What differentiates this from Point Shooting?
What differentiates this from Point Shooting?
Nothing and everything.Originally Posted by Redhat
A lot of people who talk about "point shooting" are talking about a novelty scenario.
As opposed to the kinesthetic improvement and specific training that is the BASIS of all other shooting, especially when adding movement and transitions.
Does that make sense?
Some people only practice "point shooting" as an occasional test rather than as a skill to improve and develop.
Of course those are the same people that think J frames are only good for contact distance and can't be used to make good hits farther.
Something like this is an example. It's 90% kinesthetic with 10% vision because the sights are so terrible.
It's actually similar even at speed.
So you could call it "point shooting" but it's not.
But it is.
Basically if you're slaved to vision as the primary input you'll be slow and inefficient.
@Redhat think about the traditional “don’t move the sights” during trigger press as an example.
That only works for single shots and should be thought of as a very basic drill to train kinesthetic trigger press and grip that won’t be doable at speed with recoil and movement (of target or of shooter).
You’re supposed to be able to train the trigger press and grip and then take that kinesthetic knowledge to dynamic situations.
But many people try and get that same static sight picture on draw, transitions and under recoil follow up.
You can see how much extra time and visual dependence that would take.
When moving you’ll never have stable sights. If you never trained the kinesthetics separate from the vision you couldn’t do something like this.
With iron sights, there is: sight alignment relative to the eye (equal height; equal light), and sight alignment relative to the target (POA). With a red dot these are the same*.
Aiming irons precisely requires 1) look at the target, 2) align the sights, 3) adjust POA to the target, 4) check if rear, front, and target are colinear, 5) break the shot or correct and repeat. For very precise shooting this can take multiple cycles, and a long time.
If the shooter has a good index, sight alignment will be subconscious and "automatic" on the draw and after recoil and transitions. That allows some shooters to use a hard target focus using irons, similar to what we do with a dot.
Now, we get to the interesting part of this discussion: can an accurate shot be made when the sights are misaligned with the eye? We can do it with a dot: all we need is for the dot to be somewhere* in the window. Irons shooters do this as well. There's still a lot of information in mis-aligned irons. For example, if I draw with a jacked-up grip and my index is right of center I will nudge my POA to "favor left" on target.
There are all sorts of applications of this. Once the index is established (sights aligned with the eye; arm triangle turret established), we can look through the sights to shoot predictive target focus transitions without re-confirming sight alignment.
Or, we can steer the gun to make shots based on the original confirmed index to shoot around barriers, compensate for movement, and shoot makeups.
A red dot makes all this so much easier--until the dot is outside the window.
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*there is usually some parallax error when the dot is not centered in the window.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
@Clusterfrack I’m still newish to irons so let me know if this sounds off:
I am preferring a thinner iron front blade in a wider notch because I can use the misaligned iron info within the notch rather than an overly constrained sight picture…
To me a wide front sight that takes up most of the notch feels like when I try and hold a DPP large triangle on a steel target. In order to get the reticle to stay fully within the smallish target I have to constrain down more tightly (and slowly) than a smaller reticle that’s within my trigger wobble ability.
I like that as well. The stock irons on a S2 are perfect for me. 0.125 notch; 0.120 (3mm) blade.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
For me, wider front sights that take up most of the notch have advantages in quickly picking up small differences in vertical alignment. They also provide more feedback during target focus. With unknown or changing distances the vertical alignment is often the tricky part for me, especially in certain light conditions. You can still use misaligned iron info with a wider front sight (OFF LEFT/ON/OFF RIGHT) but it is not as easy or as precise as with a thinner one.
Speaking to iron preference. This may cause some head scratching by some folks. So let me preface this by saying I've got monovision correction. In my right eye, I'm natuarally near sighted which plays well with irons. My right lens is under corrected, but precisely corrected to my front sight depth of 16.5 inches. Seems close right? Well I'm 5-0" and that's where the sights end up. The ratio is more important than some preconceived notion. My left eye is corrected for distance. The result is a perfectly crisp front, as well as visible serrations on the rear, AND a crisp target.
With that foundation laid, I use a .125w rear, paired with a .140w front . Gives very narrow light bars, and for me, a larger front seems to vary less in percieved height in a variety of lighting. With the Night Fision front, I use the apex of the circle should I need a very precise POA. Otherwise I'm using the top edge, and cutting the POI. Visually on a B8 at 25 yards I can see the actual X, and the sight serrations overlaid.
Taking a break from social media.
We should probably define what type and speed of shooting we are talking about!
I think that would affect my iron preferences quite a bit like it influenced my RDS reticle choices!
I’m talking about tracking <0.20 s splits on 10 yard alphas.
Slow fire B8s, I’d also prefer a more precise system and wider front.
For precision, I would use a narrow notch and a narrow blade.
I tried Trijicon HDs and absolutely hated them. For my eyes, they did nothing well.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
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