People regularly attend my classes with red-dot sights, and I've been training and shooting them in competition myself. Here are a couple observations:
- The pistol must be close to properly aligned in order to see the dot, otherwise you come on target looking through a blank piece of glass and waste precious time waving the pistol around to find the dot. Developing a subconscious index, where you can present the pistol on target and immediately see the dot, is more important than with iron sights, because with them you can always see the front and rear sights to bootstrap the alignment process. Develop your index by practicing looking at a spot, presenting the gun, and instantly seeing the dot when it stops. Pay attention to how your grip, wrists, and forearms feel when you stop the gun and the dot appears over the spot you're looking at. Do this not just when you're stationary and squared up with the target, but in torqued-up firing positions, coming into a shooting position, shooting on the move, leaning around barricates, going prone, and shooting one handed. Drawing to your support hand and immediately seeing the dot consistently is a very tough challenge, but with practice you can learn how to set your joints to make it happen. Dots with larger windows are easier here: it's easier to index with a Trijicon SRO than with an RMR since the larger window on the former provides a larger margin of error in initially seeing the dot.
- The aiming process with a dot is to look at the spot on the target you want to hit and cover it with the dot, not stare at the dot and move it onto the target. The latter mitigates one of the big advantages of a dot—keeping your focus downrange—and slows transitions. Cover the front of your optic with tape for a quick test of whether you're looking at the target or the dot—you won't notice the tape if you're target focused. You want to shoot the same way with iron sights—look at the spot and place the tip of the front sight there. Training with a dot helps build this skill and carries over naturally to irons, where you also want to be shooting target focused.
- It's extremely easy to inadvertently switch your focus from the target to the dot, which will slow transitions and interfere with returning the gun for follow-up shots. With practice, you can learn to feel your eye muscles making the shift and become aware of this tell. Switching focus is also often associated by moving your head down and toward the optic, which is another tell to become aware of. Shooting with an occluded optic is a great way to learn how it feels to shoot target focused. And when you switch focus to an occluded dot, the tells of eye and head motion will be associated with shooting becoming very difficult because both eyes are looking through the occlusion.
- The dot never stops moving, which can be unnerving when making tight shots. You want to get comfortable letting the dot paint the acceptable-hit zone while breaking the shot. Shooting head shots on a USPSA target or B-8 at 25 yards is great practice for this. Go one-handed to further up the challenge.
- On large targets, say an open IPSC target at 7 yards, you want to shoot using the streak tearing around the A-zone, not wait to see a stable dot. Don't think of it as a red-dot sight, think of it as a red streak sight. Going fast with a dot takes some getting used to. Experiment to see how difficult a shot you can make shooting a streak. As with most shooting, it's a matter of learning what you don't need to see as much as it is what you need to see.
- Related to this, it's easy to over-aim and wait for a stable dot before breaking the shot. This is rarely necessary. You're not trying to shoot the letter A on the target, all hits in the A-zone score the same!
- A dot provides a speed advantage over irons when shooting targets that require using the rear sight along with the front. When shooting with iron sights, it's okay to ignore the rear sight on large targets: put the front sight on the A-zone and pull the trigger. This is how aiming with a dot works at all distances: put the dot on the A-zone and pull the trigger. Verifying that the front sight is lined up in the rear notch becomes important as the target gets smaller, and this takes a little time that isn't present with a dot.
- Don't over-complicate zeroing with slide-mount sights. It doesn't matter as much as people think for shooting out to 50 yards. Zero at 20 or 25 yards, then see where shots go at 5 and 50 yards. Slide-ride sights have fewer height-over-bore issues than Open guns or AR-15s, but you still need to acount for it on close, tight shots like the A-zone on the head of a USPSA target at 5 yards. Test your setup, but don't be surprised if you need to put your dot just above the perforation on close shots.
- A dot tells you what's happening as you aim and pull the trigger much more clearly than iron sights. This applies to both dry and live fire. In dry fire, dot movement as you pull the trigger reveals sympathetic movement of fingers other than your trigger finger. Same in live fire, plus seeing the dot lift diagonally or bounce excessively points to grip issues. Shooting with a dot, both in live and dry fire, will improve your grip and trigger-finger isolation faster than irons and is valuable even if you're primarily an irons shooter.
Last edit: 4 January 2023