SIGforum.com Main Page SIG Pistols Why you (probably) don't need and (probably) will not benefit from a red dot sight on your pistol
Main Page SIG Pistols Why you (probably) don't need and (probably) will not benefit from a red dot sight on your pistolGo | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Member |
The counter to your point, thinking of the "typical" self defense use of a firearm, is that you can get away with a lot of iron sight misalignment and still hit your target. That gets demoed in classes all the time. With a similar amount of misalignment that results in hits with iron sights, you may well have no dot visible in the display. And if your skill level is such that high can't find the dot, I am not sure you can effectively index with just the display or transition to BUIS. | |||
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| Member |
Absolutely. I was aiming, pun intended, at a similar point somewhere halfway upthread, noting that stats suggest "within 5 yards" for 95% of "typical" events. I just don't think that a shooter with low/no commitment [who is a focus of this part of discussion] will be relying on their iron sights or appreciating the degree of misalignment at those typical distances under the fight-or-flight circumstances. | |||
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| Member |
Agree 100% with this. Americans as a culture throw money at problems instead of effort/ training. Lots of people unfortunately do consider the dot as some sort of magical gadget without investing sufficient time training, with the potentially fatal belief that “better” equipment ( more modern advanced expensive etc) somehow will automatically produce better results. I am not on the dot boat at this time, don’t disparage those that are ( so long as the training and practice is sufficient) But there are far too many people bolting stuff on guns ( that comical “Swiss army knife AR meme from a few years ago comes to mind) thinking it solves a problem in and of itself. Grip draw stroke trigger control sight or dot alignment must all be practiced to be effective. A lot of us on these forums are not what I would call “typical shooters” Your average ccw carrier ( and now a lot of those adopting dots unfortunately) shoots only a few times a year at most. It is not uncommon to find people who carry routinely to have fired less than a box of ammo from a new gun before starting to carry it. Remember in the old revolver days of buying used revolvers that came with a box of ammo with 6 rounds missing? | |||
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Member |
Thank you for the helpful info, sigfreund! I think I will pass on the Red Dot for the time being. No gadget will replace practice. _____________________________ Life's too short to compare your real life with someone else's photoshop. | |||
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| Sigless in Indiana  |
I haven't read all 10 pages, yet, and I apologize for that. Thinking of red dots on duty guns for police use in particular. What happens when an officer leaves a cold environment and enters a warm environment? Like spending 10 minutes outside a house preparing to make entry on a barricaded subject, or to serve a warrant? I know what happens when I bring a cold rifle with a scope or a red dot from outside, back into a warm house. It immediately fogs up. Optics have their place, but iron sights are far from obsolete. Going a step further. I have seen a TON of shooters do the 'red dot wiggle' to find their dot when they draw a handgun at multigun matches. I know it has been oft repeated, that this issue can be corrected with training and repetition. And that well indeed be true. But I know that most police officers don't train. They qualify a few times a year. And their qualification standards don't place an emphasis on the speed of getting their first shot onto a target as quickly as possible. But a gunfight absolutely does place an emphasis on the importance of that first shot finding it's mark ASAP. | |||
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Get on the fifty! |
^ I would hit any red dot/scope with anti fog for anything remotely serious, including hunting. You can get wipes easily that work well. "Pickin' stones and pullin' teats is a hard way to make a living. But, sure as God's got sandals, it beats fightin' dudes with treasure trails." "We've been tricked, we've been backstabbed, and we've been quite possibly, bamboozled." | |||
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| Sigless in Indiana |
Even if the sights are not aligned perfectly, the front sight is ALWAYS there in my field of view when I draw a handgun. That is not the case with a red dot. In my experience, it is slower to find a red dot if your presentation of the pistol isn't perfect on the draw. I don't think red dots justify their added bulk, added complexity, added training requirements, or added expense; for the vast majority of pistol shooters. | |||
