Ahh...the neverending debate..
For starters, I'm a point-shooting kind-of-guy. This is
NOT to be confused with the "
point-and-shoot" method espoused by some.
Threat-Focused shooting is not so much about ignoring your sights as it is about focusing on the threat rather than your sights....which, in my own experience, is what is
most likely to happen under stress.
The misconception that point-shooting is better than sighted shooting needs to be laid to rest. You won't find any serious threat-focused shooters who will say that one is consistently better than the other, all things being equal. The Threat-Focused community readily argues that both sighted-fire and point-shooting skills are simply valuable tools that should fit together - no one wants to replace sights, and nobody is telling people that you don't need to "sight" your weapon.
One of the most common misconceptions is that - in the Threat-Focused sense - "unsighted" means "
un-AIMED"; this is not true. As someone above pointed out, there are many different visual inputs one may use to acquire a "sighted picture" - from the outline of the slide in relation to the target, to true front-sight focus, to body indexing. One of the things that frustrates me most in these "Point Shooting vs. Sighted Fire" debates is that people refuse to grasp this concept - or maybe it is never explained correctly.
Whatever visual stimuli a person uses to bring their weapon accurately on target can be logically considered "sighting"...it's just that some people don't ALWAYS use the traditional "sights" that are mounted on the weapon.
If any of you bow-hunt or have great-great grandfathers who carried SA Six-shooters in the old days, you should know what I'm talking about.
The transition from point-shooting to sights is not difficult - you just have to get your mind wrapped around what feels natural and what doesn't. Many people think that it's too confusing to think about when to use threat-focus and when to use sights. Well, they're partially right....it IS too confusing to think about it when the stress is on. That's why it's important to quit thinking and start shooting... your body and mind will tell you when a target is too far. Now, I'm not a competition shooter, so keep that in mind. Everything I've said may not help you at all when training for "competition".
As for who says you won't find your sights in a real gunfight? I know that from my own experience you are very VERY likely to focus on the THREAT when you are in fear for your life. While there are certainly cases where people don't remember seeing their sights but did in fact - probably - use them, there are still many cases of gunfights where the bullet wounds are in the arms and hands. This indicates that the person shooting was most likely focused on the gun/knife that the other person was holding.
Your body, under life-threatening stress, WANTS to focus on the THREAT.
Anyone ever have another vehicle pull out in front of you while you were driving down the road? Think about what you looked at....did your mind immediately seek an escape route and simply keep the "threat" in your peripheral vision? No - I am fairly positive that nearly everyone who has not received a decent amount of training found that their eyes were glued to the car you believed was about to hit you. What makes you think that an actual gunfight would be any different? Life-threatening stress. Admit it or not, the cases where people consciously use their sights in a gunfight spend a lot more time on their guns than 99% of the civilian population is willing or able to spend. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that "regular people just don't have the time or money to spend on extensive training"...
I put in a year of non-stop combat operations in Iraq - most of it moving house-to-house. If I am qualified to have an opinion on anything, it is what is
likely to happen to you under life-threatening stress. I will promise you that the majority of people will NOT look for their sights when a gun is pointed at their heads.
So to argue that if people like Leatham use THEIR sights under stress then everyone else should be able to is outright madness, especially when/if you're not willing to put in the time behind the gun that he is.
The problem with comparing real-world situations to competition shooting is where you will exist within the reactionary curve. To say that competition is parallel to real-world is somewhat of a misnomer, if for no other reason than that you go to a competition PREPARED. You KNOW you will recieve a certain number of engagements within a certain window of time. Competition shooting places you either AHEAD or EVEN with the rectionary curve. Real-world is not that way and you will most often find yourself BEHIND the reactionary curve, or, at best, EVEN with it. Additionally, the only "real" stress that competition puts on you is that of "time"...not fear of death. I do not agree in drawing parallels between competition shooting and real-world situations.
You won't find any of us in the Threat-Focused world condemning sighted-fire. In fact, we use it ourselves. We don't advocate point-shooting as a replacement, or as something better, or as something to fill the void that sighted-fire leaves. No, point-shooting is simply another piece of the puzzle - it's up to the individual to decide how/if/where it fits in their personal philosophy. We're just trying to get people to understand that they don't need to be afraid of something that they don't understand.
Lurper said:
When I was competing regularly, I could shoot .72 "A" hits all day long and splits of .11 and call my shots. That indicates that I used the sights.
Maybe, maybe not. What it DOES indicate is that you had enough visual input to know where your shots were going to go. Threat-Focused shooting is the same thing.
Look, it's a medical fact that you can't focus on more than one thing at a time, so even those of you who are outraged that people would advocate shooting without looking through the sights need to understand that you are - at some point - doing the very same thing you're upset about. There is no way you can focus on the front sight, rear sight, and target all at once...we can't even focus on the front sight and the target at the same time. So what happens is that you are "aware" of the relationship between the front sight and the rear sight, and your focus is on the target. OR, you are aware of the relationship between the target and the rear sight, and your focus is on the front sight. Either way, at SOME point during the cycle you're NOT focused purely on your sights - you are simply "aware" of them because they are your visual inputs to verify indexing.
Point shooting simply uses different visual indicators.