Back-Up Iron Sights (Handguns)

November 2nd, 2021 // Chris Woomer

(Edit / Nov 3: Exactly no where in this article do I mention back-ups in any capacity on rifles. I explicitly am talking solely about handguns. This article is specifically talking about iron sights on pistols. If you read it, you should be able to tell that. I had spell this out here, because many people couldn’t figure that out or chose to just ignore it.)

On October 15th 2021, RECOIL wrote an article titled Overrated & Unneeded: Back-Up Iron Sights. The author basically went on to say things that are basically untrue, opinionated, nor backed by any data that I am aware of or that was brought forward into the article. Though this rebuttal has some data, albeit very little, it is also backed by myself teaching Red Dot specific courses for several years now. Though I don’t teach as many people a year as other big name instructors, many of those people are people I consider friends, mentors, or just good dudes. Id be willing to bet they would find similar data if the time in the courses allotted for it.

Somewhere around 200 Students in 2021 passed through VEIL Solutions courses running red dot handguns, and the teachings and drills ran in this course align with those Red Dot specific courses taught over the last 3+ years. Since this article came out a week before a Red Dot Class in Indiantown, Florida, I had the perfect opportunity to actually test these claims as a class, and record the drills and data instead of just going over the course information and repping the concepts. Usually I try to track as much of this info as I can(like red dot failures/mounting failures, scores, etc), but I don’t have the time to document everything as much as Id like.

Before I get too off into this, I want to clear up as much bias as I can – I have personally met two of the writers from RECOIL and spent a few days with some of them and have been good people. VEIL Solutions has even been published several times in RECOIL on the gear side, and I appreciate that opportunity as a growing small business. However, I try to do my best to separate what I do as an instructor from what I do as a manufacturer of gear. In class I do not mention my gear unless specifically asked, and the only gear I will mention to students, is gear directly related to the curriculum, companies I have no affiliation with or connection too, and none of these things are products I sell or get any kind of kick back from. I say this, because I am not here to sell you anything. I am here to develop shooters and too help form mindsets that are capable of thinking critically on their own. The beauty of all this is, at the end of the day you are free to make your own choices based on experiences, data, your gut feelings, your wallet, this article or whatever else. But when it comes to peoples lives, I don’t mess around with feelings, clickbait, or what gets readers to my site.

So let’s get down to it, and why I decided to challange this article specifically. The title of this article itself is a big issue. Props to RECOIL for doing the journalist thing and getting some traction with it, but Overrated & Unneeded: Back-Up Iron Sights itself is a way to start off on the wrong foot. Back ups aren’t overrated and certainly not unneeded(double negative for effect).

They proceed to make statements like – “though if you ask the internet, irons are still very much mandatory.” This is a cop out in order to use the masses as a scapegoat and play off the fact that usually they are off base, untrained, or not up to speed on what is best at the time. “The internet” is akin to going into your local Joe Bob gun store in your town where there’s a guy running a revolver OWB, in whatever holster is hanging on the wall to make a sale. Ill agree the collective internet as a whole doesn’t know what they don’t know, which actually makes this all the more funny..

“The fact of the matter is that iron sights are suboptimal backups because they’re only viable for an exceedingly rare set of situations: if the battery dies on your dot, your emitter becomes blocked by debris, or if the optic dies itself.”

For what its worth almost all of these things in this article, are exceedingly rare. Chances of you using your handgun in a defensive situation is rare. Chances of your dot not working when that time comes, is rare, that doesn’t mean we ignore them, because they are extremely important even if they are highly unlikely. If we wanted to stick with that kinda of mindset, we wouldn’t carry a gun at all… or carry a .45 because “Gun fights happen in 3 feet, 3 seconds and 3 rounds”, that’s one of those gun store blanket statements guys throw on things in hopes to set false exceptions for a situation they can’t predict. To loosely quote someone who’s opinion I highly value and is way more accomplished of person in every way, Bill Rapier of AMTAC Shooting told me “Train for what is most likely, then train for worst case scenario.” Yes, probability of occurrences should dictate where a lot of your training should come from, yet still most people don’t want to training combative or grappling which is far more likely an occurrence than shooting someone. The expectations of what might be best practice for end users or students, doesn’t always tell the the story of what is actually real. In class we spend most of the time focusing on self diagnosis, the nuances of the dot, and confidence building, but we do spend an hour or two on these worst case scenario things because if they aren’t learned about here in class, and explained, many people may never even see them or even know they exist. So when we talk about these “malfunctions” of the Red Dot, we are referring to anything that is basically the dot not working as it was designed or expected because of environmental issues, user induced malfunctions, or catastrophic failures. The term “malfunctions”, and how we handle them with MRDS is a term I adapted from Dan Smith of Centrifuge Training. Give credit where it’s due. Its a great way to teach the curriculum and resonates with people.

