Taking longer to find the sight results in more panic / mag dumping, not less because now they have to “catch up.”Originally Posted by Trooper224
Taking longer to find the sight results in more panic / mag dumping, not less because now they have to “catch up.”
That attitude is part of the problem. "The smart kids will figure it out, so just teach the big part of the bell curve" is abdicating your responsibility to teach everyone. If you don't have the ability to teach everyone something, you're in the wrong job.
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
Most LEO "students" have the ability/motivation to learn, others not so much no matter how good the Instructor is.
We've been teaching "shoot the sights you see first."
Our issued M&P's came with the standard three dot tall backup sights. That sight picture looks the same as the sights that have been on the issued pistol for decades.
If you raise the pistol and you see the dot right away shoot that. If you don't see the dot, but see your irons, shoot those.
Three things happen when you teach this:
1) It cuts down on the "fishing" for the dot and speeds up time on target
2) If you align your irons the dot typically appears (again, cutting down on searching)
3) If the battery/dot is dead, we aren't wasting precious time trying to find it
There are some tricks (such as pointing support hand thumb) to help you find your dot quickly and the importance of grip is still significant, but when you are instructing your whole department you have to teach what will help everyone.
Some great thoughtful stuff in here. Some butthurt too, but that's how learning occurs.
1. Consensus seems to be that dots will not replace training. Agreed. So....if we're not training, will dots help? You can't have it both ways.
2. Some of you, it seems, might not have a lot of teaching experience. If your agency only runs quals, then YOU are.......only running quals.
3. If you're not training, and you're not shooting......then you just might be part of the problem.
4. It's important we have these discussions. Someone many posts earlier mentioned a "gut check" which, although painful, is how we get better.
Irons don’t replace training either. Lack of training is problematic regardless of what’s in the holster. I just took three brand new shooters to the range for the first time and the difference between their group sizes with irons vs optic was enough that I’m not convinced irons should be the default answer for anyone that doesn’t train.
ETA - Also, just since this is instructor focused, now that I have been one (not shooting) for 18 months, I'm far less impressed by total students/hours instructed. I've found that its so easy to put the work into a curriculum at the start and then prioritize other requirements so that the POI is never revised, it that I'd be much more interested in how an instructor is challenging their own experiences and curriculum than I am interested in how long they've been teaching people. YMMV and all that, just a personal point of view that has changed for me after some professional self reflection.
Last edited by Wake27; 12-04-2023 at 08:32 AM.
Good point; I am hoping that the learning curve for people that have never shot before is cleaner/smoother.
It is. Very much so. I again point to ICE issuing red dot equipped handguns to all new academy students. The qualification scores are substantially higher than they were pre-RDS. You can even use the other half of the CITP class that the HSI students are in as a control group since they probably have iron sights. The HSI students are outshooting their classmates even though everyone is receiving the same instruction from the FLETC firearms instructors.
It’s also just easier for new shooters to understand the RDS concept than irons. Look at the target. Point the gun at the target. The dot appears on the target. Press the trigger while keeping the dot on target. Hit the target. They don’t have to worry about shifting visual focus or lining up their front and rear sights. Dot on target = bang.
My favorite part about the RDS is that it makes self guided learning a whole lot easier than with iron sights. The RDS is like a shooting coach you have with you at all times. A lot of shooters, new shooters especially, have difficulty tracking their sights with irons. It’s a lot easier to see the red dot suddenly fly across the window when your strong hand gripping fingers all crushed down while you were pressing the trigger, diverting your muzzle off target. Students can see the red dot move as they provide inputs into the gun so they start picking up on what inputs cause movements and what results in the dot staying on target.
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
Qualification scores will go up. Ours did. I think the sighting system was a big part but providing some very deliberate skills training to the guys that chose to switch to optics (about half of the PD) also helps. The handgun qualification course is not hard.
Performance in the field...who knows? The ability to perform better is there. The guy doing the shooting has to take advantage of it. If he starts shooting like a democrat (all based on feelings), goes cyclic, and never sees the dot, it really doesn't matter. If he can treat the threat like a shot timer and apply proper grip, sights, and trigger, accuracy will be better than irons. I think the heat map of hits from the Sage Dynamics white paper, showing the difference in accuracy (both in raw hits and shot placement) between irons and optics shot on the same scenarios (most notably with a drastic drop in mistake of fact shootings) is as close to "data" as we have right now.
I don't fit into the age demographic to call myself a boomer but i have to side with the boomers on this one. Having gone through both a state LE academy and CITP in relatively recent memory I can confidently say today's LE shooting standards are absurdly low. I don't have any statistics to support this, but I'd speculate if you gave a FLETC class of 48 novice shooters an RDS pistol from day 1, they would qual faster and with less range time, less rounds fired, and less 1-on-1 instruction with a competent instructor. If i were an agency bean counter i'd say that's great. But as a field agent taking these probies out on search warrants, I'll say that sucks.
The ideal scenario to me...is to let the basic courses (CITP/UPTP) be basic. Get them to a baseline level of competency with irons. Then if their agency allows RDS pistols, introduce them to it in their follow on course. The entire point of the FLETC basic courses is to establish a common baseline across all federal agencies. Throwing the RDS issue into that just seems like a bureaucratic headache at best, and at worst its an excuse for the bean counters to allow fewer training hours to firearms training.
Edit: I got a perfect 300 score on a P229 when I completed CITP. That wasn't because I was anything special. It was more of a testament to the quality of FLETC FIs. They were able to take me as a decent shooter whose prior formal training was on Glocks, and made me a better shooter on a more difficult handgun to shoot well. They didn't just try and get me to pass the qual, they did their best to make me get to that 300. I fear that RDS pistols at the basic course level will dumb down the program in general to simply meet the standard.
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