It works

American Handgunner, July-August, 2009 by Dave Anderson

Several years ago I was shooting on the range with a couple of friends. One of them was an occasional handgun shooter. He owned quite a few handguns, had a CCW permit and his gunhandling was certainly competent and capable. He was a very good rifle shot, the point being he had a good degree of trigger control. He just didn't shoot handguns very often.

On this occasion he was shooting a new carry gun, a subcompact Glock 26. It's an excellent carry gun, light, compact and reliable. Due to the compact slide, sight radius is short even by handgun standards. He shot the little gun quite well--certainly well enough for most realistic personal defense situations. But when we moved out to 25 yards he wasn't very pleased with group size.

As it happened the other friend had an identical Glock 26 in his range bag, fitted with a slide-mounted Tasco red-dot optical sight, and he gave it to Shooter #1 to try. The difference in hitting ability was dramatic.

With iron sights he could barely keep shots on a full IPSC silhouette target at 25 yards. With the dot sight, he was hitting 8" diameter Bianchi plates at 40 yards most of the time. And when we moved back in to five yards he was just as fast, maybe even faster, with the dot sight than with iron sights.

It's important to remember, this guy did know how to release a trigger. If you flinch, shut your eyes, yank the trigger, you're going to miss with any sight. That dot isn't magic. What it does is eliminate the concern about where to focus. The red dot and the target appear in the same focal plane.

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