a little SECRET about good shooting

H

HighValleyRanch

New member
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.
 
So, if your sights are perfectly aligned to each other the bullet will hit where the gun is aimed.

If your pistol has a sight radius of 6.5", and the front sight is perfectly aligned with the target but is misaligned by X to the rear sight, you will miss by Y [edit]at 25 yards.[/edit] (thanks, HVR)

misalign
by
this
X -----> Y (miss by this)
0.1"--->13.9"
0.05"-->6.9"
0.04"-->5.6"
0.03"-->4.2"
0.02"-->2.8"
0.01"-->1.4"

For reference. 0.04" is roughly the thickness of a dime, 0.01" is a little smaller than the diameter of the period at the end of this sentence.
 
Last edited:
JohnSka
You forgot to add the distance at which you are calculating this?
10 yards? 25 yards? 50 yards?
Thanks for the input. I'm not that mathmatical.
 
I'm not sure I understand, but I'll take your word for it. I just try to line those puppies up and not mess it up when pressing the trigger. You guys are just to scientific for us Neanderthals.......... ;)
 
not busting your balls but i thought this was common knowledge. nra safe hunter course taught me this when i was a wee lad. the fed training center taught the same way. can't remember what uncle sam taught for some reason. guess he failed to leave an impression. good point worth bringing up though.! :)
 
I can't understand what you said, perhaps because I don't have the proper definitions of alignment and picture here...

I shoot by concentrating on the target, bringing the handgun up and focusing on the front sight with both eyes open. I never align the rear posts with the front, I use the front sight and pretend its a red dot sight on the target.

I've found with practice I'm more accurate this way then normally, and I have better situational awareness. I use the Isoscles, so Weaver users may not be able to use this technique.
 
http://www.bullseyepistol.com/chapter2.htm

sight alignment is the most important. If you shoot nice tight groups even though they are not dead center you can adjust your sights if they are adjustable or change your sight picture for a fixed sight pistol or adjust the fixed sights. So if you are out shooting and are getting nice tight groups within the paremeters of the accuracy of the firearm.. you have proper sight alignment and are doing the other fundamentals of marksmanship correctly and iits a matter of adjusting your sights or where your sight picture is on the target to get center of mass or center of target.
 
This is probably most valid in target shooting. For combat / self defense shooting, there is something to be said for concentrating on the front sight or using a point-shooting technique, especially at closer distances. Other things, such as the position of the arms, can be used as indexes for proper alignment when trying to quickly get the front sight on target in a defensive shooting scenario.

I will agree that accurate shooting at a distance requires proper sight alignment. Sometimes it's hard to decide which method should get more of your practice time. I try to practice both aimed fire with sight alignment at distance as well as quick front sight focus for up close.
 
I agree that for aimed fire and precise shooting this is correct. For combat shooting concentrating on your front sight is faster and gives acceptable accuracy.
 
Geeze what is this recent obsession with hostage rescue? There are maybe one thousand people in the world trained enough to have a good chance at rescuing a hostage in a hostile situation.

These people have expended at least 15,000 rounds to become proficient and accurate enough, and there is still a margin of error. Unless the hostage taker is the dread pirate Blackbeard, I wouldn't base any of your gun choices, ammunition choices or training choices on rescuing hostages, unless your willing to dedicate thousands of dollars and months of time to become that good.

Unless by removing a hostage from a bad guy you mean shooting through the hostage, which is what the Israelis do.
 
These people have expended at least 15,000 rounds to become proficient and accurate enough, and there is still a margin of error. Unless the hostage taker is the dread pirate Blackbeard, I wouldn't base any of your gun choices, ammunition choices or training choices on rescuing hostages, unless your willing to dedicate thousands of dollars and months of time to become that good.
Click to expand...

I guess the point got lost here. Over the years I have spent that much money, time, and effort. I believe in my abilities to make a head shot at 7 to 10 yards. Yes even on a moving target. But that would require correct sight alignment. Right? Not just quick point, and shoot.

