Guns: "Sights you can see"

The greatest advice on what is needed in a handgun that will be carried for self-defense was given by Jeff Cooper - "100% reliability, sights you can see, a trigger you can manage." I've blogged several times about how important it is for a firearm to be reliable - any gun that is not or cannot be made to function properly should not be trusted to work when the chips are down. I guess it's time for me to move on to the second requirement, "sights you can see."


While sometimes in action shooting competitions you see elaborate optical sights mounted on handguns, these setups are almost never practical in terms of carrying a gun in the real world (raising some questions as to what those competitions are supposed to simulate, but that's another post). 99.9% of defensive handguns thus wear simple iron sights, sometimes with tritium inserts. The typical sight picture looks something like this (six o'clock hold pictured):



Others have tried playing with the basic Partridge-type sight, with varying degrees of success. Steyr came out with some interesting pyramidal-type sights for their pistols, and some people even sell peep sights for handguns, but the good old square notches are definitely here to stay.

Everyone's eyesight and perception will be subtly different. What may seem a tiny front notch to some might be just right for others. One constant, though, is that the sights must contrast with the surface you are shooting, otherwise it is easy to lose them. Today I shot a gentleman's $1,000 Kimber target 1911 - the thing was accurate as all hell, but finding its black target notch, aligning said notch with the black front sight, all in the center of a black target, was a chore. I shot my basic CZ P-01 much better than his gun for this reason. I've consistently found simple three-dot configurations (or a solid color rear sight contrasted with another solid color front sight) to be ideal.



Shooting instructors often advise people to "focus on the front sight," which seems easy enough. Unfortunately, there is a continuum (at least for me) between perfect sight picture and perfect shooting speed. How fast you can shoot thus primarily depends on how fast you can reacquire sight picture after a shot. Dry-firing exercises can help this reflex to a degree, but it takes a ton of range time before you can learn the exact, split-second interval where you can start squeezing the trigger again after the gun has come back from its muzzle flip.


Different ranges will require different sight pictures - while the topic of "point shooting" (shooting without a sight picture) is somewhat controversial in the shooting world, when an attacker is literally close enough to touch with your arms, you simply may not have enough time to get a sight picture.