If they weren't looking through the sights how do you know the sights were properly aligned on target?? My point is that you can have perfect sight alignment but if you push, pull, or otherwise mangle your trigger manipulation you will not hit what you were aiming for. Just go to any gun range and watch how poorly most people shoot regardless of sight alignment. If you can't master the trigger press, no amount of sight usage will help you hit the target.
If at this point, your trigger pull is an issue, you need to go back and practice until its not an issue and you don't have to think about the trigger at all while you're shooting. If you have to think about the trigger while you shoot, you're doing it wrong. If you have to think about "any" aspect of shooting while you're shooting, you're doing it wrong.
Every time you present or sight a gun using the sights, your eyes go tunnel vision and see the sights and alignment, while your subconscious brain sees the whole, "big picture" and takes in all those other cues that it can use to get good hits, even if the eyes don't see the sights. Suarez calls it a "meat and metal" index. Think about that for a sec and let it sink in.
And you can easily prove this, just by picking out something across the room, and pointing the gun at it just below your eye and over top of the sights, and hold it, and slowly, without moving, roll your head down a hair, so you can see the sights, and you should see them on, or very near, to where you were looking when you presented the gun.
As at least one other person basically said, its not necessary...just could be advantageous in some situations. Personally I think most times that you're going to need to pull your CCW its going to be a blur. You may barely have time to position yourself in a combat stance. Both you and your assailant may be darting around things trying to avoid each other but also not wanting to turn your backs on each other. Most shots will probably be sporadic and offhand from the hip, or from even weirder positions. In most of those cases having sites will be practically irrelevant. All that said, I am fine with the tiny little site on my little Radom P83. I'm able to draw from the hip and shoot off hand at about 7 yd and hit a basketball-sized object. Knowing that, I figure what's the point in having some kind of fancy expensive sights on it? Other guns I might be more demanding about the sights but for your typical concealed carry...no.
I think whats being missed here is, up close, you need to be able to shoot quickly, repetitively, and instinctively, and do so while you're moving (any incoming rounds are going right to where you are/were standing
). People talk like they are going to be taking the time to get their gun out, and get a good sight picture, and aim and shoot like they are plinking in the back yard or something.
You need to practice as close as you possibly can to how you expect you might to have to shoot (and even better, anything you "cant" think of or just seems downright silly), if you have any hope of making things work. And you have to do that until you can shoot like that without thinking about the "shooting" part, or anything associated with getting to that point. I know, its a lot of hard and constant work, and I know its not perfect, but the closer you can get to that, the better off you're going to be.
And just an FYI, I don't know about you, but I cant run and shoot, and use the sights. Aint happening.
I also cant run and shoot holding the same "fixed" stance. I morph through pretty much every stance Ive ever used in the past as I go, and some that aren't any kind of stance. It all depends on which way Im going and where Im shooting.
