
Pistol sights - luu
http://yarchive.net/blog/gun/pistol_sights.html
======
seibelj
Anyone who is diehard anti-gun for personal use, I recommend taking a pistol
class from a reputable organization, and keep an open mind. No one is telling
you to get a license or buy a gun, just go take a class. They will teach you
all about safety, how to shoot, gun cleaning and maintenance, and all of the
basic skills needed to properly own a gun. Then if you are still diehard anti-
gun, great! But if you have no experience, then taking a day to learn more
might help you understand how the other side thinks.

~~~
arethuza
Out of interest, do high schools in the US teach this kind of stuff? The
reason I ask is that my son was taught to shoot, gun maintenance etc. at his
high school in the UK and we're usually regarded as "anti-gun" as a country!

~~~
InitialLastName
Anecdotal but related: My grandfather shot competitively and as a hobby for
most of his life (mostly skeet, occasional trap and pistols). Until the 90's
he also taught gun safety and competitive marksmanship at a (comparatively
very wealthy) area high school. He was dropped from that role as a knee-jerk
reaction to the Columbine shooting, as it was deemed "too dangerous" to allow
guns, even well controlled and in professional hands and for the purpose of
teaching safety and responsibility, on the school property.

I don't know how this played out in the rest of the US, but I have a feeling
that there aren't many (if any schools) that allow guns on their campuses,
even if for the sake of education.

~~~
itbeho
I grew up in a small town in central California. High School in the early 80's
- lots of kids from ag/ranching backgrounds would park their trucks in the
school parking lot with a rifle or shotgun hanging in a rack in the back
window. I don't recall anyone being particularly bothered by that practice or
any problems relating to it.

Same town, different era: My 12 year old nephew received a poor grade and
"this is terrible!" written on his essay by his teacher because "What I did
last weekend" recapped target shooting with his dad and grandpa at the range.

------
electrograv
If you're interested in the science behind this, you may be even more
interested in learning how peephole style rear iron sights almost eliminate
the dual sight alignment problem of goal-post style rear sights (as commonly
found on pistols).

The rear peep sight on rifles take advantage of actual "optical effects",
without any glass -- much like a pinhole camera can actually magnify images
without any lenses or mirrors at all.

By simply providing an arbitrarily small "aperature" you're looking through in
the rear, the front-rear sight alignment problem is not only capped at an
upper bound of error (defined by the peephole size and sight radius), but the
actual error from front-rear sight misalignment is visually magnified and
centered through a fixed viewing point, making it vastly easier to keep the
actual error near zero.

So generally, to achieve precision within the (small) upper bound of error
with a peephole sight, all you need to do is place the front sight post on the
target when looking through the rear peep sight. Even better precision is made
much easier via a sort of "peephole camera" effect through the aperature of
the rear sight.

~~~
steverb
When I shot competitively (rifle in HS, almost 30 years ago) I was a big fan
of the double peephole sights. All you had to do was center the target in the
aperture and make sure the aperture was circular.

Takes all the work out of sight alignment and then you can focus on breathing,
heartbeat and trigger squeeze.

~~~
Zak
I did the same kind of competition, and the double-aperture sights were,
indeed very effective and effortless to use. There's a catch though: they're
only good for shooting circular targets of the correct apparent size.

I actually did once use a rifle with such sights to take some small game. It
was not easy to aim outside of the conditions for which it was designed.

~~~
steverb
I think it depends in large on the type of shooting. I didn't have a problem
with double peeps for man-shaped targets, but acquisition is harder due to the
limited field of view.

The military style peep + blade is a good compromise I think, especially when
have to worry about ranging.

------
chrissnell
Going target shooting is incredibly relaxing and a great break from the
workday. The focus required to sight in a target and control one's breathing,
arm, and finger movement is a very powerful relaxant to me and melts stress
away.

I work from home and I live in the burbs so pistol or rifle shooting is not
possible. However, I've gotten really hooked on shooting (of all things) my
Red Ryder BB gun. It doesn't make a loud noise, it costs almost nothing to
shoot, and it's surprisingly accurate for how inexpensive it is. These little
BB guns have iron sights like the article discusses.

My favorite thing to shoot is little plastic bottles--particularly the ones
that over-the-counter medication comes in. They're durable and make a nice
popping noise when you hit them. I put them on little stakes in the back yard
at about 10-15 yards and shoot at them from my deck. As I got better, I made
up little games, like shooting them in a sequence and trying to get 100%
accuracy. I find it easy to get back to writing code after doing this for five
or ten minutes.

~~~
dreamcompiler
If you're willing to go through the red tape, you can buy a suppressor
(silencer) and a bullet trap and do target shooting with your 9mm in your
living room. (I have no affiliation with this company. It just seems to be an
informative website on the process of buying a silencer.)

[https://www.silencershop.com/how-to-buy-a-
silencer](https://www.silencershop.com/how-to-buy-a-silencer)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its typically called a suppressor. And it doesn't make the gun silent at all.
But at least it won't blow out your hearing. Still, even equipped, I wouldn't
try it in my living room.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Indoor target practice at home is fairly common among Class III enthusiasts
where I live. (Although the website I cited says you don't need a Class III
for suppressors any more). I've not tried it; suppressors outdoors are quite
pleasant to shoot without ear protection but you might still want EP indoors.
The point of the suppressor is to avoid alarming the neighbors. It's also
something I'd never try in an apartment or with other houses nearby because of
the obvious danger if you miss the bullet trap.

