OK...so after 27 years in Law Enforcement and just over 24 years as a firearms instructor, my agency staff are pushing for red-dots o duty pistols. The SWAT guys are all giddy about them, and others see the new systems as a better way to shoot.

OK...but I just don't get it. I've tried them, and they sow me way down. Compared to point shooting and using sights, the red dots seem so much slower as I struggle to find the dot when I should already be putting roads downrange. Second place is first loser in a gun fight, so speed is important.

OK so are they really that great? Or do others feel like me that red dots on pistols is just a fad.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bcjwriter,

RDS are here to stay.

Red dots do a ton for fundamental marksmanship.

First off, it forces you to clean up a sloppy draw. Yeah, it seems to be the first thing you notice on the switch. You can get away with a whole lot of misalignment on the sights on the presentation and survive with irons. With the red dot, not so much. A slight misalignment causes the dot to not be in the window. Practice really cleans up the presentation. Even when shooting irons.

You only think that you have clean trigger control. Until you start shooting the dot. Every little bad input shows up in the window. This causes you to clean up your trigger control. A win even when shooting irons. At 10 yards, I’m really no faster. At 15 yards and out I can pour on the speed.

Over 40 eyes is a huge saver by running the dot. Plus the advantages we see running a dot on a rifle in CQB.

Win/win.

They aren't a fad but I'm no fan.

I've tried to warm to them but they are not for me. I've been told "give it more time" but I've invested enough and have zero interest in them.

I have not carried or Practiced Drawing mine yet but I do love shooting them at the range. I think I shoot more accurate with them .

As jones said, they force you to improve the fundamentals.

When I first started shooting with my red dot I felt the same way you did bcj. After evaluating what was happening and correcting my errors, I much prefer my red dot over irons.

After spending a good amount of time just practicing my draw, I found I needed to adjust my initial gripping of the pistol. With my P365/ RMSc, if I have the web of my thumb centered on the tail of the backstrap when I draw, the dot will be outside of the window to the left. Initially when I adjusted my grip, I rotated my hand so a little more of my finger would be on the trigger and the dot was outside of the window to the right. I made smaller adjustments to my grip, did multiple draws with each and dry fired to make sure the dot stayed aligned during the trigger press. I found if I initially contact the grip with the inside of my thumb, then drive my hand into the grip, when I draw, the dot is on target. If you play around with your grip, you will find where you need to be.

Using the red dot compared to iron sights, I am on target and ready to shoot in less time.

I agree with what Jones said. I realized how inconsistent my draw was when I started trying a red dot.

The other thing is the ability to focus on the target. When shooting irons, you can’t focus on the target and the front sight at the same time. One will be out of focus no matter what. A red dot changes this. You can focus on your target and your aiming device at the same time. That’s a big deal imo.

quote:

Originally posted by esdunbar:
The other thing is the ability to focus on the target. When shooting irons, you can’t focus on the target and the front sight at the same time. One will be out of focus no matter what. A red dot changes this. You can focus on your target and your aiming device at the same time. That’s a big deal imo.

With my near vision degrading as I age, this is a huge plus for me.

I'm retired now but if I want to see my front sight I need reading glasses. I doubt I will have time to don them during any type of self defense situation. The red dot solves my issue.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Red dots do a ton for fundamental marksmanship.

First off, it forces you to clean up a sloppy draw. Yeah, it seems to be the first thing you notice on the switch. You can get away with a whole lot of misalignment on the sights on the presentation and survive with irons. With the red dot, not so much. A slight misalignment causes the dot to not be in the window. Practice really cleans up the presentation. Even when shooting irons.

You only think that you have clean trigger control. Until you start shooting the dot. Every little bad input shows up in the window. This causes you to clean up your trigger control. A win even when shooting irons. At 10 yards, I’m really no faster. At 15 yards and out I can pour on the speed.

Over 40 eyes is a huge saver by running the dot. Plus the advantages we see running a dot on a rifle in CQB.

