by Larry Vickers
Vickers Tactical, retired US Army 1st SFOD- Delta combat veteran

This is a topic I haven’t seen broken down into detail before but we need to discuss it – the correct approach to your pistol iron sights integration with your red dot sight.

Here’s two rules to live by that to me are carved in stone;

1. No tritium, dots or white outlines of any kind on the rear sight as it can distract you from the red or green dot you are using to engage the target with – plain black only on the rear sight.
2. Nothing on the front sight that is the same color as your dot – for instance red fiber optic front sight with a red dot sight. This causes confusion for no good reason.

You have several options to choose from on this topic;

• No irons at all just an RDS – like the Alien Remus. This means all your eggs are in one basket – if the RDS fails you’ll be point shooting from there on out. If you go this route go with the most bombproof RDS you can buy – to me that means Aimpoint.
• Black front sight – very popular approach as anything on the front sight can distract and confuse you. Downside is if your dot goes out your sights are basically useless in anything less than good lighting. Once again point shooting will come into play.
• Tritium front sight – another popular option that has a lot of merit. Easy to see at night almost to the point of being a distraction from your red dot. It does give you some reference during the day in regard to using your front sight to help guide you onto target until your dot appears into view. Also is very useful in low light in case your RDS fails. As I said, it is a very good option all around. Luminescent front sight dots (non-tritium) generally fall into this category as well except at night they generally are not as useful as tritium- which means you may be potentially point shooting once again but with hopefully a front sight that is more visible than a black front sight.
• Green fiber optic front sight – another good and popular option. Very usable during the day but disappears at night – which means at night you are point shooting in case your RDS fails. Also, eventually the fiber optic in the front sight breaks – it’s inevitable. But at that point you still have a black front sight to use – albeit with a hole in it.

If you go with a green dot sight (GDS) you can rule out tritium as it glows green at night – so that means plain black or red fiber optic front sight are your options.

It’s all about the front sight in these cases – we want to use it to help guide us toward the target until the dot comes into view – with practice this works very well – the rear sight isn’t really a factor until the RDS dies or is way too dim to use. Then you align the front and rear in a conventional fashion just like if you had no RDS mounted at all.

As far as placement in the field of view I am very much a bottom 1/3rd guy – any lower means the irons are useless in case you need them (like the terrible sight picture Glock has with the factory installed COA) and any higher (in the center of your field of view) means too much of your field of view is blocked by your iron sights. It is critical you do your research to figure out what irons work best with which red dot sight on your pistol. You will find some RDS won’t have a useable iron sight solution due to the height of the base of the RDS. If you’re a Holosun fan check out the website Freedom Gorilla as they have some excellent information on what Holosun will work with what sights on many different pistols. And their pricing on Holosun optics is very competitive. They are a good source of information.

There is no one clear cut choice as all of them have distinct pros and cons – definitely do your homework and make an educated decision on what works best for you. As far as the optics themselves go I’m a closed emitter guy as many of you know. To me they make the most sense for a serious use pistol. Open emitter RDS are the most common and there are some really good ones but to me they are basically for range and/or competition use. Not for EDC or duty use. In the closed emitter world to me it boils down to two brands – Holosun and Aimpoint- with the EPS series from Holosun and the COA from Aimpoint being the top choices albeit on opposite ends of the price spectrum. Once again do your research – the Holosun EPS series can be mounted on virtually any popular handgun whereas the COA isn’t that wide spread quite yet but it is getting there. My first choice would be the COA if it’s feasible with an Aimpoint ACRO P2 as a second choice- failing either of those I’d go to one of the Holosun EPS optics. Green vs red dot is an option with Holsun – if at all possible try both to see which one you like the most. The gold dot Holsun optics are new to the market and I hear good things about them but I have no personal experience one way or the other to recommend them or not to.

I purposefully avoided the topic of white lights on pistols as that opens a whole new can of worms- we will talk about that in a future article.

So there you have it – now you have some serious thinking to do and remember the two rules I outlined at the beginning of this article. Like I said, to me they are carved in stone

Have a good one as always – LAV out

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