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| Sigless in Indiana |
I replied before I watched this video. Glad to see my intuition was correct in many respects. Hackathorn gave a good honest assessment addressing the pros and cons. | |||
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Prepared for the Worst, Providing the Best |
I can speak to this one. It was definitely a concern I had as well based on my experience with rifle scopes in the past (and wearing glasses!). But the answer, at least in my experience, is...nothing. I have had zero issues with fogging on my optic, and I live in a place that would theoretically be incredibly conducive to such a thing. Right now it's 39 degrees and raining outside. The snow is melting, and there's fog everywhere. It's like an arctic rainforest. Last week it was -6. I have yet to have an issue with the Romeo 1 on my duty gun fogging up. Whatever coating they put on the glass at the factory works. Sig told us not to add any anti-fogging solutions and I have not. I clean the glass with plain old isopropyl alcohol on a Q-tip. The fact that it's a single pane of glass so that temperature and humidity quickly equalize on both sides, unlike an enclosed tube, may be a factor as well. I'm not sure about the science behind it, but I know mine has never fogged up under working conditions, or even outside on the range shooting in this crap. Theoretically, even if it did fog up, the dot should still be reflected off the back of the glass and I could shoot using the Binden aiming principle, but since it hasn't happened yet I haven't been able to personally observe or try that under those conditions. I do know that my glasses fog much more easily than my red dot. | |||
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| Sigless in Indiana |
This is good to know! | |||
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Sigforum K9 handler |
We’ve been doing it for 20 years and the streets didn’t run red with blood as the hand wringers predicted. At the academy we had an instructor that had an impending sense of doom about those new fangled red dot sights on rifles. I took a rifle class to where we spent the first 35 minutes staring at an EoTech that had been in a cooler over night. He wouldn’t let the class actually proceed until the optic was clear. He then stood in front of the class and shook his finger at all of us and gave us the same tired spiel that’s being recycled today. After he finished I asked him that if his daughter was being held hostage, would he want the police sniper sent to save her to use irons just in case? He mumbled quite a bit and changed the subject. I have been on multiple cold weather entries as recent as last week. With a little prep there is zero issue. And we did two entries going from single digits to inside. Hilariously, the instructor would make an officer with a RDS remove it to take a course. He hated optics so bad. Until the day came that he ordered two state troopers (assigned to SRT full time) to remove their Aimpoints or risk permanent expulsion. They told him to fuck off and left. Shortly there after, the instructor “retired”. Seems that one of the troopers just rotated off the governors detail, and was friendly with him. The Governor made a call to the commissioner at the academy, and after that optics were welcome. Today, recruits can shoot MRDS on handguns in a basic course. | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower  |
There's nothing like saying silly stuff like that to get people to take you seriously. | |||
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| Prepared for the Worst, Providing the Best |
Just for giggles, I decided to try this today. It's about 38 degrees out, misty, foggy, and just about 100% humidity. It's rained for the last few days, all the snow is melting, and it's absolutely disgusting out. Perfect weather for this particular test. For reference, here's a view off the front porch:  I took my gun into the back yard and left it on a table for about an hour...plenty long enough to allow it's temperature to normalize to the outdoor conditions, and let it get the full effect of the crappy weather. This is probablly worse than it would experience during normal daily use, as it's in a vehicle or at least exposed to body heat and covered by a holster and/or a coat most of the time.  I then brought it inside where the thermostat is set at 64 degrees. This is what the optic looked like (football for contrast only...no sports equipment or children's toys were harmed in the making of this post!). Even standing directly under the light, there's no significant fogging or glare.  | |||
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| Member |
When is was super cold out a couple weeks ago I came into the station for something. I then took my gun out of the holster to see fogging on my SRO. Only fogging was in little places I didn’t get Cat Crap on. Same w/ my eye glasses. It is not a problem. | |||
