[HoneyBadger]

Crossbows aren't great...compared to a Glock 9, AK, or assault shotgun. Compared to a 14th century hand-cannon, they're spiffy.

They're still great for hunting, superior in some ways to guns. Infact, a lot of states only allow crossbow-hunting for disabled hunters who can't easily use a gun.

Matchlocks, wheel-locks, and their predecessors had the unhappy tendancy to messily explode in the hands of their intended firers, among their many drawbacks. It was great for knights and nobles to give them to peasants (peasants are made for sucking) and then ride off to fight from horseback, because there was no way in hell a peasant could afford to mass-produce quality guns or quality powder, back then. Coupled with their inaccuracy, and the need for highly trained, and hideously expensive, special warhorses (which themselves took decades and decades to develope) to merge guns with calvalry (the only way low class gunfighters could hope to outmaneuvar landed chivalry on the battlefield), guns were reasonably safe to put in the hands of the common mass.

If crossbows had recieved the same level of technological attention guns have for centuries, it's reasonable to suppose they'd operate at a much, much higher level than they currently do--and possibly much closer to the guns we have today.

At the time gunpowder became weaponized, crossbows and ballistae were the most advanced ranged weapons on the battlefield (the hand version of the trebuchet-pretty much the omega catapult-was basically a sling, afterall...). A seige arbalest could be fired accurately, by a single soldier with modest training, at up to 900 meters, every 30 seconds, and deliver 5000 pounds of force. That's not nothing. Consider that that could be done from behind a large, heavy shield, and that crossbows could atleast be fired from a horse, without much special training from the horse. Crossbows and ballistae could also be stacked together, creating 2 and 3 shot versions, and repeating crossbow technology had existed for centuries before guns were ever invented.

The problem with crossbows was that they were too dangerous, and too easily produced and employed.