Miniaturized Red Dots-My Take on Them

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past couple of years, you’ve probably noticed the surging popularity of mounting miniaturized red dots or MRDs on handguns. One merely has to peruse through social media to find countless pictures and posts featuring handguns all sporting various different types of slide mounted optics. In response to the craze, firearms companies have been releasing handguns with slides that are pre milled to mount optics. This includes prominent brands such as Glock, Sig and CZ. But also not wanting to miss the hype are lesser known brands such as Canik.

Especially notable is that it’s not just the barrel rolling, tacti-cool obsessed yahoos who are raving about the efficacy of MRDs. Seasoned law enforcement and military veterans and operators have also not been hesitant to praise these optics as valuable tools. Some of the research in support of these claims have been anecdotal but there have also been studies done by law enforcement that do show shooters tend to have a higher significant hit count when using a red dot versus traditional iron sights. When you consider that statistically speaking, most law enforcement officers involved in shootings tend to have a low hit ratio to begin with, this is a highly valuable piece of information.

It might sound like I’m already on the bandwagon and in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I am in support of mounting optics to handguns.

But my initial impression however was not as stellar. I initially wrote off the concept of MRDs as being nothing more than a passing and expensive fad, meant to satiate the seemingly bottomless appetite of tacticool Instagram gunners. I believed they were nothing more than a way for shooters to be lazy and shortcut solid fundamental shooting mechanics.

I held this belief until my friend convinced me to try shooting his Glock 17 with a Trijicon RMR. After shooting through a couple of magazines I realized how much easier it was for me to quickly acquire and reacquire my target. Also, shooting with the red dot made it much easier to keep both my eyes open, which greatly helped with depth perception and maintaining wider and greater visual acuity.

So, in response, I purchased a Trijicon RMR and had my Sig Sauer P320 milled to accept it. Shortly after, I decided that I actually preferred the more economical yet more feature laden Holosun 507c. (Gasp I actually prefer the lesser known brand!? Shocking).

I’ve been shooting and dry firing with the red dot for some time now and I believe I have enough experience with it to speak on it candidly.

First things first, I do not believe that the advent of the red dot has rendered iron sights obsolete. Although the red dot is sweeping across the firearms community with Blitzkrieg efficacy, I firmly stand by the belief that shooters should learn to shoot with iron sights. My reasoning for this is two fold. For one, learning to shoot with iron sights will force a beginner shooter to build solid fundamentals, because there’s no way to cheat. Basically, if you’re able to shoot well with nothing more than iron sights and no other types of accessories or aids then that’s how you know you’ve built a solid set of fundamental skills that can be built upon with additional tools like the MRD.

Secondly, is this tactical consideration, technology fails. No matter how rugged or battle tested a piece of equipment either claims or has been shown to be, there is always the potential for failure. Even the most powerhouse name brands such as Trijicon and Aimpoint can fail, either by running out of battery or some other type of incident. In the event that this happens, you need to still be able to effectively aim your weapon because the gunfight does not stop just because you have a malfunction. Iron sights do not run of battery, they don’t need to be waterproofed and they are not affected by the extreme cold, heat, or humidity. The point is, malfunctions and equipment failures happen and you need to be able to work around them. The most viable solution to a red dot failure is to retain iron sights on your weapon.

My final thought on MRDs, is that there is going to be a learning curve. I say this because some people erroneously believe that slapping a red dot on their handgun will automatically make them a better shooter right away or unlock some kind of real live cheat code. That is not true. This is not Call of Duty and learning to shoot with a red dot is a new skill and like all new skills, requires repetition and practice in order to become efficient. Most instructors will advise that it takes a minimum of between two to three thousand repetitions of drawing and dry firing in order to begin to get accustomed to the red dot and its nuances.

With all of this in mind, I do stand by the red dot as a welcome addition to the world of handgun shooting and I am beyond excited to see where things go within the next decade.