The established, well-seasoned shooters- the one Ken Hackathorn calls "The one-percenters" know positively where they stand on the issue of red dot sights. I am speaking instead to those who may be new to pistol shooting, or the old guys who are considering an RDS because every new pistol introduced these days is cut for one of these things.

Anyone caring to pay attention to the subject as it has been discussed in this forum probably knows that I consider the RDS to be unnecessary and even detrimental to the practical manner in which pistols are employed defensively. You just don't need these things. That's what I think.

The newest shooters especially are prone to succumb to the desire to tack a lot of stuff onto their new pistols. How many times have we seen enthusiastic first posts in this forum, saying that someone has just purchased a new pistol, and wanting to know what other "stuff" they need for it? It's understandable. You've finally picked out your pistol and you want to keep the momentum going, so, it's "what's next?!" The RDS seems to have been made for this kind of thing.

In terms of mechanical apparatus, Occam's Razor usually applies and this is certainly so when it comes to firearms. "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". Passive iron sights versus complex battery-powered devices which may fail in several ways. To me, the correct choice is obvious.

This Ken Hackathorn video has been posted more than once in this forum but I'm re-posting it to support my opinion on the matter and I make no bones about it. Anyone who might contemplate the use of an RDS, I strongly encourage to watch this video in its entirety. Per this video, Hackathorn owns at least a half dozen RDS-equipped pistols and has shot thousands of rounds through these pistols. Though he strives to balance his view, the bulk of his statement tells you why you don't need an RDS. He talks about the history of fads in modern pistols, he talks about the ways these sights can fail you and the way you can fail these sights. He talks about conditioning and practice of focusing on either the front sight or the red (or green) dot, and the man makes a whole lot of sense.

The amount of shooting he feels is necessary for a shooter to become proficient with an RDS adds up to more money than most shooters can afford, and more time that most shooters are willing to invest. Most of us who don't have some agency providing gratis pallets of ammunition will never get anywhere near the investment required.

Just as Hackathorn says in his video- if all this is inconsequential to you and you like the RDS or feel as if you need the RDS- more power to you. Buy it, mount it, shoot it, knock yourself out. I've heard it all before, but I am telling you that for the way almost all of us will employ the defensive handgun (that is to say, inside of 10 yards), the RDS offers you no advantage and IMO, gets in your way and compromises you as a shooter.

My opinion of electronic sights on firearms extend to rifles as well. For carbines usually employed at relatively close ranges, I recommend iron sights only. I do own rifles which use magnified optics and battery-powered optics and these sights are indispensable for long-range shooting, but for close-in, they just get in the way.

Thanks for posting that! New to the hobby, hope to be a 1% in time! Everything he said makes perfect logical sense. I hope the pros outweigh the cons for using an optic on a non self defense gun. Being cross eyes dominant with a huge floater in the non dominant eye, I look forward to being able to use both eyes, seems like a huge help, but I guess time will tell.

First time seeing this video. Very detailed and does open a lot more thinking into the use of red dots.

Thank you for posting.

I am another who believes that Red Dot Sights are a waste of money and a device that may get you killed in an actual Defensive Shooting.

The problem is that they are in fact nothing more than device that allows you to make pretty little groups. So what's wrong with that. The problem is your rate of fire, taking the time to line up that Red Dot takes TIME you cannot spare in a Defensive situation".

Now my google skills are poor and I was not able to find the percentage of defensive shooting that occurred at 20 feet or less. That said I expect that it's probably around 98%. Note, anyone who can find this statistic please chime in.

At 20 feet or less you should be employing Vision Assisted Point Shooting. What you do here is focus completely on you target and as soon as the image of your gun in your peripheral vision appears to be pointing at your target you pull the trigger. As you recover the gun position after recoil as soon as the pistol seems to be pointing well you pull the trigger again. You repeat this process until your assailant stops making aggressive motions towards you. Note, you never take your eyes off that target unless you pick up a new potential threat. I will also suggest that your focus point be the center of the chest. Do this and your split times can range between 0.15 and 0.3 seconds. Now, you wont get pretty little groups doing this but with some practice you'll be able to keep your shots within a 10 inch circle at 20 feet. So consider the effect of 9 to 18 rounds delivered in just 3 seconds.