The article basically explains that the first step is realizing there’s an issue, and without that none of the following skills or techniques matter, which I whole heartedly agree with. They then go on to give a little more context, “Remember, we’re talking carry pistols and worst-case scenarios: In a fight! Optic down! Need to shoot!” This is important because it gets us back on track to generally what this article was focusing on – alternate sighting methods other than the dot. Having a dot go down could cost you a stage, or even a match win, “a couple seconds during a shooting match, or a sucking chest wound on the street.” Getting the first round on target quickly and accurately is arguably the biggest proponent to winning these things mentioned. I talk about this ad nauseam in class. What wins matches/gun fights? Getting accurate rounds on target as fast as possible as it applies to the given context or the situation needed to achieve the desired outcome. So the “couple of seconds” thing is important to implement into the data collection process, as well as a scoreable and measurable bullet impact on a target.

The Process

Let’s go ahead and clear some things up. This is still a small sample size of 17 students, on a 9 hour training day. Many of these students were fairly proficient shooters coming into the class, and most left with higher scores on various “standards” drills that I give to students as a way to track progress through time. Time meaning hopefully in the following weeks or months of implementing what they learned, not simply just the 9 hours I had them on the range. I hope their scores would improve after having a 500 round warm up. I say this because this is not enough time to really grasp all of these concepts, nor is it enough to really truly develop the skillset that goes along with them. Teaching these malfunction drills in the manor I did is NOT the best way to go about that process, and even explained it to them. Block style learning does not work. They need to take these drills home and work them into their training days and range trips for them to be truly subconscious, “tap-rack” kind of reactions to problems. But when you only have students for a day, you show them what you can, explain it, demonstrate it and practice it. It’s up to them to take notes, and implement these things, or not. Thats their choice to make.

The malfunction portion of the class comes towards the end of class. In my opinion the other topics like grips, presentation, confidence self diagnosis are all more important and where the majority of the time is spent for this type of class as it is the part where students see the most progress in their shooting. We started off covering various malfunctions, and at this point even had one optic plate already come loose in class and cause accuracy to be extremely impaired for that student(Good thing he had back up iron sights on his duty pistol). I won’t cover how these type of alternate sighting systems work here – if you’d like to know that read RECOILs article on it, or go train with any number of people that teach MRDS specific courses. They will cover these. However we did go over sever options for students, the nuances and gave them all a chance to shoot each of them as much as they wanted and for some at varying distances to find the threshold of which method they liked, or which was usable or not at varying distances. We started on steel as it gives instant feedback to students on if they are applying the concepts correctly enough to get hits. These targets were C zone pieces of steel and we shot anywhere from about 10-15 yards on these drills. Another important thing to mention is all students abilities, hardware and preferences were all likely going to be different. These drills(and the class as a whole) were used to give them a heuristic process to figure out what they liked best and what worked best for them. What I prefer may not be what the guy next to me likes because of any number of variables. Its also very important for students to understand what they can and cannot do. Sometimes the answer may be, not to take the shot. Situation dictates this, and at the end of the day they will have to answer for their choices and actions, pulling the trigger or not. This is why we train – to understand what we are capable of and what we need to work on.

We covered the front and back of the students optics with blue tape to demonstrate “Worst case scenario” type of malfunctions and occluded optics. These things were mentioned in the article as “Fog, Dirty window, or Cracked glass.” Alternate sighting methods covered and taught were the Guillotine Method, Back-Plating/Framing the target, using a line(s) drawn on your optic as a form of Short Sighting or as a 2D alignment method, Vent-Ribing (like on a shotgun as i call it), as well as water soaked optics and emitters, both with the dot turned on again and with iron sights. We spent a little more time on this portion because of my intentions to measure the data from it as well as give students as much of a fair shake as possible for the drills.

“With a modicum of practice, all of these methods will allow you to put rounds on a man-sized target within 20 yards.”

Im not sure what a “modicum” of practice amounts to or is measured by, but Oxford defines it as “a small quantity of a particular thing”. Students probably shot over 20% of their allotted class ammo on these malfunction drills for what it’s worth. After everything in class, I ask students if they have any questions, comments or concerns. Anything they maybe didn’t grasp, or anything that stood out to them personally or any light bulb moments that I as an instructor might find valuable or that might be worth sharing with the rest of the class. It gives them a chance to polish anything I might have missed, or explained improperly as well. Having shot steel for an hour or so, we moved over to our paper targets to quantify the information.

