I didn’t want to lose any of my ability to do sighted shooting. I wanted zero learning curve and to be able to take advantage of the highly refined draw stroke and presentation that I already had.Ģ. Red dots on pistols are notorious for having a steep learning curve. Until recently, a red dot just didn’t have a place for me on a serious gun because of a few unique…almost prima donna…requirements that I had.ġ. I’ll get into why this is important in a minute. The sensory experience is so overwhelming that they’re not really going to create or retain any skills…I just want them to create a positive association with shooting and we’ll build skills later.
The first time that someone is shooting a gun, my priorities are that they are safe and have fun. I have used red dots on pistols for 5-6 years, but until recently it was primarily for plinking with fun guns with my boys and with brand new shooters who are touching a gun for the first time.
Red dots tend to help solid shooters shoot 10 to 20% better (speed/accuracy) but actually cause most novice to intermediate shooters to shoot slower. As long as you can press the trigger without disturbing the muzzle, it’s just ridiculously simple to shoot tight groups with a red dot and to shoot accurately at much longer distances.īut, when you add speed to the equation, the game changes… Red dots reward precise irons technique and add a severe time penalty for deviations from precise technique. When you just look at accuracy (and not speed), red dots make a huge difference. They negate many of the aiming advantages of a longer slide, make shooting easier for shooters with visual confusion (seeing ghost images when aiming with both eyes open) and they can be easier to track in recoil than iron sights. On most targets, you can keep your focus on your target, put the red dot where you want your bullet to go, and the bullet will go there (instead of lining up the front and rear sight and having to shift your focus to the front sight). They are almost as big of a game-changer on pistols as they were on long guns. Red dot sights on pistols, also called micro red dots or micro red dot sights (MDRS), are all the rage right now for defensive use after proving their effectiveness in the shooting sports for the last several years.