Now consider the result if your red dot slows you down enough that you break your first shot in 4/10 second and your assailant breaks his at 3/10 second.

I haven't shot a handgun with an RDS but I did heft unfamiliar pistol equipped with one and I spent way too much time trying to find the dot.
I have alway felt that if you need the sights in a defensive situation that maybe the perp is far enough away that your jury will not think your life was in danger.

Ken's description of the challenges with a red dot pretty much reflects my personal experience. My personal experience are as follows:
-Had to retrain for a new sight picture
-Can be distracting
-Not as intuitive to use as a red dot on a rifle
-"Searching" for the red dot became a habit
-Developed a habit where I would hold iron sight pistols slightly too for a proper sight picture
-And took about 500 rounds to develop across 6 trips of the range to become proficient at target shooting, and a few more to defensive shooting drill to be become confident in for defensive shooting

Having an astigmatism, red dot sights don’t work for me without vision correction. This makes the decision easy for me. The likelihood of me not having glasses on, or loosing them in a scuffle would make my optic unusable for me. Some would argue that a set of co-witness sights would solve that, but switching from missiles to guns is a fight for my life sounds like a loosing proposition

I am a decent shooter, not master class. I have challenged several friends with dot optics to a draw and shoot competition from concealment at self defense distances. I have never lost. Some of those people were better shooters than me.

They are expensive, hinder concealment and are a failure point waiting for a disaster.

I agree on pistols, but having used rifles at close range at night both with and without an optic, for me at least the optic is absolutely invaluable. Dark irons are hard to see at night, especially when you desperately want to focus on the target that is trying to kill you.

Handgun RDS have much smaller windows and are further from the eye. This makes picking the sight up less instinctive. I've grown to like them on fun guns, but I also set them up so I still have irons. I'd prefer not to have one on my duty weapon.

Long, long ago when I first started reading pieces by Ken Hakathorn, I came to the conclusion that he was a pompous blowhard. Somewhere along the line, though, he became a genius because now I agree with him completely (that’s a joke, son, a joke)—or at least about this discussion.

He articulates all the things I’ve come to believe about handguns with optical sights of the illuminated reticle variety, and he has the experience and practical knowledge to back up his opinions. He admits he doesn’t know if such sights will be “the future” as some predict, but if I am lucky (or un-) enough to be around in a decade, one of the things I will be following until then is whether they will still be the hotness they are becoming now.

A few years ago a former Delta member expressed his enthusiasm for the sights that were just coming on the market, and I strongly suspect the sights will always be sought after by what Hakathorn describes as the one-percenters. That will be good because evolution driven by demand will result in their improvement. But the 99%? I don’t know either, but I wouldn’t bet my house on that. And even now I’m beginning to see some small hesitations in the move to universal adoption of the sights.

But on an unrelated matter of terminology, this concept/technique is something I have taught for a long time, but never had a good term for it. Now I do:

quote:

Originally posted by Scooter123:
Vision Assisted Point Shooting

I’m fairly new to the pistol red dot game. I’ve got 2 pistols not with red dots and have a few hundred rounds through them. I’ve noticed that my first shot is slower than irons but my follow up shots, especially moving from target to target, is much faster. Where I really see the red dot shine is at distance. Longer shots are so much faster and easier to hit than irons.

I’ve only watched about 10 minutes of the video so far but I agree with what he’s said. Pistol red dots help mediocre shooters much more that they will experienced shooters. At least that’s been my experience.

He mentioned the distances that shootings occur at and the fact that red dots are useless at those distances. I agree with that, but will add that iron sights are as well. At our latest range a couple of weeks ago the instructors had guns for us to use with no sights at all. We did a lot of work at 3-7 yards. It was very easy to get good center mass hits at those distances. Trying to use any type of sight that close only slows you down. I shot one drill with 5 steel targets set up at varying distances from 10-20 yards. I was able to get a clean sub- 5 second run the first time with no sights from the holster.

