Handgun Modification: Sights

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Now we're going to take a look at another replacement front sight. And this one is going to solve the problem in a slightly different way. This particular front sight is a very popular front sight to replace the existing sights on your defensive firearms and I want to talk a little bit about the history behind this sight because I am very familiar with the history of these large front dot sights. The original idea on these large front dots, was that you wanted to be able to pick up the front sight as quickly as possible.

Now if your background assumption is that you absolutely need to see the front sight in order to responsibly press that trigger, you're not going to be able to shoot to defend yourself without seeing that front sight clearly, and obviously you want to be able to see that front sight as quickly as possible. And everybody realizes that that's going to be a very short time frame, very dramatic situation, and a very dynamic situation, where you're focused on a threat and you want to pick that front side up very quickly. And I happen to think that that assumption is flawed, that you don't need to see the sight every time you pull the trigger in order to responsibly defend yourself with a firearm, but if you start with that assumption, then having a very large white dot out at the end of your firearm is going to make that easier. So the history of the large white front sight, actually comes hunters in Africa hunting dangerous game. With ivory bead sights on their double rifles.

These rifles were used in situations where you were potentially in very close quarters with a charging dangerous animal, like a lion, rhinoceros, water buffalo, coming out of the tall grass very quickly and possibly unexpectedly. Being able to throw that rifle up quickly and verify your alignment with a high contrast, large white bead, was very reliable and obviously these people needed something that was reliable in that situation. The problem is that when you take an application that comes from a long gun, and try to put it on a pistol, you got to remember that you are dealing with a different set of circumstances. That long gun has four points of contact. Our body, our check and of course our two hands.

We're going to have a certain amount of consistency that comes from the alignment at this end of the firearm from those four points of contact. What that means is, we're putting that eye in the constant position behind that bright white bead at extension at the other end of the long gun. When we deal with a pistol, we're holding that pistol at extension and we really only have one point of contact. We may be coming at it from two angles, but we have one point of contact at extension. The back side of the pistol.

The position of our eye could be very greatly, one way or the other. And that's why we rely on the relationship between the front sight and the rear sight to allow an actual proper sight alignment before we get a sight picture. So when we put this large white dot on the front of the firearm, and then we complicate the situation, by putting a very wide open wedge on the back on the fire arm, and take away that true notch, that we'd insert the blade to, what we get is a much less precise alignment between the front and the rear sight. And you can see that on the overhead camera at this point. The alignment can be precise, but it can't be nearly as precise as a true notch and blade situation.

So here's the trick. If you start with the assumption that you need to see the front sight, this becomes a great idea. Once you have that on there, this rear sight seems like an appropriate solution to getting a quick sight alignment. And in a controlled situation, like the competition range or that training environment that's well let and predictable, you can always get that precise shot you need, with enough practice and enough consistency and an understanding of good trigger control and the alignment of these two pieces. So we want to be really careful about people who talk about what they can do with this type of sight alignment, sight picture situation in a training environment.

Just because you can be precise, doesn't mean that you'll be able to pull off the same level of precision, particularly that same level of precision as efficiently as you can with a true notch and blade situation. The notch and blade allows for less deviation than the wedge and the big dot. So be careful about the wedge and the big dot as a solution to your sighting options, when it comes to a defensive firearm. The idea of sights is to be more precise, not to be faster. When you want to be fast, you're going to need to compromise your precision.

If you want to be precise, you're going to need to compromise speed. That balance of speed and precision is a centerpiece of the Combat Focus Shooting program, and in fact, whether they articulate it that way or not, it's probably a centerpiece of just about every practical defensive shooting program. So when we look at replacing that front sight with the big dot, we need to really be sensitive to the idea that we are compromising the ability to be precise. Personally, I don't want to do that on the firearm that I am going to require in variety of different circumstances. I know that if I don't need to be precise, I'm not likely to be using my sights.

So that big dot, which seems like such a good idea for speed combined with this wedge, may not be what I want. And in fact, as we can see here in the overhead camera shot, this big white dot, can still be aligned with this tray, that comes from the Glock firearm standard type sight. Well this happens to be a rear sight laser, but the dimensions of that tray are exactly the same as they would be on a standard factory Glock. That alignment is certainly possible. Now that alignment isn't as precise as the standard size dot, but it's a lot more precise, than trying to put that big dot in this wedge.

So again, I'm going to advise you to consider if you like the big dot, just replacing the front sight and sticking with the standard rear sight, so that you have essentially the best of both worlds. You get the faster easier front sight, but you still get more precise alignment then you would have from something like that wedge. Now if we step away from those types of sights that are actually going to provide their own glow, their own luminescence, we can get back into something that might be less expensive and might be more useful in situations, where we're not in a completely dark black, pitch back situation, where we need the sights to glow themselves. Something like this set of HIVIZ sights, which are actually fiber optic sights, designed to have open areas, which collect as much light as possible and filter it back through the tube towards your eye, whether that be here on this front sight, or here in this two tube set of rear sights. What you end up with is a situation, where you can get much more light going back to your eye, much higher contrast without the investment in the tritium sights, which over an extended period of time, will actually lose their glow.

Of course, their more expensive, that means their more sensitive, their harder to replace, so that might be a consideration for you. And again, the situation where you truly need sights that produce their own light, is very extreme. So something like this set of sights, which actually produces more light coming back to your eyes, is something to be considered. Before we leave the topic of sight modifications to your defensive fire arm, it's important that we take a look at the revolver. The revolver is such a great choice for personal defense, it's a very popular choice.

We want to make sure we consider the fact that things are a little different when we get to this situation here. It's much harder to modify the sights on this particular type of firearm. Of course the rear sight is going to be part of the frame of the revolver, and the front sight is almost always going to be built into the actual barrel, as it is on this J frame. Now, sometimes you do actually have removable blades that can come and go from the part of the barrel that is connecting them, and you have a drift pin or you have a dove tail or something like that. If you have a firearm like that, it may be an easy replacement.

Otherwise, you may be back to something like the paint, that you are going to place on that raised bar, and you put that paint on the blade that is the raised area of that front of the barrel. That's going to allow you to see more light back at your eyes or pick it up quicker because it is a higher contrast. You might think about changing the width or depth of the actual rear notch. If you make the deeper or a little wider, without compromising the integrity of the frame, and of course appropriate change the height and possibly width of the front sight, you might also be able to put up your sight alignment quicker. Again, remember, all of these modifications are going to be compromises between the speed with which you can get alignment, and the precision which that alignment brings to your shooting situation.

Keep that in mind, when you think about modifying the sights on your defensive firearms. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.