Win/win.

I agree with all of this. You really get good at aligning the gun with your eyes with a dot. Or you don't, and you don't like it.

Greater proliferation of factory milled guns is probably the next big step. It would be nice to see some agreement on a bolt pattern so we could dispense with the one and done milling or the goofy sets of plates, but the biggest impediment there is probably that the military and a big chunk of the competition world have picked the Deltapoint Pro and the tactical, self defense, and LE folks have by and large picked the RMR.

Lots of good points here about old eyes and correcting bad habits.

If your red dot is not co-witness then you have a lot of muscle memory retraining to do.

If your red dot is co-witness with your irons and you can't find the dot, you would have missed with just irons anyway. Shedding training scars is a must.

They make sense on a rifle but I don't know about a pistol. Plus the constant recoil of the slide has to be hard on them.

You probably saw my thread on wanting to get a glock setup for an RMR here;
https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...590021654#5590021654

In the first "background" paragraph I touch on why I want to start moving more guns into having dots.

My first attempt was putting a cheap mini reflex on a Ruger 22/45 with a flat top with no sights. It was frustrating as all heck twisting my wrist in every direction looking for that dot. I decided it wasn't for me, and I haven't really shot that pistol much because the dot is my only way to aim it. (I've since moved an Aimpoint Micro-style dot that gun and having the tube with depth makes a HUGE difference in getting that aligned, but haven't shot it much still)

A few years have gone by, Agony posted that massive thread on shooting with an RMR, Cabela's put them up for sale and I grabbed one. I bought a slide milled for it for my P320. With the cowitness irons I was able to use the dot more effectively, but as you mentioned it slowed me waaay down. Instead of pushing the gun out, following the front sight, and breaking the shot when I got the rear sight in place around the front, I was now bringing the gun up, aligning my sights, shifting focus with my eyes to the dot, then playing the game of getting that dot settled on target before breaking the shot. Couple that with the slide cut being junk and the RMR loosening because the tapped holes were not quite perfect, I sold the slide, shelved the RMR, and went back to irons.

Sig was having a sale on Rx slides for the P320, and I had a 25% coupon from the not-a-recall upgrade, so I decided to give it another shot. The Romeo window being larger, and having less of the optic "bezel" (for lack of a better term) in your sight picture makes it a bit more forgiving in terms of losing the dot, in my mind.

I've shot the Rx slide a bit on my own, and I've done a fair amount of dry fire practice with it. I took a small class a few weeks ago, 4 of us with an instructor on a private area of a public range. I was the most experienced shooter, but I was the slowest to get that first shot off out of the holster, partly because I was the only one wearing a cover garment, and I was using a new holster, but when I turned the dot off and just shot it with irons I was much faster. Trying to hit a 3x5" index card at about 7-10 yards, should be fairly easy. But as mentioned, the dot magnifies subtle movement to the point it can "dance" around a lot, and you can clearly see if your trigger press wasn't perfect, so it took me a bit to get that dot settled on the target to where I was confident in making hits.

The weird part about shooting with the dot is that my groups were at least 1/3 the size of the other shooters, and I was outpacing them with follow-up shots by a wide margin. So drills with 5-shot strings, or emptying the mag while walking, or repeated 2-3-shot drills in and out of the holster, I was getting the first shot off a little slower, but finishing quicker and so much tighter. Tighter than I shot similar drills with the same gun and no dot just a few weeks prior.

So I realized that once I get that initial draw more refined to where the dot settles where I want it, which will come with putting more rounds downrange, I'm going to be shooting faster and more accurately, AND with a target-focus that allows much easier transition on drills such as color-or-number callouts by the instructor on a target with multiple numbered/colored shapes. With the pistol in low ready when we did those drills I was dead nuts and faster than expected.

No different than having never used irons before and needing to build muscle memory into having a draw that presents the sights well, and knowing how to properly align them, follow-through, all that stuff that transitions one from a newbie that has no consistency to a seasoned shooter that has speed and accuracy as second nature.

