Keep an eye on him, my buddy Rosco always talked about Ken hosting them at his house the night before a Fort Harmar matches, and eventually figured Ken was laying back on the booze, and everyone else was fuzzy the next day when the timer, I mean stopwatch came out...Originally Posted by GJM
You're right, he says this very consistently. I think that he's wrong on that. Maintenance aside, I believe that shooters at low end of skill set will do better with dots, even if they are slow to pick their sight pics.
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
This could be an interesting thread. First, define "better" -- do you mean better at some marksmanship test or better at using a handgun defensively?
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
Me talking about defensive gun use is quite a bit out of lane. That said, I didn't separate the two when I said what I said. In a context of this thread and my post, I am talking about people with low level of skills and modest marksmanship training who may end up in a defensive situation so it is a cumulative measure. If you want my speculative opinion separating the two, I think the dot shooters will do better on technical skill tests, and no worse or better in defensive uses.
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
In before the thread split!!
IMO using a handgun defensively is such a spectrum that it will be impossible to ever tie it down a real definition.
Also, IMO, many of the things we hold ourselves to as standards are way beyond the most common (highly improbable anyway) DGU. And IMO (again) are standards derived from matches, matches where things must be difficult enough to determine a winner. I think when @BehindBlueI's has stated that he has never investigated a dead body with an empty J-frame laying next to it, may be a relevant data point. Sure, we all to strive to do wayyyyy better, but we are also motivated by desire and amusement. I am very unlikely to die in a gunfight at the gas pump or grocery, and if I do I really doubt if it will be because my pistol didn't have a dot and a light. Though perhaps I might need to shoot past my dogs at a coyote coming at them, so maybe I should buy one of the Shields you have offered, and rig it up with a light, hmmmmm...
That said, until the property recently sold we always did some shooting after Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws. This was an opportunity to expose many new shooters to pistols, and the combination of the Ruger MKIII, Aimpoint and rack of hanging plates generated a lotta smiles. I use the same approach when trying to orient new shooters, we establish their baseline ability to succeed with a rimfire RDO gun, so that if/when they are yanking the trigger on a centerfire gun you can point over to their group they already shot. I also transition them next to a full size gun, maybe with a RDO, before they shoot the something I can carry barker they think they want(ed).
I like the idea of a 5yards/5shots/5seconds on something like a paper plate, as a baseline goal.
It's super interesting to me to read the responses here.
I'd like to hear a consensus on a very specific question:
Is the current consensus that the best practice for shooting quickly and accurately is to be target focused versus sight system focused regardless of whether that's irons or a dot and utilize what is commonly refereed to as an "index" to create consistent alignment of the pistol to the preferred point of impact?
I am less than nobody, but, I do think this is where preferred technique is headed.
I got attuned to the idea of visually focusing on a precise point on the target and then using the sights or dot to confirm the index of the gun to that spot through Ben Stoeger about 2 years ago, and it completely changed my shooting process for the better. This technique allows your brain to subconsciously bring the sights back to that point of aim during recoil or a transition, and also allows for better shot calling, per Steve Anderson. Before this, when front sight focused, I'd get locked on the sight and drift up in recoil, or drift off target if I was moving. Likewise, when shooting a dot, I'd start looking at it as it moved in recoil vs staying locked on a spot on the target.
It is a very flexible technique where you employ the needed level of visual confirmation based on the shot at hand.
Shooting this way has definitely made shooting a dot vs good irons a more similar experience than if one is shooting with a front sight focus.
It's definitely coming from a competitive angle (Anderson, Stoeger and PSTG and surely many others I'm not exposed to) but I really think it works.
I can't overstate how much this has changed how I shoot and how I think about shooting, compared to years past when I shot with a hard front sight focus (BB gun days til 2020) and then shot a dot (2020-2022) believing target focus meant "opening my vision and seeing the whole target" then being surprised when my brain got distracted by the bouncing glowing ball.
Last edited by Noah; 01-31-2024 at 12:42 PM.
Fair enough.
One thing that is strictly a theory of mine, is that it's a little easier to "course correct" a poor index from a compromised draw position with irons than it is from a dot.
STRICTLY a theory and I acknowledge I have no data to support this and more often than not the actual answers to things are counterintuitive.
I agree with this.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Oh I don't think that's even debatable- let me soften that, I would have just taken it for granted that a dot requires a less forgiving index.
Shooting both with a precise target focus and an index presentation, the cone of error where you get the dot in the window is tiny compared to the "cone" where your front sight is somewhere in the notch, let alone a little high or left or right and then you'll intuitively correct it as you go.
It would be really interesting to put actual data to that comparison.
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