Are BUIS necessary on a defensive pistol

[Eyesquared]

Using that logic might also hold for why someone might not use BUIS on their CO carry gun, no?

DPP is similarly tall and a number of people are running SRO on their carry guns...

Also, none of the world champions that I know of run BUIS and a dot going down at the world shoot would be catastrophic... but they still don’t run BUIS in CO or Open...

See where I’m going with this?

Even at the highest stake matches, they’d rather have an uncluttered window than BUIS just in case.

I personally run BUIS on my carry guns though. But I wouldn’t fault someone for going either way.

You can get a SRO much lower when it's milled into a slide, which mine is not. The very bottom of my optic is level with the top of the slide, about 0.150" taller than most mill jobs. My current setup is insanely tall relative to what most people have with their SRO or DPP equipped carry guns. It really isn't very practical for me to put BUIS on the CO gun. I don't see this as a binary "must have BUIS always" or "BUIS don't matter" thing. Just that after looking at how much of a pain in the ass it would be to put BUIS on my CO gun, I decided with my specific setup that it wasn't worth the effort. If I shot a different setup the cost benefit analysis could be different.

In USPSA I don't think it significantly matters which way you go with or without backup sights. I realize 99% of people don't use them but I think that is also somewhat of a cultural norm. How many CO or Open shooters have actually tried using BUIS on their guns to see if it even changes their performance to have something at the bottom of the window?

I don't care if anyone else uses BUIS on their carry gun or not but personally there are shots I don't feel comfortable taking without any sights, and therefore I want sights when I can get them. Didn't mean to imply someone is wrong for not having them BUT I hope that if someone is not using BUIS then they understand what shots they can and can't get away with.

[JCN]

BUT I hope that if someone is not using BUIS then they understand what shots they can and can't get away with.

Haha. You’ve seen people at matches... with sights... that have no idea what they can and can’t get away with.

[Eyesquared]

Haha. You’ve seen people at matches... with sights... that have no idea what they can and can’t get away with.

That is true. It's hard to know what is the absolute minimum acceptable level of sight confirmation no matter what your sighting system is.

[GJM]

At the range this morning, I turned the 507K off and shot two shots at 7, 12 and 18 yards, using the tiny rear sight built into the 507K's housing.

[TCinVA]

There's a lot of "why" to that phenomenon, IMO.

Having spent the last 20+ years watching people draw a handgun, the number of people who have taken the time to build a reliable, repeatable, efficient draw that will show up under stress is miniscule. I regularly watch even people who have some significant level of training present the gun while looking completely over the thing under the mild stress of an audience and a timer.

For someone to see a useful sight picture or the dot, they have to present the gun up into the eye line...often what people do is present the gun forward from their chest or their chin. It never makes it up to the eyes because under stress the gun tends to stay at the level it pushes out from.

I hate to quote myself, but a good example of exactly what I'm talking about came up today:



That's Max Michel. Max is one of the most skilled pistol shooters in the world. The setup here is an attempt to empty that Sig P320 in less than 3 seconds from the draw. That's 17 shots.

Max's draw to first shot there was .68 seconds. Fast. Very, very, very fast.

But note what you see. Max was trying to go fast. He was in a frame of mind not unlike what we would expect to see from someone who felt the time pressure of an encroaching threat or a series of bullets coming their way The impetus is to make that stop RIGHT. NOW.

The end result of RIGHT NOW thinking is exactly what we see...the gun comes out from chin or chest level and the loud noises start.

During the string of fire you can see Max elevate the gun to his eyeline. But on his first shot the gun is at his chin.

All hits were A's...but that's because it's Max fucking Michel shooting. The many thousands of hours of practice he's done have given him enough of a repeatable index and enough focus on his shot process that he can get the gun more or less on target even when not seeing a visual confirmation from the sight at 5 yards, and as he's trying to mag dump as fast as possible he can recognize something isn't right and correct it without stopping what he's doing.

If we gave him 1.2 seconds to get his first shot fired, he'd eat the X out of a B8. But this was about doing it as fast as he possibly could.

For most people, asking them to do a 1.5 second draw from concealment is like asking Max to do what he did in that video. Except they don't have the years of disciplined practice, dryfire, live fire, and competition under their belt that Max does. So the part where his mistake is minor enough to still land an A zone hit isn't going to be there for them. And the part where he sees something wrong and corrects it inside a split of .15 seconds isn't going to be there for them. Etc.

That's why I'm really careful about how I build someone's draw if their goal is duty or defense.

I can't tell a sheriff's deputy who is returning to work after having been shot four times on a felony stop several months ago that he needs to draw the way Max does with all the work that entails. That guy...and most people carrying for defense...don't need a J style draw seen most out of competition rigs. They need something that works better for what they have to do.

[Simong]

Is teaching a 2 day advanced course named "Reflexive Shooting" basically you will learn how to shoot without ANY sighting device.
They will remove or tape your sights.

Good place good people highly recommended.

https://www.sigsaueracademy.com/prod...exive-shooting

Simong.

[TCinVA]

Ugh.

People don't need training to not look at their sights and press the trigger. They do it already...with terrible results.

And if I need training to do it, it's not "instinctive", really.

[GJM]

Ugh.

People don't need training to not look at their sights and press the trigger. They do it already...with terrible results.

And if I need training to do it, it's not "instinctive", really.

I think this could be an interesting discussion. If they are teaching point shooting, I would agree with you. If they are teaching you to develop an index, so you consistently present the pistol using a developed index and then use the sights or dot to confirm that index -- this is a fundamental of high level shooting, sort of like natural point of aim with a long gun. Guess we would need to see their syllabus.

[LHS]

Has anyone here ever transitioned to pistol BUIS during a string of fire during a match, at a class, or during training.

My RDS flew off the slide and hit me in the face during a string of fire at a training course this past weekend. I finished the drill with the irons.

[GJM]

My RDS flew off the slide and hit me in the face during a string of fire at a training course this past weekend. I finished the drill with the irons.

I guess that would be a clue to transition over!