[HighValleyRanch]

Haven't seen anyone post this yet, so I thought I would step up to the plate.

This little "secret" was taught to me by a great world class shooter and gunsmith. He sat down with me one night and drew it out on paper.

SO WHY IS SIGHT ALIGNMENT MORE IMPORTANT THAN SIGHT PICTURE?
We are talking pistol shooting, not rifle, and iron sights, not optics.
Why does everyone empahsize focus only on the front sight, and secondarily focus on the sight alignment ONLY?

Because the relationship of the front sight to the rear sight on such a short sight radius, pistol being about 4 to 8 inches, is like the tip of a triangle.
The further the target is from you, the bigger the triangle. So the degree of difference between being centered in the blades and slightly off is like at the tip of the triangle and when the bullet gets to the target, it will be following the side of the triangle to the base. Therefore, if the blade is mis aligned a small amount, it will greatly be magnified as the distance increases.
That is the significance of sight alignment, pure and simple.

Now if your sights are perfectly aligned, but your sight picture is off.
Say your sights are perfectly aligned, but in your sight picture your hold wavers off sightly to the 3:00 part of the bull. Right edge, the bullet will hit in the black on the right edge. Why, because you are now talking about PARALLEL difference rather than TRIANGULAR difference. If the sights are perfectly aligned, the difference in the sight picture is LESS than if the sights are mis aligned and dead centered in the bull.

Hope that makes it plain and simple.
I know that there might be someone out there that can take this little gem of knowlege and realize the difference! All those little gems are out there in plain sight. It's up to each person to realize them.