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Questions about Red Dots for EDC?

Trijicon rmr's & sro's have been my go to for quite awhile. I recently put an Holosun EPS 6 Moa on a M&P and couldn't more pleased. The shake wake feature is really nice and I like the enclosed emitter. Correct me if I'm wrong but don't believe any of the Trijicons have the shake wake function, plus they are so expensive.
 
Bassbob said:
I used to think that.
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And I used to think they were great but after several years have come to the conclusion that they do not work for me in that role. The simplest reason is the 5% of the time they have some type of issue, condensation, dirt, lint, wrong brightness setting, and inability to make the practiced presentation (this is the biggest issue) like off hand, one hand, picking up off the ground or a table, awkward angles etc where you can not use the practice repeatable presentation you have drilled. Those small hesitations when you have to correct and thousands of draws in awkward positions finally left me with a cost benefit ratio in favor of a hi vis sight system like the Sig X-rays.

For situations where there will be a static presentation like home defense, ambush, behind cover situations I still use them and think they are a great choice.
 
Sol-Invictus said:
And I used to think they were great but after several years have come to the conclusion that they do not work for me in that role. The simplest reason is the 5% of the time they have some type of issue, condensation, dirt, lint, wrong brightness setting, and inability to make the practiced presentation (this is the biggest issue) like off hand, one hand, picking up off the ground or a table, awkward angles etc where you can not use the practice repeatable presentation you have drilled. Those small hesitations when you have to correct and thousands of draws in awkward positions finally left me with a cost benefit ratio in favor of a hi vis sight system like the Sig X-rays.

For situations where there will be a static presentation like home defense, ambush, behind cover situations I still use them and think they are a great choice.
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I think it depends on your set up and obviously the person’s preference. If your dot co witnesses then those weird angles don’t really matter and personally I have yet to have a failure of any kind with any dot. That’s my situation though, not a blanket statement.
 
Grayfox, red dots or any dot work great with practice. Like others have said many have shake awake, auto off. Thousands of hours of battery life, many range 20k - 50k hours. Today there are holsters galore to accommodate for most current market guns and your carry position.

2 suggestions.

Already stated at least once above if not more times, choose a model that you can change the battery without having to remove it. It will save you much aggravation.

And my pet peeve, make sure the red dot will coexist with you iron sights. Though most are quite reliable I have had one fail to "shake awake" during my 2nd round at a small local (fun times) competition and had to quickly revert to irons to finish the day. It's still out waiting for the warranty replacement to arrive. It was on my EDC. Though I was pretty quick to change to irons I'm glad it happened during a friendly competition and not a situation with a real bad guy.
 
Sol-Invictus said:
And I used to think they were great but after several years have come to the conclusion that they do not work for me in that role. The simplest reason is the 5% of the time they have some type of issue, condensation, dirt, lint, wrong brightness setting, and inability to make the practiced presentation (this is the biggest issue) like off hand, one hand, picking up off the ground or a table, awkward angles etc where you can not use the practice repeatable presentation you have drilled. Those small hesitations when you have to correct and thousands of draws in awkward positions finally left me with a cost benefit ratio in favor of a hi vis sight system like the Sig X-rays.

For situations where there will be a static presentation like home defense, ambush, behind cover situations I still use them and think they are a great choice.
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So it’s harder to put one dot over the target than line your front and rear sights up and put them on target? That just doesn’t make sense.

I get it, everyone makes their own choices re: red dot/iron sights, but a lot of this old school think about red dots is exactly that. There are plenty of people - myself included - for whom the red dot is second nature and the road bumps you mention rarely, if ever, present a problem. If you want to run a red dot reliably, you have to train, train, train. No different than people have done for years with iron sights
 
Bear007 said:
Grayfox, red dots or any dot work great with practice. Like others have said many have shake awake, auto off. Thousands of hours of battery life, many range 20k - 50k hours. Today there are holsters galore to accommodate for most current market guns and your carry position.

2 suggestions.

Already stated at least once above if not more times, choose a model that you can change the battery without having to remove it. It will save you much aggravation.

And my pet peeve, make sure the red dot will coexist with you iron sights. Though most are quite reliable I have had one fail to "shake awake" during my 2nd round at a small local (fun times) competition and had to quickly revert to irons to finish the day. It's still out waiting for the warranty replacement to arrive. It was on my EDC. Though I was pretty quick to change to irons I'm glad it happened during a friendly competition and not a situation with a real bad guy.
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If it had been a bad guy and you were been at a distance that you HAD to engage you would have point shot and got the job done. If you’re trying to pull of a 25-40yd mall shot then you’ve got time to run away.
 
