Red dot vs iron sight gun

[1slow]

Glad it is going well !,,

[Doc_Glock]

Here is the repair to Charlie's humerus.

Attachment 109646

She has had two PT sessions and loves her therapist. He is a big hunter and had to shoot a big black bear harassing his elk camp this past weekend. He told her to throw away her sling and get at it. Says she will be shooting matches by early November.

She started using her rig and drawing, although it is only one hand.

Impressive so soon after surgery. Is this at two weeks?

[mmc45414]

Absolutely! It hasn’t really been about irons since page 1…

Well, through my ineptitude I had a good test of shooting irons after shooting dots almost exclusively for almost a year last weekend at three gun. When I got home I enhanced the checklist spreadsheet to not only include "9mm Ammo" but added "9mm Pistol"....
Fortunately I am pretty diligent (especially when carting around a fairly elaborate cargo of guns and ammo) about carrying my carry gun and consequently had my 4" compact version of the gun I left in the safe.

My result didn't show it (in three gun I need to get better on the rifle arrays) but I was able to shoot it plenty well enough, there was probably only one target I had to take a couple extra shots at that I am pretty sure I would have simply nailed with the bigger optic gun. I know some folks are reluctant to get a RDO because they worry about becoming reliant on it, I think in my case last weekend I proved to myself I would be just fine with a carry gun without an optic, probably as good or better than I ever was before I started shooting with the optic.

But there are things at longer distances I just flat cannot pull off without the RDO, damn thing is like the Foutain of Youth. Though there was one array that was pistol/shotgun optional, it included a couple of paper targets that required slugs and then five KD plates. Seemed like a simple shotgun stage, maybe they made the pistol optional for people that didn't get the message about bringing a couple of slugs. But as it turned out the smallest plate was a thick rifle rated plate that had a heavy base, and it was a bit pesky to get off its perch with the #8 shot through an improved-modified I thought would be a slam dunk. But a pistol would have tossed it right off, who knows what I would have done if I had not left my gun in the safe.

I think the benefits of a red dot over irons are pretty well fleshed out at this point.
Ironically, I’m finding some benefits of iron sight practice in long guns and handguns these days to improve my sight and head centering for when I do use dots.

Yeah, I never want to lose the ability to not be able to do reasonable things with an iron sighted pistol, and will probably primarily carry guns with iron FO (the pistol I shot in the match had those huge TFOs on it), but the dot can do things it cannot. But the things the iron gun cannot do are, IMO, well into the outlier category of defensive gun use.

[JCN]

Well, through my ineptitude I had a good test of shooting irons after shooting dots almost exclusively for almost a year last weekend at three gun. When I got home I enhanced the checklist spreadsheet to not only include "9mm Ammo" but added "9mm Pistol"....
Fortunately I am pretty diligent (especially when carting around a fairly elaborate cargo of guns and ammo) about carrying my carry gun and consequently had my 4" compact version of the gun I left in the safe.

My result didn't show it (in three gun I need to get better on the rifle arrays) but I was able to shoot it plenty well enough, there was probably only one target I had to take a couple extra shots at that I am pretty sure I would have simply nailed with the bigger optic gun. I know some folks are reluctant to get a RDO because they worry about becoming reliant on it, I think in my case last weekend I proved to myself I would be just fine with a carry gun without an optic, probably as good or better than I ever was before I started shooting with the optic.

But there are things at longer distances I just flat cannot pull off without the RDO, damn thing is like the Foutain of Youth. Though there was one array that was pistol/shotgun optional, it included a couple of paper targets that required slugs and then five KD plates. Seemed like a simple shotgun stage, maybe they made the pistol optional for people that didn't get the message about bringing a couple of slugs. But as it turned out the smallest plate was a thick rifle rated plate that had a heavy base, and it was a bit pesky to get off its perch with the #8 shot through an improved-modified I thought would be a slam dunk. But a pistol would have tossed it right off, who knows what I would have done if I had not left my gun in the safe.


