I finished a red dots for duty pistols class last night hosted by the Tucson Police Department and taught by NLEFIA. This class was eight hours of day instruction followed by an afternoon/evening session that included low light stuff.
Day One started at 0800. We spent the morning in the classroom discussing different department policies and red dot programs. We also talked a bit about current technology and what's being used and why. It would appear, from this discussion, that the RMR is king of the hill with the Leupold DP Pro prevalent but not a big player yet. Of the sixteen students, I think probably a dozen had some version of the RMR with the rest of us using Aimpoint (the ACRO) or the SIG Romeo.
After lunch we met on the paper target range. We adjusted and confirmed zero at ten yards as well as checked zero and mechanical offset with and/or between irons. We talked about the minute difference in zero differences and walked it back to 50 yards to get an idea of how well the dot works at longer handgun range.
Day Two was spent mostly on steel shooting various drills that involved shooting on the move. Drills were built to reinforce the "big three" of Initial Presentations, Acquiring the dot after recoil, and manipulating the gun with a red dot attached.
Once the sun went down we played with both handheld and weapon mounted lights and how they worked with the red dot.
Takeaways:
I'm not 100% sold on the dot. At least not for all officers. As an aid for older eyes and/or in certain applications it makes complete sense. But will the regulator beat cop maintain the optic and change batteries, etc? Some type of policy will have to be written especially for something like the RMR that has to be removed to change batteries.
The RMR with the fiber optic and tritium illumination probably sucks for LE use. My range partner was shooting a Glock with this model. He had no issues in the day but had some difficulty in low light. His WML washed the dot out especially at closer range. He was able to use his handheld to sort of illuminate the target and the fiber optic but this was somewhat clumsy and less than ideal.
Auto-adjustment systems are probably only slightly better than the dual illumination system. It seems in many cases the auto brightness system will feed off the light hitting the emitter and not light hitting the target. Being in a darkened area while the target is brightly lit caused for a washed out dot.
Manual brightness is probably best although care must be given to find a setting that works okay for both light and dark surroundings. Important for officers working a swing shift or mids that go into the post-sunrise hours.
Overall, an excellent class. Matt and Josh (our instructors) are both competent and professional. Time management was spot on and the drills were simple, low round count yet effective for the teaching point at hand.
Sorry. No pics. But there are pics and videos on NLEFIA's Facebook page.
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