Iron sights / Open sights - The same?

C

Cliff

New member
I say potato, you say potato. What the heck, they both make great french fries. :)

I've always referred to iron sights as... well... iron sights. Some other folks refer to iron sights as "open" sights. We all seem to know what the other means, but are the terms truly interchangeable?

For me, "iron sight" refers to any combination of front barrel sighting aid and receiver mounted rear sight. The rear sight can be aperature, or ramp, or flip-up and the front can be bead, post, etc.

Did I just describe an "open sight" as well, or are there differences?

Cliff
 
Cliff. They mean the same to me. I would imagine that iron sights cover both receiver and open rear sights, while open sights would more or less not include the receiver sight. I guess it's just a matter of semantics.
Paul B.
 
My thought is that iron sights covers any metallic sights. Open sights seem to refer to the traditional buckhorn or leaf sights at the rear of the firearm.

Giz
 
I may be wrong (which will damn sure not be a first), but I always thought that iron sights were any kind of sight that was not a scope, and open sights were the vee and post type. In other words an iron sight could be a peep or a vee type, but open is only a vee type. Today they are used interchangably a lot.

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Carlyle Hebert
 
There's a big difference in ease of use between receive peep sights and open sights, though both are "iron sights."

Most of your "iron sights" references will come from competition shooters, to distinguish them from "any sight" events where the scopes are allowed but not mandatory. BTW, I *have* seen an "any sight" match won by the guy who was too broke to put a scope on his rifle.

You can shoot MOA and sub-MOA groups MUCH easier with peep sights, if your rifle and ammo are up to it.

Some people say that open sights are faster for target acquisition at closer ranges, but if the rifle comes close to fitting me properly, they're the same speed but the peep gives better results.

The only disadvantage I've found to peeps is the low-light problem. That's the only place where open sights may be better. Even with a ghost ring setup, I can lose the target when looking through the peep when the light is REALLY bad.
 
Cliff:

"open sights" are, in my mind at least, are the type of sight usually seen on factory 30-30 carbines.

"Iron Sights", again as I think of them are micrometer reviever sights, as used in rifle competition.
 
I like the ghost ring sights better for distances over 50 yds better than open vee sights.I have played around with them quite a bit.I think the shallow vee is faster than the peep at very close range but long range the peep wins out.I have mounted several open sights on double barrel shotguns for hunting in the past and found them very effective for pass shooting at ducks and even rising quail and phesant behind dogs.I have usually used Remington 700 sights for this because I always remove them when I mount a scope on my rifles.They work quite well for fast close shooting.However a 1.5X scope is just about as fast.I have actually tested this against a IPSC timer and found that I could shoot partridge type iron sights on pistols sightly faster than a 1.5X scoped pistol but it was very close.
 
'Eether' ... 'either': 'eather' will do. The divide is really between 'optical' - scopes lenses and things and your own unassisted eyeballs with some sort of arrangemnt for lining up the bore and bullet with the target.
Buckhorn and 'v' sights can be considered 'open' for sure. peep sights where the rear sight is a disk with a we hole (say like the tang sighting systems) are hardly open but not 'optical'. and then the 'ghost ring' as in the most excellent Ashley system is neither one or the other - the rear sight just sort of fades away as you aim - but its hardly 'open'... so just to keep matters simple i prefer 'iron sights' (even though they may be made of aluminium, titatium or kryptonite) and 'optical'
FWTW - Peter Knight
 
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