Musings on Night Sights

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Thoughts....The probability of misaligning the dots in low light or complete darkness is very real, especially if you are visually impaired or if you suffer from a convergence insufficiency.

Convergence is your eyes ability to rotate inward to maintain proper binocular eye alignment as objects approach from distance to near.

A cross dominant shooter or even those of us who shoot with both eyes open can experience a convergence insufficiency while aligning the sights in low light, complete darkness or even under stress.

To reduce this possibility, it is only logical to avoid night sights of identical dot color or better yet, avoid sighting systems that work on the principle of 3 dots altogether.


Triggertime, are you for real? :scrutiny:
 
To me, this gross misalignment of three dot sights has nothing whatever to do with vision. You would have to be holding the gun sideways to do it, AND not be aware of it.
I personally am not an advocate of point shooting, but there are many out there. These people simply point the gun at the target and hit it. If they can do that, with no sights, how could someone hold a gun in such a way to have the front sight off by more than it's total width and not realize it ? I am sure we have all done at least a little point shooting or hip shooting just playing around or seriously. I know over the years I have done it many times; just pointed the pistol at a target and fired. Sometimes I hit, usually I missed, often it was a close miss. But never did I point the gun at the target and have the gun pointed 10 or 20 degrees away from the target.
 
Situations where night sights would be needful would inherently be very stressful as well, wouldn't you agree? Consider for a moment what mayhem acute stress will wreck on your fine motor skillz and senses.

Those here who say that there really can't be any confusion as to which dot is the front one, should in my opinion get more real pressure on in their training. Especially the ones who recommend "checking" which dot is up front by moving the head etc. If it is for real, there most probably will be no time nor actual capability for any of that.

Not happy with what I have either, I'm looking into these bar-dot -configs next.
 
Seems to me if you are using a firearm in light low enough not to be able to see the sights you are very likely to mess up the orientation of the sights by using night sights that are all one color.

All I can say is to try it. I've shot in zero light settings in training classes and had no problem knowing which sight was which. Try it; you'll see.
 
Those here who say that there really can't be any confusion as to which dot is the front one, should in my opinion get more real pressure on in their training.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't pretend that what is true for me is true for everybody since I've seen that individual differences in eyesight can often have profund effects on the usefulness of some sighting systems.

I can say that for me, I do not get the dots misaligned and not know it since you can't have a proper grip on the pistol (either one hand or two) and still be able to misalign your sights.

To emphasize this point - look at your wrist. Now show me how to misalign the sights without breaking your wrist dramatically. I shoot a fair amount and even among neophytes, I've never seen the amount of looseness in the wrist that would be necessary to misalign the sights to the degree it would take to confuse the front dot for a rear sight dot.

Show me the level of stress it takes not to immediately realize your wrist isn't locked when firing. I can't pretend to speak for others; but my own body's natural response to fight or flight stress is to clench fists and lock the wrist in prepapration for a fight. These traits make it less likely to misalign your sights in the manner described, not more. This is the same response I've seen in every other human being I've witnessed in that state.

I've done my fair share of shooting under pressure and time stress. I've made errors as a result; but I've never misaligned my night sights or seen any other person do it. To those who would advise me to "get more real pressure in my training" I have to ask what kind of background or experience do you have that you've seen what I haven't in several years of formal and personal training?
 
I just pulled my Wilson Combat out of the drawer at 5:00AM last night because the dogs were going wild (racoons were on the roof again). In near darkness I was again surprised at how bright these 2-color sights were, they didn't glow, they shined so I could clearly distinguish between yellow back and green front.

Having excellent quality 2-color tritiums certainly wouldn't hurt if having to make shot in low-light situations. Always being instantly certain of which is the front sight is far from a disadvantage.

-Yes, I've been trained in low-light, flashlight and no-light shoots.
 
All my SD guns wear Trijicons- simply because that's what I had available at the time. Green/green three dot.

I kind of like the Novaks also, my Kimber CDP wears PTs I think, and they seem a little dim. I'll probablt get around to changing them out some time soon.
 
Novak dot the I? I thought they just had the bar-dot??

Don't forget Heinies. I like them, but have Novaks on my Beretta.
 
If you take their armorers course, Glock will be more than happy to sell you their sight pusher. And it does help with removing/installing their stock sights, 'cause the rear has a leaf spring that needs to be compressed to ease it in and out. If you don't care about pranging the rear stock sight you can just tap it out which usually snaps it off of the leaf spring. Then you can tap out the leaf spring. To install all you need is a brass punch and a padded vise for the slide.

The front sight requires a thin hex driver, though what size escapes right now. It was pretty small.

Oh yeah, and blue locktite for the front.
 
Yeah but if you don't care about destroying the rear sight (and replacing it with night sights) then you're still good to go.

Heck, when I did night sights I usually destroyed the stock front sight by grabbing onto it with a pair of pliers and pulling it out. Since I was installing new night sights, and unless the customer specifically asked (and I always asked them 'do you want to keep your stock sights?'), why worry about it?
 
So it will only wreck the stock sights?
Click to expand...
Correct. If you just use a brass punch to remove the rear sight, most likely you'll destroy them. You can remove the front sight without destroying it, but why bother?

You'll need padded vise for the slide, but that's easy. Then all you need is the right sized hex driver to tighten the itty bitty screw that holds in the front sight.

Use a little blue locktite on the threads of the screw, not on the tip of the screw- waaaaaay back when I did my Glock armorers course, they told us that it was possible to have the locktite get up in around the tiny vial holding the tritium gas inside the front sight and then when you tighten the screw you'd create enough hydraulic pressure to force out the tritium vial. Sounds far fetched, and I’ve never ever heard of it happening, but I figure why take a chance?
 
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