SimonRL said:
So it’s harder to put one dot over the target than line your front and rear sights up and put them on target? That just doesn’t make sense.

I get it, everyone makes their own choices re: red dot/iron sights, but a lot of this old school think about red dots is exactly that. There are plenty of people - myself included - for whom the red dot is second nature and the road bumps you mention rarely, if ever, present a problem. If you want to run a red dot reliably, you have to train, train, train. No different than people have done for years with iron sights
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Most if the time it is, but I challenge you to grab your gun in your left hand right now and draw and point and I bet you don't see you dot or have to adjust and it takes longer than drawings similar firearm without a dot on top. Sighting down the length of the firearm is natural and wholly different that looking at a target and then lining up a dot in space in a housing. Without that housing on the top disrupting your binocular rivalry response your eyes will naturally sight down the top of the gun. It is how our eyes work. Basic irrefutable human physiology. It is like saying you can train too hear with your eyes. Can you adjust? Yes. Will it take more time no matter how much you train? Yes. Will that extra time get you killed? That is up to each individuals gambling tolerance.
 
I attended a red dot for duty pistols instructor course for LE instructors with about 30 other LE instructors, with a wide range of red dot makes. I also attended a red dot seminar at the IALEFI training conference 2 years ago. The consensus has been, and I agree, that once you settle on a model of RDS, you need to invest a lot of time and repetitions with it before you carry it in the wild. Range time is a big consideration for agencies making the transition to red dots.

The most frequent complaint has been "I can't find the dot". You can't find the dot because your presentation of the pistol is as if you are using iron sights, and it is different. You don't need the chicken pecking head down posture that so many use with iron sights. The pistol needs to come up to eye level with the red dot. Once you have practiced the presentation enough the dot will be there. I suggest that we have been presenting the gun using iron sights wrong all along.

I really like the "shake awake" feature. Most manufacturers claim the battery lasts a year, but I am more comfortable with a semi-annual replacement cycle.

I discovered after a lot of hours behind a red dot, my sight acquisition time improved when I picked up a gun with iron sights.

I also discovered that my target acquisition is faster with a red dot, but I am more precise with irons. I attribute this to the size of the red dot.
 
Sol-Invictus said:
Most if the time it is, but I challenge you to grab your gun in your left hand right now and draw and point and I bet you don't see you dot or have to adjust and it takes longer than drawings similar firearm without a dot on top. Sighting down the length of the firearm is natural and wholly different that looking at a target and then lining up a dot in space in a housing. Without that housing on the top disrupting your binocular rivalry response your eyes will naturally sight down the top of the gun. It is how our eyes work. Basic irrefutable human physiology. It is like saying you can train too hear with your eyes. Can you adjust? Yes. Will it take more time no matter how much you train? Yes. Will that extra time get you killed? That is up to each individuals gambling tolerance.
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Just did. I’ve got a VP9 match with an SRO and a CZ P07 with iron sights sitting on my desk in front of me. Guess what? Training and technique took over. The dot was on target - a 1 inch plastic ball - each time From the moment I started shooting, I adopted the red dot because I can’t see a front sight without readers and it is my normal. I’ve actually had to work backwards to learn how to shoot iron sights well. But if I find myself on the ground shooting with my left hand, fumbling for my readers is going to get me killed. Like I said, this is all personal choice, I just don’t buy into red dots are no good for CC. Maybe not for you, but I’m going to be just fine. And for what it’s worth I have actually trained in the scenarios you’ve mentioned. Do I want to be fighting it out using my left hand? No, but in those circumstances my dot is going to be the least of my worries.
 
SimonRL said:
Just did. I’ve got a VP9 match with an SRO and a CZ P07 with iron sights sitting on my desk in front of me. Guess what? Training and technique took over. The dot was on target - a 1 inch plastic ball - each time From the moment I started shooting, I adopted the red dot because I can’t see a front sight without readers and it is my normal. I’ve actually had to work backwards to learn how to shoot iron sights well. But if I find myself on the ground shooting with my left hand, fumbling for my readers is going to get me killed. Like I said, this is all personal choice, I just don’t buy into red dots are no good for CC. Maybe not for you, but I’m going to be just fine. And for what it’s worth I have actually trained in the scenarios you’ve mentioned. Do I want to be fighting it out using my left hand? No, but in those circumstances my dot is going to be the least of my worries.
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That was a good read. Your situation mirrored mine. I'm still having trouble finding the dot in total darkness. My nightstand pistol still has iron sights.
 
