The Ghost Bullet issue with hand cannons in Destiny explained and demonstrated in this video
Ghost Bullets are an issue in Destiny and this video from iAM - tripleWRECK on YouTube demonstrates just how big of an issue it has become.
If you watch the video, you will see that when he aims at a player using a hand cannon, the dot shows where the bullet is supposed to go. Sometimes it hits, and many times it doesn't - even when within the weapon's specified range to maintain accuracy. The bullets aren't missing the target due to latency nor poor aim.
Apparently, this is some sort of issue with balancing with hand cannons and other lower range weapons. The balance seems to be tied to a hidden stat, which could be some sort of random deviation as a way of balance, possibly to prevent quickly spamming the gun.
However, the accuracy automatically drops when firing multiple rounds in a quick succession. While that is typical with particular weapons in many shooters, when accurate aim is applied - in this case specifically - the bullet should hit the target in the sights instead of the wall behind the enemy.
This shows the bullets aren't disappearing as many players thought, they just aren't hitting the target. In the video, it's said that The Last Word seems to suffer from this issue the most.
Sometimes, shots which hit the enemy in the video also count as body shots instead of a crit even when laser point is set at the very center of the player's head.
iAM - tripleWRECK explains the issue and demonstrates it very well in the video. He also calls upon Bungie to acknowledge the problem, and remove both RNG accuracy and bloom from hand cannons.
If you google the RNG accuracy issue or Ghost Bullets, which I had to because I don't play Destiny, you will find players have been discussing the problem for quite some time now, and it is especially frustrating for those who play PvP.
Hopefully, this will be addressed when Destiny: Rise of Iron comes out on September 20.