Was wrapping up a class and we got to talking about.........dots on pistols. Students were suckling at the teat of "Red dots are awesome" and I asked some questions.
1. When everyone's got a dot on their duty gun...will gunfight hit ratios be the same, worse, or better?
2. When everyone's got a dot on their duty gun....will qual scores be the same, worse, or better?
Not many answers, some foot shuffling and loss of eye contact.
If the gear isn't helping officers, how can it be any good?
Are you saying that qualification scores and actual use hit rates are not higher with red dots than they were with irons?
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
Not yet. Not enough data.
Absolutely curious as to how it will turn out though.
The fact that 10 instructors from a very small sample of agencies didn't speak up was interesting.
FLETC went full boomer and protested against the use of agency issues RDS-equipped pistols by students during the basic courses (CITP and UPTP) because of a dramatic difference in qualification scores, which ended up making the task of achieving a perfect score almost trivial. Maybe that's an overstatement, but I remember hearing it was a night and day difference in scores between students with RDSs and students without, to the point that FLETC protested that its unfair to other students and they shouldn't be allowed to use RDSs during the basic courses. I believe the "offending" agency was HSI.Originally Posted by konkapot
ETA: @Gadfly was detailed to FLETC as an FI during this time, he might have more concrete data on the scores.
Last edited by TGS; 11-27-2023 at 10:41 AM.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
My understanding is that it was the other agencies protesting HSI’s use of RDS’ on their issued handguns during CITP because the HSI recruits started to consistently take home the top shooter awards. FLETC actually told the other agencies to pound sand since they were free to issue RDS’ to their recruits as well if they were unhappy that the HSI recruits were consistently outshooting them. Gadfly or @HCM would know more than me about that though.
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
I’ve probably done enough of stepping out of my lane into LE topics lately, but I’m going to throw this out there just because I’ve been consuming a lot of dot-related content recently and it’s fresh in my mind.
If you listen to comments from people who are directly involved with helping multiple agencies train up on dots (Aaron Cowan, Wayne Dobbs, Scott Jedlinski, Steve Fisher, etc.), there’s a massive difference not only in dot vs. irons effectiveness but also in the ease and effectiveness of training new shooters. In what I’ve heard from them, they’re more or less adamant that this is a revolutionary development for institutional handgun use.
With the caveat that i'd never recommend making everyone carry an optic on a pistol ...
No one has done a good (or even decent) job tracking police hit rates. The oft-rumored 15-20% is just that - rumored. The best documentation I've seen came out of an ALERRT report.
I believe we are seeing better hit rates so far, but until agencies release definitive data, I won't know for sure. Without knowing what the students in my instructor classes were shooting before, I can't give you feedback on the outcome there.
In the user classes I'm teaching at Gunsite, the school drill (qual course) scores are going up - but we made changes to them recently, so I'm not completely positive about the dots being the reason. Unless agencies radically changed their qual courses, there will be improved scores - if for no other reason than the transition course range time. What will be interesting is whether or not those scores stick.
Don't know what instructor group you had, but that is interesting. Curious about a number of things there.
I'm seeing evidence on BWC footage that optics are resulting in improved performances. And at the same time, I'm seeing things that make me pull my hair out.
eta: Cal POST was concerned about optics being "un-fair" to those who did not have them. Oh damn. But at least agency-sponsored recruits can go through the basic academy with them. I'm trying to withhold my opinion on Cal POST publicly.
Is this still a debatable topic? We know that training is the root problem, not equipment. If one becomes proficient with the aiming device on the gun, it makes it easier if it's an RDS vs irons
I personally think it's impossible to truly quantify these sorts of things, but I suspect the widespread use of the RDS will resemble what happened back when "night sights" became commonplace. We immediately saw qualification scores go up, but hit percentages in OIS's did not reflect the same degree of improvement.
The path of least resistance will seldom get you where you need to be.
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