Sol-Invictus said:
Most if the time it is, but I challenge you to grab your gun in your left hand right now and draw and point and I bet you don't see you dot or have to adjust and it takes longer than drawings similar firearm without a dot on top. Sighting down the length of the firearm is natural and wholly different that looking at a target and then lining up a dot in space in a housing. Without that housing on the top disrupting your binocular rivalry response your eyes will naturally sight down the top of the gun. It is how our eyes work. Basic irrefutable human physiology. It is like saying you can train too hear with your eyes. Can you adjust? Yes. Will it take more time no matter how much you train? Yes. Will that extra time get you killed? That is up to each individuals gambling tolerance.
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I’ll take that bet. So would anyone with a co-witnessing red dot. Or who regularly trains weak side.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make the argument that a dot takes longer than irons. Probably because it’s wildly inaccurate.
 
HayesGreener said:
I attended a red dot for duty pistols instructor course for LE instructors with about 30 other LE instructors, with a wide range of red dot makes. I also attended a red dot seminar at the IALEFI training conference 2 years ago. The consensus has been, and I agree, that once you settle on a model of RDS, you need to invest a lot of time and repetitions with it before you carry it in the wild. Range time is a big consideration for agencies making the transition to red dots.

The most frequent complaint has been "I can't find the dot". You can't find the dot because your presentation of the pistol is as if you are using iron sights, and it is different. You don't need the chicken pecking head down posture that so many use with iron sights. The pistol needs to come up to eye level with the red dot. Once you have practiced the presentation enough the dot will be there. I suggest that we have been presenting the gun using iron sights wrong all along.

I really like the "shake awake" feature. Most manufacturers claim the battery lasts a year, but I am more comfortable with a semi-annual replacement cycle.

I discovered after a lot of hours behind a red dot, my sight acquisition time improved when I picked up a gun with iron sights.

I also discovered that my target acquisition is faster with a red dot, but I am more precise with irons. I attribute this to the size of the red dot.
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My instructor calls that Turtling. Don’t be a turtle. Bring the gun up to the eyes.
 
SimonRL said:
That is very common. If you learn to bring the dot up to the eye you are 90% of the way there, but you have to be aware of what you are doing.
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It’s the way I have been training for years. In fact I still have a booklet around here somewhere that Captain Bill printed up himself and passes out to first time students. Complete with a graphic about turtling. Pretty funny.
 
When I trained with Ernest Langdon years ago, he was a big proponent of bringing the sights (iron) up to your eye and then pushing out, so that your sights are already aligned when you reach your draw extension, rather than bringing the gun up and then doing your aligning with the gun way out in front of you. This works particularly well with the longer trigger travel of DA/SA pistols, as you can already be 'on' the trigger as you're pushing out.

When I transitioned to red dots, I found the same technique I was already trained to use with iron sights translated perfectly to using red dots - raise the dot to eye level and align the dot as you're pushing out, so that you're pulling the trigger as you hit your full arm extension. With practice, it's very fast, and eliminates the "fishing around for your dot" syndrome.

As a sidenote, Ernie wasn't using red dots at the time, but sort of begrudgingly admitted that as an instructor, he was "probably going to have to put his time in using them." Now, he's all about red dots.
 
Bassbob said:
Nightstand gun is a P30L with TFX Pros.
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I actually took an RMR off to better see the iron sights. I have a Streamlight on it too. In the auto position the dot washes out when activating the light. Only option is set the the dot to manual settings. That's a real pain to change things every evening to keep the battery from draining. You have to remove the sight to change batteries, another pain the ass. I'm thinking about trading the RMR for another EPS.
 
rcurtner said:
I actually took an RMR off to better see the iron sights. I have a Streamlight on it too. In the auto position the dot washes out when activating the light. Only option is set the the dot to manual settings. That's a real pain to change things every evening to keep the battery from draining. You have to remove the sight to change batteries, another pain the ass. I'm thinking about trading the RMR for another EPS.
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Well if I’m being honest that P30 ain’t the first thing I’m reaching for if I hear my door being kicked in. Plus there’s always some level of ambient light on in my house anyway. Still, tritium sights and no dot for bedroom and bathroom guns. My trash can gun has a dot though. 😀🤣
 
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