I see a definite advantage to red dots in certain situations but I think people are sorely mistaken if they think throwing a red dot on a gun will make them a great shooter.

quote:

Originally posted by cooger:
He mentioned the distances that shootings occur at and the fact that red dots are useless at those distances. I agree with that, but will add that iron sights are as well. At our latest range a couple of weeks ago the instructors had guns for us to use with no sights at all.

What he said was than an RDS offered no advantage over iron-sighted pistols at close range; his point being that fans of the RDS have claimed otherwise.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by cooger:
He mentioned the distances that shootings occur at and the fact that red dots are useless at those distances. I agree with that, but will add that iron sights are as well. At our latest range a couple of weeks ago the instructors had guns for us to use with no sights at all.

What he said was than an RDS offered no advantage over iron-sighted pistols at close range; his point being that fans of the RDS have claimed otherwise.

You’re correct- he said they offer no advantage over red dots at those distances, not that they are useless.

I'm almost 72 and have carried daily since I was about 26 years old.

I'm not at all interested in RDS equipped pistols. I don't see
the need for them at 21 ft or closer.

I have a new Echelon with mounted Holosun and I am working on mastering it. Everything Hackathorn says mirrors my experience. Thus far, anyway. My main motivation is I hope the optic will help to compensate for my aging eyes. Will I ever EDC an optic sighted pistol? Only if I pick up the dot much faster and consistently than I am now.

I mounted one of the first available Holosun 407K’s on my carry P365XL. I was starting to feel pretty good about it until I shot a friend’s timed, shoot/don’t shoot targets. Standing there with the gun in my hands like Mr. McGoo looking for the damn red dot made me realize I’d be a dead man if the drill had been real life. The Holosun came off that day, and I replaced the front sight with a bright green one from Night Fision that’s so bright I can practically see with my eyes closed. I still like red dots for shooting at the range, but for carrying and serious practicing, it’s irons all the way.

HoWink

The postal match challenge for the past two weeks has been a shoot/no shoot target, 5 shots at 10 yards on a partially eclipsed B8. I was significantly faster and more accurate with my dot equipped gun (P320 full-size) than I was shooting a gun with only iron sights (P228).

While I don't see myself as being anywhere near the top 1% of shooters, I have put a lot of time in on that gun with the dot, and I definitely agree with the Hackathon that it isn't a magical answer to everyone's problems, especially those unwilling to put in the time to learn it. It does also bring with it some problems of its own. For me in my situation, though, it has provided measurable benefits.

Based on their popularity I considered whether I needed one. I just couldn’t imagine how a red dot sight would be useful to me. Call me old fashioned, but regular front sight shooting works best for me. Besides, I think the RDS would make drawing and holstering clumsy. I have the same opinion on lasers. I have lasers in kits where such was issued, but I can’t shoot very well with one. I keep trying to use my front sight and the laser confuses me. I do see the value for an Aimpoint style sight on a rifle for some people with certain vision conditions. My ARs have ACOGs that I use with the Bindon concept. Works for me. Pistols are iron sights only

Early last year, I bought a pistol that had a red dot on it. I couldn't even get to the point where I could reliably find the dot on the draw, so I never actually shot it to find out. I can see the benefit if one is used to it and practices enough to be proficient with it, but for me, the sight eventually came off the pistol. I don't feel a pressing need to repeat the experiment. Hackathorn presents some reasoned comments, and I found myself agreeing. Maybe confirmation bias, but again, I feel it was reasonable. Time will tell on this one.

I think red dots on a rifle are here to stay, and the most obvious reason is you have two points of contact, and a place to rest your cheek to align your eye with the dot - it's a lot harder to get wrong. A handgun doesn't give you those things.

Honestly, as soon as our chief retires, 90% of us are removing our red dots. For the distances we shoot, it slows us down.

We just did a fun drill the other night. We hung up four bowling pins at 75 feet and timed how long it took each of us to hit all four.

I then went and grabbed a gun out of the armory without a red dot and consistently had better times without the red dot.

I've never been a fan of red dots on pistols. I currently only have one pistol with a red dot mounted, a Romeo Zero on a P322 as I've really been trying to educate myself and practice with it to see if its for me. Honestly I'd rather go without it. They just don't work for me a this time in my life.