Yeah, I never want to lose the ability to not be able to do reasonable things with an iron sighted pistol, and will probably primarily carry guns with iron FO (the pistol I shot in the match had those huge TFOs on it), but the dot can do things it cannot. But the things the iron gun cannot do are, IMO, well into the outlier category of defensive gun use.

Great observations and I totally agree! Thanks for making this thread more than a personal training log!

I had a nice discussion with my wife about reticle selection and matching reticle MOA to your mechanical wobble. It’s kind of akin to picking front sight to notch width depending on what your anticipated target geometry and size/distance are.

I’m currently in the middle of a discovery journey to become “good” with irons and learning a lot of things about indexes and assumptions along the way.

I can share here if people want to make the thread actually about red dots and irons.

[1Rangemaster]

GSSF presented an opportunity to compare irons and dots again. This event I shot with an iron sighted(Glock BOLD night sights, orange front) Gen5 G26 and my personal 19MOS w/ACRO P2. So, comparative "anecdotal" data; ammo was 115gr. ball.
7% advantage to the optic in this instance with GSSF's time plus scoring. I don't believe the sight radius had a large impact; these stages were relatively short range-farthest target at ~20 yards. I am comfortable with irons-I have the 26 on my ankle as I type this-but a reliable dot brings plenty of advantages. I hope to not ever stop shooting irons, but the dot advantage is a definite thing. I'll try a closer comparison with 19 slides later this year.
And-Charlie is inspiring! I'm reminded of Churchill: "never, ever, surrender".
Best wishes for a complete recovery.

[vcdgrips]

Random Observations:

1. Continued Prayers and Blessings for Charlie as she comes back from her injury

2. The posts that document her trek and the use of an RDS v Iron Sights are well within the bounds of the topic at hand.

3. A bit of thread drift can happen in any given thread, particularly when it is 37 pages/has 360+ replies and 92K+ views

4. The beauty of a Forum is when a thread allegedly drifts past a certain point, one can always start a thread of their own.

[JCN]

GSSF presented an opportunity to compare irons and dots again. This event I shot with an iron sighted(Glock BOLD night sights, orange front) Gen5 G26 and my personal 19MOS w/ACRO P2. So, comparative "anecdotal" data; ammo was 115gr. ball.
7% advantage to the optic in this instance with GSSF's time plus scoring. I don't believe the sight radius had a large impact; these stages were relatively short range-farthest target at ~20 yards. I am comfortable with irons-I have the 26 on my ankle as I type this-but a reliable dot brings plenty of advantages. I hope to not ever stop shooting irons, but the dot advantage is a definite thing. I'll try a closer comparison with 19 slides later this year.
And-Charlie is inspiring! I'm reminded of Churchill: "never, ever, surrender".
Best wishes for a complete recovery.

Steel Challenge has the same CO to Production time parity standards that USPSA had on the introduction of CO.

I think your finding of 7% is pretty dead on to what I notice. I have to work a little more with irons to be able to have more confidence that it’s not my technical deficiency that’s causing part of the gap, but I suspect you’re pretty dead on.

Irons are a lot more head / eye position constraining to call the same good hits and often require additional time to get the head and mechanical alignment settled to use the sights to the same degree of accuracy as a dot.

I’m experimenting a little more with iron fiber and width / notch ratios to make sure I’m comparing optimized apples to apples just like picking an appropriate red dot reticle size and brightness.

[GJM]

Charlie is a month plus one week since surgery, and her rehab is progressing very well. She isn't ready to shoot a match two hands, but decided to shoot a match strong hand only, using her injured arm just to reload. She did awesome.

[JCN]

Wife is motivated and dry firing more regularly.

I was the dutiful athletic supporter and chauffeur and she did some live practice today.





She’s now solidly into the B class range and working on reproducibility and vision.

[Clusterfrack]

I'll repost this here because it's a decent data point for the title of this thread.

Battery died, and I didn't notice until after the beep. It felt slow as fuck, but I don't think I lost that much time--maybe 2s overall? Points were good: Clean except for Down 1 on the disappearing target, and a makeup on steel.