Self-Illuminating Night Sight Poll

[Casual Friday]

I find that tritium night sights, for me, only add to the usefulness of a carry gun and take nothing away, so I personally see no reason not use them.

[TCB]

I really want a serrated front with a F/O tube high in the blade with a large tritium embedded underneath it to illuminate it at night. I don’t know if it would provide enough light to be visible but I’d sure like someone to see if it would work.

[1Rangemaster]

I really want a serrated front with a F/O tube high in the blade with a large tritium embedded underneath it to illuminate it at night. I don’t know if it would provide enough light to be visible but I’d sure like someone to see if it would work.

Depending upon pistol manufacturer, try Viking Tactics. Kyle Lamb, US Army(ret.) is a solid shooter, Instructor and designer.

[TCB]

I emailed Dawson about doing one a few years ago and never heard back...they seem like the only company that have the ability to do a one off or small run of an experimental sight.

[That Guy]

I really want a serrated front with a F/O tube high in the blade with a large tritium embedded underneath it to illuminate it at night. I don’t know if it would provide enough light to be visible but I’d sure like someone to see if it would work.

Tru-Glo makes front sights that combine fiber optic and tritium. They are not serrated, though. The fiber optic is a bit buried in the sight body so it doesn't work as well as a regular, more exposed fiber, when used indoors. Outdoors, I haven't noticed any issues. Low light, it works just like any other tritium sight. Perhaps a bit dimmer? Hard to say for sure without a side-by-side comparison.

[Rex G]

Some of my carry guns have night sights. Some of my carry guns have a tritium insert only in the front sight.

If I am hunting a bad guy, in the dark, I want to be blacked-out. That includes black sights. I hunted plenty of bad guys in the dark, which was a reason I liked to report for duty, with more than one gun. (Now retired, but someone may want to hunt me in the dark, so... I need to be able to hunt him back.) None of this is arm-chair fantasy, thunked-up in my Mom’s basement. Plenty of my rookies started their careers with tritium sights, and as I trained and evaluated during the night-shift phases, I tracked the movements of plenty of my rookies, and other colleagues, in the dark.

I prefer a big, bold sight pattern, whether or not colors or tritium are present. If colors or tritium are present, I demand that the front sight be the much more visible, of the two.

As I have aged, my taste in night sights has changed. I used to passionately hate the three-dot pattern, whether tritium was present, or not, favoring the SIG pattern of a dot in the front, and a dot under the rear notch. My longest-carried duty pistol, 2004-2015, was a P229R with a white square on the rear dot, with a tritium front, and from 1991-1993, I carried a P220, with the then-standard paint, one front dot and one rear square. 2002-2004, I used Glocks with Heinie Straight-8 sights. By 2015, my eyes were ready for good three-tritium-dot sights.

The blue-label Glocks G19 and G17 I bought in the 2013-2015time period were delivered with nice three-dot tritium. My blue-label G19x, however, was delivered with seemingly cheaper three-dot tritium sights, for which everyone at Glock, from the installer to the chief executive, should be flogged.

In some cases, such as revolvers with non-dovetailed, non-pinned front sights, the juice is simply not worth the (financial) squeeze, largely because I am somewhat OCD about having a good hand-held light.