Yep. I carry with an iron gun 80% of the time but I do a lot of my training on a dot gun.Originally Posted by ViniVidivici
Yep. I carry with an iron gun 80% of the time but I do a lot of my training on a dot gun.
I don't see the dot carrying over significantly to irons, from a slight picture perspective, if your mechanics are good already.
The dot is much more communicative than irons. It's much easier to see small movements and call shots and that magnifies itself at distance.
With irons, in my experience, it takes much more practice (and hyper-focused attention/vision) to detect the small movements and achieve the perfect sight alignment that will influence a shot being slightly off target. Gross differences sure, when your accuracy standard isn't high and the distances aren't great, there's minimal difference between the two.
Shooting small targets at distance, I don't see dot practice carrying over significantly. For me at least, it takes dedicated practice with irons and lots more of it, to achieve the same level of proficiency. Dots are like a cheat code at distance.
I think the general thought and something I have experienced myself is that the dot gives you a lot of feedback on correct presentation of the gun on target and your trigger manipulation. If you take this feedback and use it to improve both of those things, your iron sighted shooting will most definitely improve.
As much as I love a challenge LE Duty or defensive use rarely involves small targets at distance.
The practice (and hyper-focused attention/vision) needed for shot calling with irons you mention is why i described the dot as allowing a new shooter to get “the story” by “seeing the movie” vs being an illiterate person trying to “get the story” from a book at the same time they are trying to learn how to read. That is a significant advantage.
The dot carries over to presentation, grip and trigger control. Those are pretty important regardless of sighting system.
I personally shoot irons target / soft focused out to about 15 yards unless it’s a particularly small target so that carries over as well.
Are you shooting irons front sight focused at all distances ?
I vary my focus based on what I have to do to get good hits. Close targets at hoser speeds, I'll shoot with a soft focus. The cut line for me is around 15 yards or 50 ft., where I have to use a hard focus to get my hits.
I do spend a lot of time on small targets at 25 yards, as well as things like a 2" circle at 50 ft. or a paster at 10 yards, due to range restrictions where I live on speed.
Sights whisper. Dots scream.
Dots make subtle things more obvious.
I remember in a low light class a very long time ago, I pulled out a S&W 442 I was pocket carrying with a CT laser grip on it. I hit a chest sized target at 35 yards in the dark just because as I was pressing the trigger the laser was giving feedback on how the gun was squirming during the trigger press that I could recognize and correct instantly. That resulted in a hit. There's little chance I could have done the same in bright daylight using the iron sights on the little revolver with my meager skillsets at the time.
Most people who fire a handgun put iron sights on the target like they saw it on the powerpoint slide or the handout the instructor gave them or the picture they saw on the internet and then they begin the process of shooting. Within fractions of a second the trigger moves, there's a small explosion directly in front of their face and physics tries to take the gun away from them. The .2 seconds it takes for them to complete the trigger pull and the pistol to cycle is literally an indecipherable blur to them and there's no obvious indication that they are pressing the trigger as one violent event rather than as a process, and that they are simultaneously tightening their grip with the whole hand. Or that their support hand isn't on the gun as good as it should be and they subconsciously tighten the support hand as they are pressing the trigger, driving the shot to the strong side and usually high.
A glowing dot that suddenly rockets off down and to the left is much easier to see in that mass of confusion. Similarly it's easier to see if the glowing dot is tracking in a particular direction as you work the trigger allowing you to call a shot that's off a bit more easily than if you are looking at a wide front sight through a wide rear notch that is pretty common for iron sights built to shoot "fast".
Something I hear over and over again when I train folks...especially those who were trained in institutions...is that they've heard they were doing X wrong a bunch of times but nobody ever told them exactly what they were doing wrong or how to fix it. A dude screaming FOCUS ON THE FRONT SIGHT and STOP JERKING THE TRIGGER constitutes their entire experience of "coaching". This is one of the reasons why people fall in love with dots because it's like a coach sitting on top of your slide giving you real-time information about exactly how you are fucking this up and where that shot went. It's teaching them things their instructors never would or never could.
As you gain experience with sights...or if you are lucky enough to encounter an instructor who can demystify the use of sights for you...you can pick up a lot more information. Simply transitioning to more of a "soft focus" where you are looking through the sights and more importantly your brain isn't constantly obsessing about whether or not the sights are good enough as if the shit sitting on top of the slide can actually do anything to correct what's happening with the rest of the gun. The right understanding of what's happening allows a person to more easily process what irons are doing.
Even so, the glowing ball is going to be easier to see and read under a wide range of conditions.
Hell, shooting in low light with correctly configured tritium sights is easier than irons in bright daylight simply because of the contrast at work. With small subdued elements in the rear and a normal element in the front you're basically tracking a softball between two golf balls and what you're doing to the gun is obvious for that golden period where there's enough light to see the target but little enough that your tritium sights are highly visible. A dot is like having that all the time if it's properly adjusted.
Last edited by TCinVA; 12-18-2022 at 12:13 PM.
3/15/2016
Absolutely this. My iron shooting went to another level after training with dots exclusively.
I had good mechanics before but with dots I got such great feedback that my HANDS learned what they were feeling to another level of proficiency.
That’s one of the great things about dot training. That your hands learn what they are feeling as related to the muzzle and that absolutely carries over to improving irons like @Corse said.
I asked and it sounds like the current agent class has been issued red dots. No word on if they're RMRs or ACROs.
Agree 100% with all points above. I only have sub ~9K rounds behind a dot since mid-2022. I agree the feedback from a dot is greater, no argument there.
I still don't see it making a huge difference in my irons shooting though, given I'm focused heavily on accuracy at 25 yards+ at the moment. That's the only point I can't correlate with my own direct experience.
My experience is I need to train more consistently and harder with irons than a dot to achieve anything close to the same results with respect to accuracy. I don't see any huge gains with irons from shooting a dot. I do see some gains from regular practice of course, but nothing I could separate out specifically to training with a dot. For me, shooting more often helps everything shooting related pretty much equally.
I need to practice with the same gun, sights, etc. to come close at distance with irons to what I can do with a dot immediately after picking one up. Ostensibly because the irons aren't screaming at me like a dot when my vision or hold are slightly askew. That's why I said dot's are a cheat code at distance. I just really need to be attuned more to irons, whereas the dot is simple and gives greater feedback.
Speed is another story, with speed, I've effectively been able to equalize the difference with practice (I was slower with a dot), but it took some work.
It’s around 1:20 here:
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