GunnSmokeer
Senior Member
Rear sights on handguns have gotten wider over the generations. They all used to be tiny slits. And that's because the prevailing view of handgun marksmanship was to forgo the sights for any combat / self-defense fast shooting, and just point. Point-shoot out to 25 yards. If you had to shoot a pistol slowly, carefully, THEN is when you'd use the sights. So you could take the time to line up that short, dull-colored front sight into the tiny little notch of a rear sight.
In the old days, all shooting was practiced one-handed, too. That further worked against the idea of aimed fire, using a sight picture, in rapid fire, under combat conditions.
In modern times, WE ACTUALLY USE HANDGUN SIGHTS. In fact, point shooting is now something of a lost art. And among semi-automatic pistols, handgun sights have improved a lot in the last 100 years, even the last 50 years. Standard sights, even fixed sights, have gotten taller, bigger, with wider notches for the rear.
Unfortunately, that's not true for revolvers. Most defensive revolvers have too-narrow rear sights, even if they're the adjustable kind. Revolver sights are stuck in the 1920s and 1930s, technologically. Except for the few revolvers that come with fiber-optic rods that gather light for the front sight post, or have an actual glow in the dark night sight, with a capsule of radioactive tritium in there.
WHAT I WANT TO SEE is more gun manufacturers making BIGGER sights on ordinary, medium-priced (and low-priced) defensive handguns. The notch of the rear sight should be twice as wide as even a modern pistol like a Glock, SiG, Kimber, etc. Twice as wide would mean the sight is optimized for fast shooting at distances of 25 yards or less, even down to 5 or 7 yards. Current sights on modern handguns may be "usable" and "acceptable" at 15 yards, but they're really optimized for shooting man-sized targets at 50 yards (because that's the standard for military-contract pistols).
When I go to shooting ranges where people can choose to shoot the target from any distance they want, 95% of the time people with open-sighted normal-sized handguns shoot them from 5 or 7 yards. Spitting distance, basically. Rarely do they put the targets past 10 yards. The only time you see people shooting at 25 yard targets with a pistol is if they have a match gun, made for target shooting in competition, usually fitted with an optical sight of some sort. OR the other kind of people you see shooting at 25 yards are cops and security guards who are practicing to pass their agency's firearm qualification, and some of the shots fired at such a mandatory qualification are done from 25 yards.
FOR MOST PEOPLE, UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES, the ideal handgun sight would have a rear sight with a shallow U-shaped notch, like the bottom half of a circle that is 8 mm diameter, with a bright colored outline (white or yellow or lime green) and a high-viz front sight of a contrasting color (red or orange).
This kind of sight would best suit the type of shooting MOST PEOPLE ALREADY DO... I'm not trying to change how they shoot. I'm suggesting gun companies recognize that NRA slowfire bullseye shooting at 50 yards / 50 meters (AKA "Camp Perry style") is not popular anymore, but today's handguns have the type of sights that are excellent for that use.
In the old days, all shooting was practiced one-handed, too. That further worked against the idea of aimed fire, using a sight picture, in rapid fire, under combat conditions.
In modern times, WE ACTUALLY USE HANDGUN SIGHTS. In fact, point shooting is now something of a lost art. And among semi-automatic pistols, handgun sights have improved a lot in the last 100 years, even the last 50 years. Standard sights, even fixed sights, have gotten taller, bigger, with wider notches for the rear.
Unfortunately, that's not true for revolvers. Most defensive revolvers have too-narrow rear sights, even if they're the adjustable kind. Revolver sights are stuck in the 1920s and 1930s, technologically. Except for the few revolvers that come with fiber-optic rods that gather light for the front sight post, or have an actual glow in the dark night sight, with a capsule of radioactive tritium in there.
WHAT I WANT TO SEE is more gun manufacturers making BIGGER sights on ordinary, medium-priced (and low-priced) defensive handguns. The notch of the rear sight should be twice as wide as even a modern pistol like a Glock, SiG, Kimber, etc. Twice as wide would mean the sight is optimized for fast shooting at distances of 25 yards or less, even down to 5 or 7 yards. Current sights on modern handguns may be "usable" and "acceptable" at 15 yards, but they're really optimized for shooting man-sized targets at 50 yards (because that's the standard for military-contract pistols).
When I go to shooting ranges where people can choose to shoot the target from any distance they want, 95% of the time people with open-sighted normal-sized handguns shoot them from 5 or 7 yards. Spitting distance, basically. Rarely do they put the targets past 10 yards. The only time you see people shooting at 25 yard targets with a pistol is if they have a match gun, made for target shooting in competition, usually fitted with an optical sight of some sort. OR the other kind of people you see shooting at 25 yards are cops and security guards who are practicing to pass their agency's firearm qualification, and some of the shots fired at such a mandatory qualification are done from 25 yards.
FOR MOST PEOPLE, UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES, the ideal handgun sight would have a rear sight with a shallow U-shaped notch, like the bottom half of a circle that is 8 mm diameter, with a bright colored outline (white or yellow or lime green) and a high-viz front sight of a contrasting color (red or orange).
This kind of sight would best suit the type of shooting MOST PEOPLE ALREADY DO... I'm not trying to change how they shoot. I'm suggesting gun companies recognize that NRA slowfire bullseye shooting at 50 yards / 50 meters (AKA "Camp Perry style") is not popular anymore, but today's handguns have the type of sights that are excellent for that use.
