Has the era of RDS Handguns fully arrived?

[Elwin]

Came here to mention what Irelander did. Rifles, duty pistols, and competition pistols don’t need to be concealed. Carry pistols do. The way I’m able to conceal a large-ish pistol is going to cause printing issues with a dot, going off my experience with how bad it is just with a blocky back of a slide and kindof sharp rear sight. That plus cost is what currently holds me back. Those and waiting on standardization.

I know, yes, plenty of people conceal them. But I have a pretty high standard for how concealed is concealed enough, and right now doing it with a full size single stack or compact-ish double stack sans red dot requires squeaking every bit of performance I can out of my holster-belt-clothing combo in warmer weather. So I’m good where I’m at, though other peoples’ mileage may vary. For now.

In ten years, we may be at the point I don’t feel this particular set of compromises is reasonable anymore. We’ll see.

[Utm]

I personally have no need for an iron sight only gun, I wouldn't carry a gun that didn't have a dot as I see no benefit. We are at the point of police departments issuing red dots for the entire department in my area. The arguments against them have all been debunked.

[zeleny]

I just want every slide to come from the factory machined for an ACRO-style footprint and for every optic to come from the factory with an ACRO-style mounting system.

I’ll take this one step further: I want every pistol to come with a compact standardized non-reciprocating Intelligent Rail collimator sight mounting system.

[45dotACP]

It adds quite a bit of height to the pistol so I'm not totally sold yet.

I need to get another P07 and mill it for an rds to know for sure if it's for me.

I also have a rogue impulse to get back into M&Ps

For my Berettas, it has been the absolute tiddies.

And my 92x compact still conceals fairly well with a dot.

Sent from my SM-A326U using Tapatalk

[ECK]

I don’t know if RDS will eventually dominate over irons on pistols in the future or not. Certainly they are popular and gaining popularity, but plenty of shooters out there with decent eye sight that don’t need them as much as some of us.

If it wasn’t for aging eyes I’m pretty sure I would still be shooting iron sight guns in USPSA. I still do it from time to time, but I have to wear special glasses with the right RX to be able to focus on the front sight. Seeing as I don’t wear those glasses all the time (or even have them on me away from the range), I eventually converted even my carry guns over to RDS.

I’ve only had one red dot die on me (SRO) since my conversion, but that was after 3 years of steady use in god knows how many matches and rounds. My RMR and HS red dots that have fewer rounds on them are hanging in there. But ideally red dot R&D will improve electronics to the point where they are more robust (cue the “are they for duty use?”) and dare I say it… adopt a universal industry-standard mounting footprint!

And lets face it, aside from folks on P-F, most gun owners don’t shoot much and their guns spend the majority of their time in a sock drawer. At least with irons you don’t have to change batteries.

[MickAK]

I’ll take this one step further: I want every pistol to come with a compact standardized non-reciprocating Intelligent Rail collimator sight mounting system.

I don't know what half those words mean, but I won't believe they era of RDS handguns has arrived until we stop building iron sight pistol slides and attaching optics to them with dinky screws and bedding compound and start building them around optics.

Plus collimators. We can have threads about how to glue iron sights to the collimator.

[HCM]

Most good shooters only shoot a dot gun about 10% better than an irons gun. At least, that holds true for me.

In a real world situation I don’t feel that 10% is worth the cons of a RDS. Plus, I’ve had two name brand, well maintained, red dots completely fail on me out of the blue. I just don’t think the technology is 100% there yet.

For competition, RDS all day! For self defense, I’m comfortable with irons.

What is your source for this number ?

Is it a real number or your feeling / impression ?

With or without time pressure ?

IME transitioning about 300 shooters the advantages of RDS vary between individuals. 10% for some, 50% for others. Those are based on agency qual numbers.

Those with “good” (I.s. 20/20 or better) vision benefited less than those with poorer vision, even when corrected.

However, that is with those with poorer vision shooting corrected (with glasses /contacts). When you add the “Mike Tyson factor” (everyone has a plan till the get punched in the face) and have those less than 20/20 shooters shoot with their in corrected vision the RDS has a significant (40-50%) advantage.

All of this is based on people who originally learned to shoot handguns with irons. Many are still getting sucked into the dot, closing one eye etc. Initial results indicate new shooters “native” to RDS do better.

