Originally Posted by
RevolverRob
My long and short - RDS pistols are tools. Some folks have a brain that I think is well wired to shoot a dot and translate it to irons and switch back and forth, others probably do not.
I did not initially learn to shoot iron sights with a target focus or with both eyes open and found it virtually impossible to do. One trip down the lane with a dot-equipped pistol allowed me to develop both skills and translate them back to irons. Now I can do target focused shooting with both eyes open. So for me, a dot is/was an extremely useful tool in eliminating old habits. That's what I got out of my first foray into dot land.
I found it difficult to get a consistent index and shoot the dot as quickly as I did irons. What I realized then and what I still believe now is...shooting a dot-equipped pistol requires enough initial retraining of the brain that it's not a 'short-term' exercise. You have to get into it, committed, to learning how to run the dot on a pistol. At the time (and now), I wasn't able to commit the effort needed to get up to speed (literally and figuratively) with the dot. Like trying to 'master' multiple types of triggers simultaneously, it isn't a good idea.
If you're going to run a dot-equipped gun, I suggest you shelve everything else and focus on shooting/dryfire the dot entirely for ~6-12 months. I would not try to move back and forth between dot and no dot guns. Once you're over the initial hump of the learning curve, you'll likely be able to go back to irons without an issue, whether you'll want to is a different story.
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I have a dot equipped gun in the safe right now. And I'll be building a second one Soon™ to take a deep dive back into dots probably next year or 2022. This I'll be doing in anticipation of continued vision degeneration. I'm in no risk of going blind, but my father was using bifocals by the time he was 40. I suspect I won't be too far behind that age when I'll need them too. At that point even a blurry dot and target focus will get the job done. I know that from shooting red-dots on rifles and shotguns.
And in an effort to simplify my life and brain...I'll be setting up all my defensive oriented long-guns in a similar manner, including the shotguns.