3 Tips for Making the Move From Iron Sights to a Red Dot on Your Pistol
There’s a lot of reasons you might choose to transition from iron sights to a red dot for your pistol. As your eyesight degrades, red dots become easier and faster to acquire, and there are plenty of holsters that allow you to carry your EDC pistol with a dot attached. But making the transition from shooting irons to shooting a dot can be tricky, especially if you’ve trained your whole shooting life on irons.
We asked Peter Schreier, one of our Vortex Edge® firearms instructors, for three tips on making the transition easier, so you can make the move to a dot without losing your hard-earned speed and accuracy.
1. Red Dots Don’t Fix Bad Form
First things first: Red dots are going to make you see better, not shoot better. They won’t cover up deficiencies in your fundamentals: If you flinch, if you have poor trigger control, a red dot is not going to fix that. But, of course, that’s true for all optics, and red dots do three things really well:
- They keep your eyes off your gun and on your target.
- They work in all lighting conditions.
- They let you aim more accurately at speed.
That said, yeah, there are some cons. There’s a learning curve to it, but once you get over that curve, the sky’s the limit.
It takes practice to move from fixed sights to a red dot, but the benefits can definitely outweigh the extra time at the range.
2. Target Focus
You have to make sure you keep consistent target focus on what you are aiming at with both eyes open. This is in stark contrast to how most people learn how to shoot iron sights and can be a significant hurdle for those transitioning to a Red dot. You have to learn to look through the Red dot at a very specific point on the target where you want the bullet to go. An easy way to check if you are doing this is to occlude the front of the red dot with some tape. If you are truly target focused and you keep both eyes open your brain will blend the images from both eyes and you will have a good sight picture. If you are dot focused you will not be able to see the target. But here’s some bad advice you need to ignore:
Get to the point you can find your dot easily, then add in dry firing. And the key here is you should be pulling that trigger right when your dot is on target. Don’t get fiddly with a dead-center hold. Also, a red dot gives you a lot of information, so keep your eye on your dot during your follow through. Is it moving all over the place? Is it showing you a little flinch?
Let your dot show you more than just the target: Pay attention during your follow through to make sure you’re not flinching or moving off point-of-aim.
3. Learn to Point The Gun
Most people who learn how to shoot a pistol with iron sights will use the sights to aim the gun from the draw or presentation. This is slow and ineffective. When we point at something with our index finger we don’t look at the tip and then move it to what we are looking at. We look, focus on where we want our finger to go and then point. We need to use the same concept with the red dot. Through consistent practice and repetition we can learn how to present the gun on target quickly and efficiently so the dot is in our field of view. We then confirm that the gun is aimed on target using the red dot and shoot.
If you’re interested in learning more about red dots on pistols, check out our 10-minute talk on “Red Dots on Pistols.”
BIO
Pete Schreier is Firearms Instructor and Range Officer at Vortex Edge®.
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