I thought about it and couldn’t quite decided which section this should go in.
It’s been my experience that lasers are generally applauded for handguns and frowned upon for rifles.
Also, tritium sights are applauded for handguns and frowned upon for rifles.
Meanwhile, RDS’s are very popular with rifles and are becoming popular with handguns.
Can someone (hopefully an SME) explain to me the pro’s and cons of the systems and why they are good for handguns and bad for rifles or vise versa?
Visible lasers on pistols are used to compensate for the reduced utility of iron sights, particularly at night. Since we use red dots on rifles we have less use for lasers. Most visible lasers on rifles are used to zero the slaved IR laser during the day. Red dots are better than lasers because they work during the day and don’t indicate your position like a laser.
Tritium sights on a pistol enhance low light usefulness with no tradeoffs. A tritium front sight on a rifle will result in a significantly thicker front sight, which will obscure too much of distant targets, will fail to provide a precise aiming point, and will significantly compromise accuracy in daylight conditions. Furthermore, you are more likely to have a light on a rifle. If you cannot see the front sight, you can activate the light, and see everything clearly.
Red dots are faster to acquire than irons. On a rifle, which at least in the case of an AR has limited recoil and recoils back in a straight line, it is easy to follow the dot during recoil, so followup shots can be equally quick. On a handgun, you end up losing and reacquiring the dot between shots, while the front sight of iron sights can be tracked during recoil. So, on a handgun, iron sights will be better for rapid followup shots. Furthermore, a red dot sight may interfere with certain ways of carrying a handgun.
Tritiums are ok on a rifle too. They have their limitations, sure, but what method of aiming hasn’t got them.
Their utility depends on the conditions you would be using your gun. On a military weapons they have their place, even though they will not work with NVD’s. On the other hand they don’t help that much if you have to use a white light to identify your target before shooting.
I recently attended a fundamental carbine class taught by Low Speed, High Drag (a forum member) using a tritium front post. It was a bright, sunny day, which generally should have been ideal for the use of most sights. Depending on the position of the sun and target, I had some difficulty perceiving my front sight with respect to the target, hindering both accurate shooting at distance and rapid, accurate shooting up close. Immediately after the class, I put my A2 front post back in, and sighted in. I was looking directly into the sun as I sighted in, which is generally the most difficult of daylight conditions. It was much easier to get accurate hits with the thinner A2 post.
If using a light, it would definitely be nice to be able to briefly illuminate one’s target, and then turn off the light before engaging. The tradeoff with using just basic irons is that in low light, this may not be possible.
I’ll be damned that I cannot find the info right this moment, but there was a guy who did a sort of role reversal with tritium vials on an AR to get rid of the fat post issue.
He affixed a tube orientated for to aft on the outside of the sight tower ears protective and put a vial in each one.
At the rear he put another pair on the inboard side of a carry handle near the rear sight windage screw.
Daytime offered completely normal sighting through standard front sight post and rear apeture, while in low/no light, the idea was to line up four dots in a row with the target between the two centermost dots.
The vials were recessed into the tubes so they could only be seen from dead on directly behind so as to prevent the glow giving position away and helped insure proper alignment of the dots.
Downside was the complete inability to adjust elevation or windage and the questionability regarding how strong whatever holds the tubes to the gun is.
So, I have a little experience with tritium sights on both pistols and carbines. In my experience, the tritium sights on a rifle are worthless. It does me no good to have a brightly glowing front sight (with a different point of aim I might add) looking into a sea of blackness. The gun needs a white light. Here’s the kicker…the minute I activate the light, I don’t need the sights to glow anymore.
Seems to me that the same principle applies to a handgun. A bump in the night dictates that I grab both the pistol and the handheld light for searching.
So…tritium sights are worthless on pistols and rifles, right?
Next, it seems that a laser on a handgun is a good idea because it is quicker and easier to pick up than sights, especially if using the pistol on-handed directly after opening a door. You have an immediate indication about where your muzzle is pointed and where that bullet is going to go if you fire. No sights to align and then put on target.
So if we agree that the laser is good for the handgun in HD, then why not on the rifle? Does the RDS do the job of the laser on the long gun? They’re just not as easily applied to handguns?
As far as revealing your position, it does it no more than a while light. Aren’t you supposed to burst the laser, fire, and then move anyway?
Not necessarily. On my pistol I find them helpful for picking up the sights in low light situations. Not in the pitch dark where a tac light would be deployed… but in the dusk hours etc.
Negative. You have a point but it’s limited to your bump in the night, pitch black house scenario. Low light, dusk (as mentioned above), twilight hours, moonlight… you may be able to see well enough to ID your target but not necessarily your sights.
You can test this without the expense or formality of a dedicated low light training class, if you want. Go somewhere you can safely draw and aim outside at night. Pick objects you can positively ID without a flashlight… small bushes, garden gnomes, porcupines (my nemesis). Try both tritium and non-tritium pistols. A little messing around will show why the tritium is valuable. Oftentimes you can see that little porcupine bastard but can’t get a sight picture for anything.
That said, I do not use tritium on my carbines, for reasons others covered above.
The light available on a typical city or town street at night is often adequate to identify a target but not to see non-tritium sights. Furthermore, there are few holster options available for carrying a handgun with a mounted light, and none that will serve my needs (business casual attire most days). So, while I certainly carry a good light, I do not want to be entirely dependent on deploying both the gun and the light simultaneously in order to see my handgun sights.
Lasers are a good option, and appropriate laser/holster combinations are becoming more available, but there are some instances in which adding a laser will make carry sufficiently more difficult to keep me from adding a laser.