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| Behold my Radiance!  |
When I hit 15 my Dad was not too available to guide me due to his USAF commitments. Thus, my morbidly obese (each would break 400 pounds) completely nuts shut-in spinster aunts stepped up to give me their advice on navigating high school society, dating, relationships, and sex. For her part, Mom set upon teaching me to drive the family Jaguar Mk. IX Saloon, something she had not yet learnt for herself. I did not have any practical, experiential frame of reference by which to assess the value of their instruction. Thus, I only hung out with the drama and chess club kids, never went to school social events or proms, & rode my bicycle until I was 17. (I learned how to balance triple SU’s on my own, tho.) I still remember Pat and Nancy, those 400 pound titans, bickering over which had the biggest tits. Given how my adolescent life was informed by crazily biased opinions and disreality, it is a miracle that I didn’t turn out more like Truman Capote than I did. For shooters with the fundamental skill to index the pistol & align iron sights upon presentation, between shots, and between targets, switching to a red dot is easy. The experiences of advisors and shooters who lack that basic skill set should be discounted and ignored. They simply aren’t relevant to the conversation. The “three rounds, three seconds, three yards” factoid is unfounded Fuddlore horseshit. No actual data exists to support this supposed “typical gunfight” model. That said, aiming is not the most decisive skill; presentation speed, grip and triggering are. Anyone can aim well enough. Few do so fast enough, and without moving the pistol off target as they pull the trigger. The red dot sight is a superb training tool for developing those skills and has no real negatives. -BruceThis message has been edited. Last edited by: Grayguns, Designer and custom pistolsmith at Grayguns Inc. Privileged to be R&D consultant to the world's greatest maker of fine firearms: SIG SAUER Visit us at http://opspectraining.com/product-cat/videos/ to order yours, and Thank You for making GGI the leader in custom SIG and HK pistolsmithing and high-grade components. Bruce Gray, President Grayguns Inc. Grayguns.com / 888.585.4729 | |||
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For real? |
Ohio Highway Patrol Police Academy will not let students use red dots. They made our last recruit take it off. That was last year. Sending another one in a few weeks. Let's see if they make him take his off as well. Not minority enough! | |||
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Member |
I don't care about RDS one way or the other, OTHER than I wish I had a choice to buy a new pistol with or without the top of the slide cut for it then covered with a plate. I just bought a P320 AXG(1st 320) and it's the only pistol I own with an optic cut.... because there was no other choice. I will be all in on the RDS when it's no bigger than Trijicon standard night sight. People sticking Red Dots on P365 pocket guns seem nuts to me, to each their own I guess. Remember when lasers were all the rage.....  Μολὼν λαβέ | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower |
Yes, having every new pistol cut for optics is aesthetically awkward. If one intends to never mount optics, having a portion of the slide machined away with a Frankenstinian filler plate screwed into the cut detracts from the pistol. On some of the pistols finished in, for example, FDE, the manufacturer doesn't even bother to offer filler plates which match the finish, so you end up with an FDE pistol with a black filler plate. Such things are a trainwreck to look at, and that's coming from someone values functionality over appearance. When Walther was making the Q4 SF, they offered an optics-cut version and a version not cut for optics. In a pistol such as the Q4- which is a bit esoteric- this choice of versions was vital. Now, though, it appears manufacturers are making only optics-cut pistols, and to me, they look like shit. | |||
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| Member |
You are to kind. I just think it's generally ugly. LOL Having a black plate on an FDE gun would probably prevent me from buying it. Μολὼν λαβέ | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower |
We see this with interchangeable backstraps as well. A manufacturer offers a pistol in some finish other than black, but the backstraps are offered only in black. It's like wearing a tuxedo with a pair of brown shoes. The manufacturer will do things the cheapest way possible because no one objects to this kind of thing. | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page SIG Pistols Why you (probably) don't need and (probably) will not benefit from a red dot sight on your pistol
Main Page SIG Pistols Why you (probably) don't need and (probably) will not benefit from a red dot sight on your pistol© SIGforum 2024