competitive play based on skill, but rather teamwork.