Firearms Training and Practice - Focusing on skills, not gear.

[Boney]

I was taught in a class the value of having a co-witnessed front sight is still a useful aid driving the optic dot on target as you draw and present.

I suspect I'm reading to much into the way you are wording this, but I'm going to jump on the opportunity to emphasis that in no way should you be "transitioning to your dot".

A red dot should overlay the target in your focus. As in, target is clear in your sight picture, a red dot or even just the smear of it is where you want on the target. I think you are describing an effective (and new to me, good post btw) method of making sure you have consistent index and a way to guide yourself onto having the dot on target by using that front sight post as an index point.

I will also say that its probably not the end game for dot use. As in, I don't see the best shooters doing this in any setting, be it operators, larpers, or competition shooters, they all use a tall riser and dot in order to get optimal posture shooting. Lower 1/3 like you mention at least, or more often a 1.93" and micro dot or EXPS-3.

 

[Pretend To Imagine]

As such, I personally don't recommend not having at least a lower 1/3 co-witnessed iron sights on your pistol but if you can make it work with no co-witness and are proficient at drawing then stick with it since swapping irons can be an pain.

Getting a proper index is everything. If you are using methods where you’re switching focal planes between sites and target, it defeats the whole purpose of using a red dot, and even with irons you should be target focused.

 

[Polock]

I was taught in a class the value of having a co-witnessed front sight is still a useful aid driving the optic dot on target

Absolute co-witnessed sights removes one of the advantages of having a dot in the first place - the ability to see under where you're aiming.

You should be training to be right on target as soon as your gun is up but there's no denying irons will help you line everything up. You just don't want it to be a crutch.

Speaking of irons, another fun exercise I learned in that same PMO class were alternative aiming methods - using the side of the slide, the front sight and the top of the frame of the PMO (yes even if you aren't using a RMR), the backplate, and so on.

The actual usefulness of this stuff was a bit dubious since if you're really close you can just point shoot and you aren't really able to shoot much farther than 15yds with these techniques. Its worth thinking about at least - your PMO is an obvious point of failure and also guns getting shot in a gunfight (threat fixation) is a thing that happens too.

 

[ellroy]

A red dot should overlay the target in your focus. As in, target is clear in your sight picture, a red dot or even just the smear of it is where you want on the target. I think you are describing an effective (and new to me, good post btw) method of making sure you have consistent index and a way to guide yourself onto having the dot on target by using that front sight post as an index point.

How you worded it is what I wanted to say but better. Thank you.