Reflex sight on CCW pistol

[goldfacade]

Do you have a reflex sight on your CCW weapon, or have you had one on? Do you know of others who do? I have been wondering about this for a while, especially after I read a short article on this topic last week. http://www.jprifles.com/1.6.1.php

The pro's are pretty obvious (quick sight picture, minimal weight, 20-50K hour battery life) but what do you see as the cons? Awkward sight to slide fit, snag potential, another thing to print?

Besides race guns and a couple of Ruger SBH/SRH 44's I haven't seen a pistol with these installed. Seems to me that the good might outweigh the bad. I carry an M&P 40 thoughts?

[mddevildog]

There is an on going discussion and T&E going on through Warrior Talk. Testing different configurations as well as the practicality. You can glean good information there.
RB

[StiveC2007]

I think its kind of pointless on a CCW. The idea of a CCW is small, concealable, utterly reliable, and accurate enough to do the job. A reflex site makes the gun's profile a lil bigger, and it's just another thing to go wrong/not work when your really need it. what happens if you drop it or the battery goes dead. The old saying If it can go wrong it will go wrong. IMO KISS

[fustache44]

Meh. Not on mine.

If you want to enhance a pistol's sights, get a decent set of Tritiums....

[TenRing]

Not for me. I want my carry revolver to be as simple and reliable as possible. No gimmicks, no high maintenance items and no batteries. Just point and shoot.

[Jim March]

The Hexsite feels like shooting a red dot, except without the red dot...or any batteries, wires or optics, and compatible with standard holsters (as long as we're talking about a REAL Hexsite rather than my infamous bizarre homebrew edition).

http://www.goshen-hexsite.com/index2.htm

Like red dot sights, Hexsites are a target-focus system. Besides simplicity, they have an advantage: no actual "red dot" to get in the way.

[LSP972]

I have a Bowie Signature G19 with a Trijicon holograph sight inlet into the slide in place of the rear sight. You can see an example of his installation on a G43 in the Pictures section of his web site. It is primo work; expensive, but masterfully executed.

I also installed a JPoint on my Advantage Arms .22 kit for the G19.

Those of you who dismiss the idea out of hand obviously have no vision issues. Most of us will get to the point where we simply cannot get a decent sight picture with irons due to deteriorating eyesight. I'm there now.

That said, this arrangement was NOT the immediate cure I had been hoping for. It works well enough, but the problem I'm having is quickly re-acquiring the dot between shots. When I first got the pistol, I shot it in an IPSC match. My hits were almost all As... but several friends commented that I was definitely shooting more slowly than I normally do. Given that the scoring in this game is weighted more toward speed than accuracy (following Cooper's dictum that "a fast 8 is preferable to slow 10"), it was not the real-time test I thought it would be.

I'm hoping that more time with the set-up will yield better results. I have suspended "testing" for the time being, since I got an HK45C whose huge luminescent sight dots are highly visible, and give me enough contrast to use them effectively... for now.

As for carrying, the added height of the Trijicon sight is a complete non-issue. I toted it around the house for a few days, in a RM Holsters Low Rider IWB, and could not tell the difference in "feel" between it and my other Bowie Signature G19 which has conventional sights.

However, as anyone who carries regularly knows, the pistol will gather all sorts of lint, dust, etc. Much of it ends up on the inside of the sight glass window. It will need to be cleaned off DAILY. I stole a new/unused wide mascara brush from my wife's stash, and that makes quick work of cleaning off the sight. Those who are allergic to daily maintenance should avoid this set-up; even though it only takes a moment.

So, for me, the jury is still out. My vision is steadily getting worse; in the six months I've had this arrangement, I can tell that the decent sight picture I've been getting on the HK45C is not as "good" as it was. So its only a matter of time before I will NEED that red dot sight to be able to hit anything much past arms reach. IOW, I can see fine with my distance vision correction, but the sights are just an indistinct blob. Using the close-up bifocals, the sights are sharp; and I cannot see squat ten feet away. And trifocals are out of the question, for several reasons. Astigmatism sucks, big-time.

I feel (and fervently hope) that once I begin working with this set-up exclusively, my shot-to-shot speed will increase with no accuracy loss. I'm just not ready to jump into that yet, since I'm doing fine with the HK.

But if you don't mind the cost or the wait, the Bowie job is as good as anything I've ever seen.

.

[LSP972]

BTW, in response to the question "What happens if the battery goes dead?", both the JPoint and the Trijicon sight have a notch at the back that is co-witnessed with the front sight in Bowie's installation. You can look right through the sight glass and use the front sight normally; provided, of course, that you can SEE them at all. If I could, I wouldn't need the red dot...

And the slide is machined so that when you remove and replace the sight to change batteries, it will return to "zero".

What I'm saying is, all the nay-say arguments about the added bulk of the red dot being obtrusive, clumsy, etc., simply do not hold water with this particular arrangement; for me, anyway. YMMV...

.

[ClarkEMyers]

I haven't - yet - but I will be trying it.

I am quite persuaded that at my age I will almost certainly perform better with than without.

Given the keep it clean issues and such it seems obvious that there are times and places other arrangements would do better. Around the house and around the town where I go in and out of permissive and nonpermissive environments with different expectations I expect the Trijicon as discussed by Mr. Suarez will be good enough and likely the better choice than irons or laser.

My current carry gun is classic irons with a tritium front and my game/backup has tritium front and rear. Perhaps fiber optic would be a better choice to try but I'm going for a red dot one of these days.

I will also be downsizing the handgun and otherwise adjusting the carry. There is no doubt in my mind - I could be wrong but never doubtful - that a fixed mount as used on race guns is faster for games than a sight that bounces around on the slide - maybe something like the old High Standard iron sights on a bridge over the slide would be worth the extra size and expense. Maybe not. That is something as close to a pocket race gun as I can get will race better than something as close to a pocket pistol as I can get but with a dot. I'll have to see how it goes.

There are many nits to pick - one that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere is that my eyes each want a different adjustment on the red dot.

[Ridge_Runner_5]

Here is a reflex bead sight that replaces the rear sight on pistols...

http://www.t-a-s.co.il/

[mddevildog]

That reflex is nothing more than a ghost ring. I'm referring to the mini red dot types
RB