IME most LE firearms instructors suck as instructors and are more line safety officers and target graders. There is also a lot of insular, big fish, small pond syndrome. When your training cadre fails you you have to seek out proper instruction on your own. Right or wrong that's the reality.
FI's (LE or otherwise) need 3 skillsets, ability to shoot, ability to communicate / teach and ability to diagnose / analyze/ mitigate (diagnostics). IME the third is the most important and the least common among LE instructors. If you want good diagnostics you will need to seek outside training, likely at your own expense. Ask me how I know.....
Ironically, you are being myopic in your response, I acknowledged that the experience you had with RDS is common and I've had several of my officers report the exact same experience you have with RDS on carbines. However, you are ignoring the part about how that experience is correctable. Once we have gotten them using the RDS properly, they have a different experience and better results with the RDS.
Gunfights are "open class events." There is no such thing as "cheating" or "crutches," just winners and losers. I want my guys and gals to be as effective as possible.
As for opinions, all opinions are not created equal. Ex: "All Glocks shoot left"
Unknowingly using something improperly and complaining about not good results is an "experience" - but it is not a basis for a valid opinion. It should be the basis for questions, such as is this thing junk or am I doing it wrong ?
For example, when I first tried the RMR I had trouble acquiring the dot compared to other RDS. However, what I eventually figured out is that the issue wasn't the RMR but the large Co-witness sights I (wrongly) chose taking up half the window. Once I swapped for lower sights that didn't take up half the window it was fine.
Knowing you are using something improperly and complaining about not getting good results instead of trying to learn how to use it properly is either doubling down on stupid or an excuse for not putting in the work. Americans are lazy and love hardware solutions to software problems. There is nothing unique about that.
Re: Offset,tThe circle dot reticle was a big selling point for the FBI's selection of the Romeo4M in lieu of the Aimpoint and IMHO, the only reason Eotech was able to stay in business after their thermal drift fiasco. The Vortex UH-1 even replaced the 6 o'clock hash mark with a triangle to facilitate this.
As PF's founder said "feelings" lie (
https://pistol-training.com/archives/5108 ). My "opinions" are based on the quantifiable performance of both myself and hundreds of shooters I have taught or trained with getting measurably better results in terms of speed and accuracy. The timer and target don't have "opinions" and numbers don't lie.
How long have you been shooting iron sights ? Because, as I can personally attest, it takes more work to re-learn something new than to learn something from scratch. Speaking of Academy classes, The Houston PD just ran an academy class with all RDS pistols to gather data on new shooters vs shooters converting from irons. They do a 3 week block of firearms training. Normally they don't get everyone qualified until the 3rd week (or washed out). The RDS class were all qualified by the end of the first week with no washouts. This mirrors the experience of the U.S. Army which is now starting basic trainees with optics first, then teaching iron sights. The rationale for this is that "reading" iron sights aka calling your shots is it's own skill set. Optics provide more feedback about what the gun is doing with the need for "translating" the feedback from the irons letting the new shooter focus on correcting their fundamentals based on what the gun is doing in response to their inputs.
You're going to do what you want, and I don't expect to change your mind. You also may be one of the people who experiences Phoria (
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?44872-Phoria ) so your experience may not be comparable to that of others.
However, one of the unique things about PF is the signal to noise ratio here. I'm posting this for those who might read this thread later in search of valid information.