Like mentioned above, the students would be measured in 2 ways: for both Time and Accuracy. I gave the article, and the students the benefit of the doubt and we shot these drills at 10 yards – half the distance that RECOIL said you should be able to get hits at. However we did shoot on a B8 Target at that 10 yards. So no, its not perfect apples to apples to their proclamation, but for clarity a B8 target as a 10” scrabble zone, which is about an inch smaller than a C zone on IPSC target, but is about the same size as the “meat and potatoes” part on an average size man. Measure the distance from nipple to nipple on a 6ft, 200 lb person and this B8 represents an area of generally acceptable shot placement to achieve some form of incapacitating hit to a threat. This is same distance from Clavicle to Xiphoid Process as well, again where the “goods” are. I gave students the benefit of the doubt, and if a round was touching a line or close would be routed up or if it was just outside of the paper B8 and it would have accrued points with relative certainty, I gave it to them.

Students had 5 seconds to shoot 5 rounds for score, so a possible of 10 points for every round for a total possible score on each drill being 50 points. Students agreed that 5 seconds at 10 yards was achievable from what they had already done in class up to that point and was a fairly “forgiving” time for a target at 10 yards if the situation was truly a pressing, real life issue. They didn’t have a choice not to fire their 5 rounds, so part of the tracking of information was if students went over the par time of 5 seconds they were to record that, this shows that they might have had issues in that specific alternate sighting method, and they were unable to execute it in under pressure, because the internet doesn’t think you can see your sights to in a gunfight to begin with, right? So heres a small sample size of data, in one course with a mix bag of students, with varying skillsets. Form your own conclusions.

THE SCORES AND THE DATA.

Guillotine Method

The average score for students for this method was 14 Points out of 50 Possible.
Of those 17 Shooters, 7 of them failed to hit the B8 at all at 10 yards.

Back Plating / Framing

The average score for students for this method was 17.12 Points out of 50 Possible.
Of those 17 shooters, 6 of them failed to hit the B8 at all and record a score.

Vent-Ribing

The average score for students for this method was 10.5 Points out of 50 Possible.
Of those 17 shooters, 9 of them failed to hit the B8 at all and record a score.

Back-Up Iron Sights

The average score for students for this method was 41.18 Points out of 50 Possible.
Of those 17 shooters, 0 (zero, nada, nill, zip, bagel, donut, fuck-all) of them failed to hit the B8 and record a score.
Every student was under par and recorded a higher score with irons than all previous methods, many of which were higher than the previous scores combined.

So the data speaks for itself. Yes, this is bare bones, very unscientific, not really controlled study with a small sample size.. I know. Its way less than perfect. However this doesn’t even take into account that students knew exactly what the test was asking for them. They know what malfunction was coming next and even had a chance to dry fire it before hand. There was no decision making, processing or “tap-rack” type of adjustment involved in the process, so they gained that time for free for the sake of information. We also don’t have a hard baseline of the students abilities, right? They might have shot that badly with a dot even? Well the iron sights scores alone say other wise. But of those 17 students there still were 11 legible scores recorded on their targets when I collected this data from the standards drills we run. One of those drills is, “The Test”. You have 10 rounds, at 10 yards, in under 10 Seconds to score as many points possible with the total possible points being 100, or 10 points per round. It’s measured both for time and score, kind of like the malefaction data we acquired above, weird. And since this was a MRDS class, let’s compare it to the baseline we do have that sparked this rabbit hole we have fallen down. The average score for those shooters was a 96 out of 100 Points for the drill, and all times under par. Apples to apples, that is a 48 out of 50. I’ll even allow you to blame my ability as an instructor, and maybe I didn’t deliver the concepts well enough to demonstrate their value. The “modicum” of practice we got definitely isn’t enough, and we know that the vast majority of shooters won’t go home and practice this on their own either. Its not fun, sexy or cool for the ‘Gram.

Call Back up iron sights what you want, but “Overrated & Unneeded” they are not.

Supplemental Information

I’ll use this space to help clear some other things up that I believe are misconstrued or presented poorly. Words mean things, and I’ll do my best to spell them out correctly. Yes this article is limited and we can’t and won’t cover everything, the best thing for you to do is seek training, information, and a heuristic experience of your own to determine what is or isn’t best suited for you and your needs, as well as managing your false expectations from some dude on the internet… Myself included.

Batteries dying is about the single most common “malfunction” I see in classes, on range days, matches or my own personal experience. Its actually not “exceedingly rare.” And the reason we don’t actually see this more in class for in group settings is either because people don’t voice it because its semi embarrassing or they realize that its dead somewhere that isn’t a classroom setting. This is why dry fire and gear maintain is important. It’s easy to talk about changing batteries every 6 months or as policy dictates, but for ever person who does it religiously, there’s a few guys who do it only when they notice it. If you train enough, you’ll likely run into this at the range, be able to swap it out because you keep spares, re-zero quickly, and go about your life with no more than 5 minutes of time spent. We cover things like maintenance, installation, up-keep in classes and how policies can help mitigate some of these possible issues for agencies.

