Americans actually do shoot quite well, but the rules around gun handling are incredibly strict for Olympic shooting.
Things like minor celebrations, emotion, or even the cadence of your walk while leaving the range can cause disqualification.
Since American shooters can't hit a bullseye without shotgunning a beer and magdumping into the sky as eagles carry exploding fireworks in celebration, they often do not place in Olympic shooting
Not to take anything anyway from the Olympic athletes who are incredibly talented at their sport, but their sport doesn't resemble the practical shooting of real guns.
American shooting is a lot more flash than precision.
Legitimately there's a category of shooting sports that's about the most efficient use of WWI trenchgun style slam firing, which is basically abusing the reload speed on that class of shotgun to convert it into a semi-auto.
We literally made a sport out of what the enemy tried to get classed as a war crime as an act of spite and you're wondering why we not so good at traditional marksmanship? It's a level of decorum that America was basically founded as a fuck you against.
Olympic shooting is just a different beast. Look at the differences in scores; it's fractions of a point, in most cases. Air guns simply aren't popular in the US, while they're one of the very few options open to most people outside of the US. And, TBH, there's not a lot of support for the Olympic shooting sports in the US, aside from possibly trap.
Olympic shooting has nothing to do with shooting of any other kind. The guns are custom made. Unless you are speficially training for the Olympics you'll likely never handle such a "weapon". I think using these guns is the equivalent to a running being able to use spring blades. I am not a gun owner but it feels like a pointless sport as done.
I mean, they should add a version of this competition where you shoot two guns vaguely at the ceiling without looking at it, while dancing in a cow-boy outfit.
Isn't it kind of weird to point at medal counts in the Olympics to say that America sucks? Most overall medals and second in gold medals. Shitting on America, no matter if it makes sense or not.
At this point we've only had finals for the events that use children's guns. I'm not really surprised that China would beat us at shooting children's guns. They'd probably win a tricycle race too.