Remember, in A New Hope the stormtroopers on the Death Star are missing on purpose. They want to put up a token resistance to let the gang escape with the tracker onboard.

Everyone’s in here making excuses but really it’s just not great writing / continuity

Yeah but that sniper was the famous raider Swargo Tulponian, there are 3 books in the expanded universe about him

My favorite nitpick in the phantom menace is in that scene.

In the Cinematic release, and I think the VHS release as well, the Tusken raiding party here is using Slugthrowers, a weapon primarily only used against Lightsaber wielders since it can't be deflected like a blaster bolt.

When it was re-released for DVD it was changed to a Red Blaster bolt. Personally, I think it makes more sense for the Tusken people to use slugthrowers, since they have access to everything they need to make gunpowder on Tatooine (guano from caves, hydrocarbons from the black fruit sugar), but to attain blaster gas they need to trade with the Settlements, something they prefer against.

Yeah, but sand people use slug throwers.

Though there's no canonical information about the speed of blaster bolts, they are very slow on screen. You can follow them with your naked eye.
You can't however see or follow the slug thrower's bullet that might even travel at super sonic speeds.
Leading a target is much easier the less time a projectile needs to reach it.

However, sand people and stormtroopers train with different weapons on different targets for different situations. So it is very possible that sand people are generally better at shooting longer ranges with high speed projectiles, taking wind speed, gravitation, coriolis effect, etc into account while stormtroopers are superior (and more precise) in hectic, close quarters situations where you have to aim and shoot quickly.

That being said, nobody checked for continuity while making the prequels anyway. And Obi-Wan is famous for talking about things "from a certain perspective."

Lucas: "Should I go back and read what I wrote before? Nah... nobody's going to care, it's just movie."

wife and i are working our way through machete order and we've been joking how racist people are (especially leia) toward wookiees. so like racist toward sand people doesn't sound out of character for old Steve Obi-wan Ben Larry Kenobi.

ObiWan doesnt know the difference between "accurate" and "precise"

Maybe its less about literal rifle accuracy and more about Stormtroopers having better knowledge of machinery and so damaged critical components to disable the sand trawler?

Though I think the top scene was more of Obi Wan knowing the Empire was finally catching up with him and trying to relay to Luke how dire the situation was.

I don’t remember the dialogue like that. I’m sure my brain has been polluted by decades of nonsense…but I remember the point of that scene being that Imperials had better weapons, not aim.

Some of that Sand People racism from Anakin must've rubbed off on Obiwan.

What they don't tell you is the podracer he was aiming at flew by 6 seconds earlier.

They lost a little something after, you know, the incident.