BTW you shouldn't ever riducle anyones willingness to be prepared. Ever shot IDPA matches?
 
Hope this drawing helps

sightalignment.tif
 
My guess is that you have nowhere near the experience and training necessary to have a greater than 70 percent chance of rescuing a hostage and having that hostage live. I did not ridicule any single persons training, why don't you tell me how you have trained to rescue a loved one from the clutches of a person with a shotgun duct taped to they're head, and to his hand.

I'm not ridiculing your training, as it has not been in vain, but I will say this, I don't have faith in yours or mine ability to reliably rescue hostages. It's one thing to think you're prepared, its another to actually do it.

Lets not get into a pissing match, I'm just stating my opinion.
 
Hope that makes it plain and simple.
Click to expand...

I appreciate you taking the time to help people out with this explanation. It speaks well of you.

I think, though, that the explanation sort of makes a complicated thing out of something that I thought was already simple.

I think that one way to look at this is, whatever is in the center of your front sight when the front site is perfectly aligned between the rears is what will be shot.

If the front sight is off-center between the rears, if you were to freeze the gun in place there, and then put your dominant (sighting) eye off to the side so that the sight alignment was perfect, you would see the off-target thing you were going to end up shooting.

-blackmind
 
One person's simple is another person's stone wall. ;)
if you were to freeze the gun in place there, and then put your dominant (sighting) eye off to the side so that the sight alignment was perfect, you would see the off-target
Click to expand...
Exactly! I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's exactly right.
 
that's a laugh. That's like saying that if you shot from the hip, the sights would be aligned with where ever the shot hit.
Correct of course.
And with your example, are you going to move your head off to the side exactly the same every time? If you are using your eyes as the reference point and the sights are as you describe, you probably will hit the bullseye once in a while....your neighbors target that is.
Before you criticize this thread, please take the time to go out to the range and just try the little experiment. Use a sand bag rest if you cannot hold perfect.
At seven yards, you are correct in that only the front sight needs to be on target for the groups to be around a 8 inch pattern. but go back to 20 yards and start to play around with the sight alignment.
take some shots with the front blade in different positions. You will then see a huge difference. Now do some shooting with the sights aligned, and move the perfect sight alignment around the bull. Even hold off the black slightly. You will be amazed at the difference. Now use a blank target, no bull and just focus entirely on the front sights being aligned. Don't worry about perfect placement, just keep the aligned sights centered somewhat in the middle of the blank target. If everything is right, i.e. correct surprise trigger break, you will be getting 3-4 inch ragged holes all day long.

The point of this thread is to help people understand the difference between sight alignment and sight picture. Too many shooters focus more on sight picture and not sight alignment. That's a critical mistake in good aacurate shooting.
And It's not only for target shooting, but if you can't hit what your aiming at, what's the point. Wouldn't you rather be able to shoot 2" groups at 15 yards than only be able to shoot 8 inch. Sure, 8 inch might be OK for combat but now you are adding in a larger mistake factor if your shot is off. Would you rather have a gun that is only capable of 8 inch groups, or 2". Same with the shooter.
I just don't buy that good enough for combat stuff. Sure, I work on point shooting and quick shots, and combat accuracy, but being able to shoot really tight groups makes the other stuff a lot easier.

Why am I taking the time to post this. It's common knowledge, I agree, but from the response and dragging feet I see in the responses, not everyone agrees. But I see that at least 450 people have taken the time to look at this, and it might help a few people in their shooting.
Who am I to try and help others? Just someone who sees others struggling out at the range. As stated in the first post, I was taught by some world class shooters, and have over 18 years experience in the bullseye game.
The criterial for bullseye shooters is about 3.25" for the 10 ring at 50 yards.
To be in expert class, you have to average 90%. so that is 9 out of 10 tens, or close to that. Rapid fire is 5 shots in ten seconds at 25 yards hitting the same 3" 10 ring. Oh and that is of course one handed. So your sights had better be aligned!

As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
 
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