Maybe the second most, or tied for first most common issue we see with dots is mounting failure or plate failure. Every class there is an optic that rattles loose. This is a big problem and depending on the gun/plate/optic set up, can be largely preventable. However, since the point of this article is basically that Back-Up Irons are “overrated and unneeded”, the one thing that can immediately give you clarity in the overwhelmingly, vast majority of the situations, are back up iron sights on your gun. If you feel or hear a rattle or see atypical dot movement Irons are your next, BEST choice to accomplish whatever you need to.

That being said, Iron sights fail 3 to 1 to optics in classes. For every optic(not mount or plate) the fails we see 3 sets of iron sights fall of guns. This number is likely skewed in reality, do to the fact that most of these come in training courses, matches or shooting heavy environments. Not every weekend are guys out blasting 1000 rounds, and if they have, they’ve see their fair share of failures and breakages. The other skewed point to this is that probably 9 out of 10 guns on the lines are Glocks. The front sight mounting system is suboptimal, and when you get guns hot, things walk loose. Hard training certainly exacerbates issues, but it’s a good way to test things and become familiar with what is most likely. Are you likely to lose a front sight in a gunfight? If you’re banging around on the streets(which is its own tangent to go down for another time), but when it comes to actually shooting the gun, no. They aren’t falling off then. We’ve lost PPQ Q5 iron sights completely sheer off in class, as well as P10c. Probably more than half of these issues are because of the installer or end user. It’s hard to say and to admit, but proper install and taking the correct steps, and using the right tools will drastically minimize these issues. Some system are definitely worse than others, some guns I wouldn’t carry because their optic mount system is poorly designed and prone to failure, so do the research and make good choices.

Emitters being blocked by debris isn’t something we do see very much, I’ll give them that. Mostly when talking about blockages it comes from the duty side of the house. This is either an issue with rain, or the few other times, guys doing tracks, grappling with suspects in rural areas. This still only accounts for such a tiny percentage of the time where there is actual obstruction of windows that can’t be managed in real time or through training. This is also a reason to maybe migrate to closed emitter systems like the ACRO P1/P2 or the Holosun 509T for example. The emitter can’t be blocked, only the window can be obstructed, which is less likely still than other options. And if you’re a concealed carry guy, which I have a feeling the vast majority of you who have made it this far are, and your emitter is blocked, you’re fucked up…

All this being said, almost all of these issues can be remedied through proper maintenance, and a little work on the front end. RECOIL actually does a good job in the article covering some of this stuff. You pay for the added benefits of the dot, but it cost you something. “you give up something to gain something.” You change the oil in your truck, right? Keep track of your batteries, use witness marks, and when you put your gear on in the morning, get a rep or 2 of dry fire and make sure things are good to go, snug and clear. Im a big believer in, “What can we solve before something bad ever happens?” We can do all these things and set ourselves up for success BEFORE things go sideways. Don’t fight on hard mode, manage your gear.

“Even though irons aren’t the magical remedy the internet expects them to be, it doesn’t mean they’re useless. They’re just not as useful as you may think. If you like your iron sights, keep them.”

They are right here, Irons aren’t Magic… its just math and some training. Irons still work, and you should still maintain a base level of proficiency with them. They are still useful and for every story of people who have finished drills or matches because of back up irons, I know 3 or 4 guys who had to stop, restart or take catastrophic penalties because of their lack of preparedness with their toolset, or the lack of training to account for it. If you want me to sum all of this up and give you the TLDR; – THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO NOT HAVE BACK-UP IRON SIGHTS ON YOUR GUN. If this statement hurts your feelings, Id love to hear your argument against them. Chances are I already know your reasons, and they all stem from a lack of understanding, poor choices on gear, or lack of experience. Theres a reason all agencies and policies require them, and just about everyone who teaches MRDS for a living advocates for them. But most people don’t shoot enough to begin with, so their opinions don’t matter. So chances are if you don’t have Irons, it goes back to the mindset stuff. Its an ego issue. Its your false expectations of what you think is going to happen because you’re the “trained guy.” If you think they are too heavy, you need to lift weights. If you can’t find $40 dollars to buy some, sell one of your 16 pistols you don’t shoot, your Gucci, limited drop, hype gear, or maybe eat one less cheeseburger a week. You’re not edgy or cool by telling people they don’t need them, especially when we are talking about the possibility of playing for keeps. And telling people “with a modicum of practice you’ll be able to hit something at 20 yards” is a joke. It’s dishonest and negligent.

At the end of the day, its your gun fight.. You get to make your own choices, prepare as much or little as you want, and ultimately live with the consequences of those actions.