Long Gun Optics

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. An important consideration when using a long gun for self-defense of course is going to be what type of optic or sighting system you're using. Whether that's a scope, whether it's iron sights, whether it's a modified iron sight that we may not be used to seeing on a traditional target gun or hunting gun, or whether it's just plain old rifle sights. With a standard notch and blade set up, what we have is, traditional rifle sights. This is more often than not exactly what the rifle comes with from the factory so to speak.

When you buy a new rifle from the gun shop, you come home from the dealer with most likely this type of set up, traditional iron sights. Now in this case, it happens to be on a shotgun. That's great Some shotguns come that way specifically so that you can be more precise with the presentation of the round, whatever it may be. Of course, typically, rifle sights are going to be put on a slug gun or a gun that's used to shoot slugs regularly. Much more traditional, is going to be this type of set up where you simply have a bead on the end of the shotgun.

When you have that bead out there, you're really going to superimpose that bead without a rear frame of reference. You're relying on your placement of the cheek on the stock of the gun to allow you to align that up consistently. The reality is, in most close quarter defensive situations, you're not really going to need to use either type of sight. You're going to what we call shoot intuitively at that point which sometimes involves using sights, most of the time inside of a self defense house hold situation wouldn't, especially with a rifle where you have four points of contact. Given that four points of contact, you're able to bring up, boom.

You've got the butt, you've got the stock with your cheek, you've got your pistol grip, and of course you've got your forearm grip. That gives you four points of contact on the firearm at any given point so that you can keep this steady and that you're going to be more consistent. At the close ranges we're talking about for self defense use of a long gun, that consistency is going to play a huge role in your ability to get the hits. But understanding which type of sighting system you have and how to use it best in self defense is also important. One option that comes traditionally on a lot of military rifles, but more and more are seen in sport shooting and recreational shooting is something like this.

A peep sight. With this open peep sight and a blade on the front, you have a much quicker acquisition of your sight picture. You can quickly put this up to the shoulder, look straight through that ghost ring, as it's often called, the peep sight or ghost ring allows you to place that blade approximately in a perfect alignment with your eye. For hunting, for precision rifle shooting, this is probably the most common set up that you're going to have. No other sights, no iron sights, as we call them, you're just going to have a glass optic.

For precision and for hunting this is the way to go. Of course what we have is field of view issues when something is very close to you and of course there's a minimum length for focus. If something's too close with a variable optic, this one happens to go down as low as 2.5 times magnification. I'm still not going to see anything a typical house, hallway, or room, that I can make out clearly inside of this optic. It certainly is not designed for close range shooting and most of your defensive shooting is going to be close range.

Probably not the best option for a firearm that you intend to use for self defense. Moving to this rifle, we see another option for the peep sight. This is another type of iron sight that allows you to put the rifle up quickly and conveniently, and look through this ghost ring onto this post, superimposed over your target. If you were going to use it for sighted fire or simply to look through the ghost ring, superimpose that image over your target, or again, with this rifle, we can just align it based on our body position and four points of contact directly at a threat that's close range shooting again, intuitively. Knowing whether or not we need to use the sights or focus on the threat.

And that comes from frequent and realistic training that allows us to know our balance between speed and precision with any given rifle. This particular model also allows you to flip the a much smaller ghost ring, actually a true peep sight, and be more precise by looking through a much smaller hole to that post to a target that would be further away. A very popular option within defensive, sport shooting, law enforcement, tactical communities, is a red dot sight of some kind. There are many different manufacturers of red dot sights. There's many different types.

Some of them are holographic, some of them use luminous dots, some of them use true reticles that do not magnify very much. And those wouldn't be red dots in the sense that they have a red dot. Simply a family of optics designed to go on short rifles designed for quick, close quarters use or rapid use inside a competition environment. This particular red dot is set up on top of what we call a flat top AR. It's a type of AR that doesn't have the traditional carry handle and allows you to mount optics on top of it.

This red dot is designed for quick target acquisition in close range. If it were to break, if it were to get knocked off, if the batteries were to go down, this particular rifle is set up with the option of a flip up rear sight which we call co witnessed or mounted coaxially with the red dot so that we can still use the iron sights as we come up and we're just going to be looking through this tube. Of course, if this were a problem, if it was damaged, if it was cracked, we could quickly remove this, twisting these knobs pulling this off, and we'd be right back to our iron sights. This is a great option if you're in an environment that's demanding or harsh or if you just want to have the best of both possible worlds. Iron sights as an ultimate back up and the red dot sight for quick target acquisition in a low light or bright light situation.

Another option that gives you the best of both worlds in a lot of ways is to have a glass optic mounted on top of your rifle with a non co witnessed or non coaxially mounted iron sight back up. With this particular rifle set up for active shooter response or any similar situation where you'd want the ability to take a close range, extremely precise shot. Close range for a rifle being less than 100 yards, maybe even less than 50 yards. So this is not a high power magnification, but it is an extremely accurate sight that will allow you to be very very precise. At that same time, if I'm in this position looking for a target and I have one come up very very close.

Let's say someone came around this corner while I was in this room as I was getting ready to take a precise shot with my glass optic, or even while I was in the ready position here. I could simply rotate the rifle up into a firing position using the iron sights. I could be here with the glass sight, a target comes up quickly, I rotate, and I'm on my iron sights now. This sight set up was originally used in competition, but it's finding more and more application in a tactical or defensive environment. Once again, it's important to understand the type of optics you have on a gun or the type of sighting system that your long gun has.

If you're going to be faced with using a long gun for self defense you want to make sure that you understand how to use the optics that you have in that given situation which is most plausible. Home defense, defense from you vehicle, really we're limited to those two options when it comes to a long gun. Certainly if you are out hunting you had your long gun and someone were to pose a threat to you or someone that you cared about and cared to protect, that would be a different scenario, but those would certainly be few and far between. Much more specific is, if you're going to have a long gun that you own primarily for home defense or self defense, put an optic on it that makes sense. Or put iron sights on it, perhaps a ghost ring, that will be reliable, usable, and that you can practice with so that you know how to use your rifle to your balance, and speed, and precision, so that you can be combat accurate and efficient when the time comes that you need to defense yourself or others.

Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.