From my hunting experience I have learned to take a rifle with back up iron sights or take two rifles or take one rifle with two scopes. I am proficient with irons and stay proficient by frequent practice. If I am ever in an actual gunfight with a rifle I don’t think I will be too bummed out. I will in fact likely be thrilled by my incredible foresight or luck of bringing a rifle to a gunfight.
Irons suck at low light I know from first hand experience.
In my town we had quite few problem bears this year. Not sure why the population of black bears increased but it did. We had one bear that managed to break into an assisted living facility home. We managed to get it out side where it went up a tree approximately 90 feet. It was 0200 hours and black as black could be outside. Fish and Game had told us they wanted all bears that broke into homes destroyed. I had a fairly safe angle of fire on the bear but it was very hard to see even with all the spot lights I had on the tree. I took 4 shots with my 870 shotgun over the course of about 10 minutes. Moving and changing positions trying to get a better angle on the bear so I could get a good shot. The first two shots did not connect but rather hit the tree. The last two did connect but were not fatal. I have a weapon light on my 870 with MMC Ghost ring sights. Similar to AR sights. Finally I put the shotgun away and got out my patrol rifle with my Swarovski Z6i scope with an illuminated reticle. I cranked up the magnification to a comfortable level and I could see the bears eyes clearly. I took the head shot and the ordeal was over. At night even with a weapon light Irons are no match for good optics. I learned a valuable lesson that night and I am sorry the animal had to suffer as long as it did before I got my rifle out.
I am not saying irons are useless. I have back up sights on all my rifles. But given the choice I will always take a AR with optics over one with just irons. Always.
Pat
I have been shooting with iron sights on a regular basis since de Gaulle kicked NATO out of France. I always thought using a scope was “cheating”. Only lately have I started to use scopes, as my eyes are shot.
For range shooting in daylight, the practical difference between a high quality peep sight and a mid power (4x) scope is not much out to 200 yards, in good conditions, with good eyes. But iron sights are like scopes - you get what you pay for. It is not a fair contest to compare the performance of factory stock open sights with $900 optics.
The biggest issue with iron sights is that most people just don’t see well enough to use them to their full potential.
The Marine Corps use to think the same thing, but the rifle range qualification didn’t point this out (we are talking hundreds of thousands of instances, so it is beyond what I think I can do). Marines just didn’t understand their RCOs because they were required to take them off to qualify, so we now require you to qual with an RCO if issued one.
As to be being as effective, Irons can be as effective in non-dynamic circumstances or on a rifle range. However, we train for not punching holes in paper but killing people who don’t want to be shot and who are often firing back. Optics are a force multiple compare to irons sighted fire, I have a feeling most people who think otherwise have very little if any time actually shooting at others.
Nope only shooting at paper and hope to keep it that way. Thanks for your service Ron.
What is a Marine to do when his/her optic breaks???
What if he/she needs to take a 400M shot??? ACOG only???
Doesn’t really seem the Marine way to bow to making something easier??? It’s difficult for a reason.
I don’t know, guys seemed to do pretty well with irons with 03s, Tommy Guns, M1 Garands, M14s, and M-16s through the 20th Century. Those seem to me to be the more major conflicts than the quasi wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting peasants nowhere near as clever as the Viet Cong/NVA or Inmun Gun. In all likelihood conflicts will remain small as the former colonies/under-developed world continue to struggle. Again our military leaders underestimated our adversaries and remain overly reliant on technology instead of mastering political manipulation that our adversaries do so well, especially the Asian communists.
I’m sure it makes it easier, but easier does not mean it’s the better way to train someone from scratch. You’re cheating them…consistency is difficult and marksmanship is filled with fine details. How are they to discover the effect of head placement and cheek weld??? These are issues that have to be proven during trigger time. You can’t learn them with a parallax-free RDO.
Just b/c the military does something does not make it the best alternative. If they can’t qualify then perhaps the instruction is sub-par. Seems to me that Marines have been shooting excellent since their inception.
I agree wholeheartedly that irons suck compared to RDO in low-light and target acquisition, but that’s not the point. The point is that the fundamentals of sight alignment and trigger control cannot be taught well with a dot.
My god your arrogance knows no bounds.
Quasi-wars? I do not serve but I can’t believe how insulting that is to hose who have.
Quasi-Wars. I suggest you shut the fuck up.
Gentlemen this is about to get shut down.
Hammonje, since you have already stated that you feel training classes are a waste of time blasting paper at 50m and that you have only “researched” CQB training through a vast amount of books then I’m going to suggest that you tread very very carefully when you feel the need to offer information. We have many veterans of both the Iraq and A-Stan wars, many of whom I call friend, as well as a large number of well trained LEOs and civilians so trying to catagorize wars and training from a self admitted “research only” POV will not go over well. I would suggest you change your tone quickly. This is your only warning.
Everyone else, let’s not stoop below the M4C standards on bickering. We all know it only leads nowhere.
My friend who died in Afghanistan must have been a real moron to get killed by a roadside IED one of those dumb peasants buried, right? How offensive can you possibly get?
To the point, “the good old days” don’t exist. Every generation, when getting up in years, thinks some point in their childhood or previous were the good old days and that’s where we need to return. Thankfully for the rest of us, things march on. In this case, we can choose to better prepare ourselves for a gun fight we don’t want to be in with a RDS. If you want to fight an intruder with a Mosin Nagant because that’s how great-grandpappy Curmudgeon did it or an author of some book says that’s how he did it, that’s your business; stop trying to sell it as sound advice.
Its probably also worth pointing out that the romantic notion of vets of prior wars were all dropping one enemy for every pull of the trigger has largely been debunked.
Hammon,
Really!?? What is your point?
I don’t know where to start.
US forces did fine with muzzle loaders and single shots for years, should we revert back to them?
An ACOG, being magnified, had parallax.
You obviously have no idea, I suggest you raise your right hand, and find out firsthand how sub par, any of our services training and equipment is. Until then…
Bob
Answers in green.
Bob
Bob he’s typical of most people. Reach a conclusion based on ignorance or incomplete facts and then fabricate a reality to support it.
I think this one has run it’s course.