You can't go in with the same expectations as shooting a rifle with irons vs a dot, it will only frustrate you as I think you've seen. I certainly felt that way initially. I think that's why a lot of people give you the advice to give it time, and try and have that epiphany moment. An instructor that can teach red dots will probably also be a huuuuge help, but I'd wager there aren't currently that many who can actually internalize and form curriculum around the dot to the same level we have now with grip/trigger/iron sights. As soon as the training catches up and the sighting systems mature a bit more I think dots will be standard.

Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't even quite trust RDS' on a rifle, much less atop a slide banging back and forth.

The day my eyesight degrades so badly I can't hit COM at seven yards with iron sights is the day it's time for me to hang up my gun.

In Bullseye competition one does not draw from holster. Rule change to allow red-dot sights allowed older competitors to continue to compete. It now has been a very long time since I saw any Bullseye competitor using iron sights.
As has always been true, pistol and its sights must fit and must point. Some people mount red-dot sight too high so pistol/sights no longer point.
Bullseye competitor mounted red-dot sight on a Colt 1911 used a rear-sight insert of excellent quality. Big problem finding dot. Removed insert and milled rear of slide for direct attachment of red-dot sight. Now the pistol points!
MOS of Glock and CORE of S&W seem to preserve natural pointing. One competitor in local indoor IDPA like competition used red-dot sight very successfully. I expect to see more use of red-dot sights when league starts again in Fall. Iron-sights or red-dot sights, pistol must point when one brings pistol up to align with eye.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't even quite trust RDS' on a rifle, much less atop a slide banging back and forth.

Lol, the entire US military seems to disagree with you man!

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't even quite trust RDS' on a rifle, much less atop a slide banging back and forth.

Lol, the entire US military seems to disagree with you man!

Don't care, man

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't even quite trust RDS' on a rifle, much less atop a slide banging back and forth.

Lol, the entire US military seems to disagree with you man!

For quite a number of years, we had this same mentality at our academy. We had to remove our RDS from our rifles at the beginning of any class we took. We listened to a guy who was a cop in the 79s lecture us on how RDS were da debil. This went over well until the day that he ordered two KSP SRT troopers to remove their Aimpoints off of their 416s. They told him to fuck off. He booted them from class. The commissioner got a phone call from the governor. The commissioner kindly told the governor to fuck off. The next week the commissioner was fired.

Twenty years of bad training is now somewhat gone.

quote:

Originally posted by bcjwriter:

OK...but I just don't get it. I've tried them, and they sow me way down. Compared to point shooting and using sights, the red dots seem so much slower as I struggle to find the dot when I should already be putting roads downrange. Second place is first loser in a gun fight, so speed is important.

Only recently have I started using an RMR on a pistol and after getting some instruction from a much more accomplished user have I come to understand how to properly use them. Shooting handguns and rifles with iron sights, I've become ingrained into concentrating on the front sight, leaving the target and rear sight slightly out of focus. Now I've learned that I need to focus primarily on the target (just like I do while shooting clay with a shotgun) and let the dot settle on the target peripherally. My accuracy and speed improved almost immediately!

I don't doubt for a heartbeat they improve speed and accuracy. All I'm saying is I don't trust their reliability. That's why I have BUIS on my AR and my optic is on a QD mount. (Electronics fail. That's also why I still use a mechanical lock on my safe. I hate the verkakte thing, but I trust it.)

If I don't even trust them on my AR, I'd trust them even less atop a pistol slide. Never mind the added bulk. 99-44/100% of my carry is concealed. It's hard enough, and sometime uncomfortable enough to conceal a pistol as it is.

So, all this considered: I'm unlikely ever to mount an RDR.

Maybe when technology advances to the point they can project a hologram in thin air from an emitter the size of a rear sight, powered for years by a battery the size of the head of a straight pin...