[TicTacticalTimmy]

Personally I will probably never buy another full size service pistol that is not cut for an RDS. There's a good chance I will never buy another compact service pistol that isn't cut for an RDS. Pistol RDS is already the standard for competition and serious handgun shooters, and within a few years I'm sure it will be the standard for LEO/Mil.

However, I don't think that the RDS will ever dominate in the handgun world to the same extent it does for rifles, for a few reasons:

-Bulk/weight: for pocket carry and other unconventional carry methods, the added bulk of a red dot sight can snag the draw, reduce concealment, and can get clogged up with lint. By contrast even the sveltest PDW does not gain noticeable bulk/weight by adding a compact red dot.
-Simplicity: Most casual handgun owners view them as last ditch tools, to see the light of day only in a dire emergency. Anything that adds complexity to the manual of arms or maintenance is going to be seen as a huge detriment for someone who sees handguns in this way.
-Use: most people who buy handguns are thinking about self defense in terms of hitting a man sized target at conversational distances. They are not thinking about slaying an active shooter 50m away or precisely targeting the heart/lungs of a moving target, or dealing with multiple armed targets, etc. Their performance expectations are low, and the performance advantages to an RDS are not likely to be worth the extra hassle for someone with such a mindset.
-Cost: as long as the dot needs to be mounted on a reciprocating slide, engineering an RDS to withstand the recoil forces while also being light enough not to effect the slide will simply cost more than a red dot that just needs to stand up to 5.56 recoil.
-Pistol Vs Rifle: the performance difference in having a red dot compared to irons with a rifle is far greater than the irons vs red dot performance difference with a handgun, for most shooters without bad vision etc. This is dramatically more true if you include magnified optics in addition to red dots in the comparison to iron sights.
The distances a rifle can be shot at mean that having a clear sight picture and eliminating the need for sight alignment makes a dramatic and obvious difference in the shooters ability to accurately engage targets. By contrast, at typical handgun self-defence distances, the shooter is much more likely to miss due to trigger/grip/flinching rather than sight picture/alignment issues.
Finally learning a consistent cheek weld with a rifle is far easier than learning a consistent index with a handgun, so the transition from irons to red dot for a casual shooter is much easier with a rifle.

[HCM]

I personally have no need for an iron sight only gun, I wouldn't carry a gun that didn't have a dot as I see no benefit. We are at the point of police departments issuing red dots for the entire department in my area. The arguments against them have all been debunked.

Pistols are the primary duty weapons for law enforcement so seeing LE lead in adopting pistol “enablers” makes sense.

The Australian Army just adopted the SIG P320 X Carry with the Romeo2 optics.

Per The Firearms Blog they will be the first conventional military to issue an RDS pistol across the board.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...wning-hipower/

it appears it will be a SIG Optics Rome0 2 T6. It appears that the Australian Defence Force will become the first major conventional army to field red dot sights on their fleet of sidearms.

The French are supposed to get an ACRO P2 for each of their new G17s but we’ll see if they are actually fielded that way.

Pistols are fairly insignificant in terms of conventional military operations so I don’t think we’ll see RDS become ubiquitous on conventional military pistols with the speed or urgency we’ve seen optics become ubiquitous on rifles.

That is going to negatively impact standardization efforts for RDS /RDS mounting systems.

Time does March on though. You can look at most any 3rd world military nowadays and find at least some troops with body armor and optics on rifles. Oil rich Nigeria is one thing but when you see optics, Kevlar helmets and rifle plates in use in places like Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea etc things have changed.

[ECK]

Ken Hackathorn says no.

Speaking of Hackathorn, I got introduced to him earlier in Sept and we even got to sling some rounds down range with his friend that introduced us. I was on a work trip so didn’t have my usual carry or comp guns with me, but he loaned me one of his 1911s.

We did talk about red dots on pistols at one point, and KH evidently is not a fan for serious use for one reason or another. We shot irons at various drills he likes to put people thru. We started out casual (he was probably checking me out) before moving onto anything more complex but at the end of the session he called me a 1%’er. As in 1% of the gun owning population that trains/practices enough to become proficient with a handgun. I definitely called my wife to brag that “KH called me proficient!”. Highlight of my week, hell even year.

On our last drill he wouldn’t let me see the shot timer. 6 shot bill drill on T2, then 2 headshots on T3 freestyle. Reload, then 4 shots SHO on T3, then 2 shots on T1 WHO. But he’s got 20 years on me, even tho we were shooting on his range, with his gun, and in a drill he’s probably shot a million times.