~~~
bmelton
I've been around a lot of suppressed arms, and aside from one competition
rifle that was specifically designed to be silent (and cost many thousands of
dollars to get that way), can't recall a single one in which ear protection
wouldn't have been dramatically preferred for indoor shooting.

Even for that one (subsonic, small rounds, suppressed, nitro piston), it would
probably have been irritating to fire indoors.

Edit: In hindsight, I suppose a suppressed, rimfire 22 would be pretty quiet.

------
binarytransform
Former JSOC dude here. Circumstances requiring engaging with pistols == bad
day for everyone, so only a few things matter. Front sight focus (which
implies maintaining equidistance from the rear sight posts), both eyes open,
fast presentation, parallel grip, smooth trigger pull, reacquire, repeat as
necessary. And optical sights = more things that can break / run out of
batteries / fall off and make noise / etc etc.

~~~
duncan_bayne
> Circumstances requiring engaging with pistols == bad day for everyone

I've shot a bit, but only rimfire long guns, air rifles, and air pistols. The
pistols were harder to shoot by a _long_ margin, and I can imagine it'd get
orders of magnitude harder w/ more recoil, noise to promote flinching, etc.
etc.

So with your comments in mind, and my own limited experience, do you have
_any_ idea why every Police-critter here in Australia is armed with a pistol,
rather than something easier to use? I mean, in my head it looks like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEhMKQhGKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEhMKQhGKE)

"It feels like you're shooting a toy gun sometimes" (similar to my experience
w/ a suppressed semi-auto .22LR)

vs. this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeYAfMeaBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeYAfMeaBY)

The only things I can think of in favour of the pistol:

* Cheaper (maybe?)

* Less intrusive / easier to carry (for the 99.99% of the time when you _don't_ need it).

* Less intimidating (for those who don't know how hard it is to hit a moving target w/ a pistol ;) ).

~~~
jdietrich
Here in the UK, police aren't routinely armed. We rely instead on specialist
firearms officers who usually perform a rapid-response role but sometimes
patrol high-risk locations.

Over here, it's actually much more common to see a police officer equipped
with a sub-machinegun or a carbine rifle than a handgun. Firearms are used as
a tactical resource to be deployed as needed, rather than an insurance policy
for ordinary officers.

~~~
ethanhunt_
> police aren't routinely armed

That might be because some UK police refuse to carry because the UK doesn't
have laws to protect officers (those laws that the US has that are constantly
protested). [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/15/police-
chief...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/15/police-chiefs-
struggling-recruit-armed-officers-conviction-fears)

Can't say I blame them. Why would someone take on the chance of being charged
with murder for carrying out their job's duties? It's not an easy problem to
solve, but I think the ease of access to firearms is only going to increase,
and they're going to have to get the UK police sorted with carrying.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'm not convinced the laws should be any different for the Police, should
they? A justified shoot is a justified shoot, regardless of who is pulling the
trigger.

Perhaps the laws in the UK need fixing (they did in New Zealand last I
checked) but it should be a level playing field.

~~~
ethanhunt_
I don't think there's a great answer here. Without special legal protection,
you're asking police to take a job that would require them to make decisions
in a couple of seconds and if they make the wrong decision, they face a high
risk of either death (should've shot but didn't) or life in prison (shot but
shouldn't have). I wouldn't take that job if it payed 500k/yr, but we're
asking officers to take it for 60k/yr?

I'm not asking for police to be protected if they're malicious, but if a
police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to
make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots
when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the
same standard as a civilian.

And people wonder why their police officers aren't the best and the brightest:
anyone making a rational decision under these terms wouldn't take the job.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his
hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake
and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is
held to the same standard as a civilian"

But that's the problem! The civilian shouldn't be going to jail, either,
should they?

That is, I don't think the standard for prosecution for killing someone should
be different for civilians and police.

Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it
by changing self defence laws for everyone.

Or perhaps, to put it another way, under what situation could you imagine
yourself as a juror convicting a civilian of murder, but acquitting a police
officer who acted identically?

~~~
ethanhunt_
> Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it
> by changing self defence laws for everyone.

Thinking about that for a bit and it sounds reasonable. A cop should only be
shooting someone if he believes his or someone else's life is in danger and
that's the same standard as civs in most states.

Perhaps cops in the US have more protection with their unions and such. I
assumed that there must be a difference between US and UK because UK officers
are refusing to carry whereas US aren't, but that difference might be that US
officers get fired if they refuse to carry.

------
danielvf
I lucked into learning to shoot with a small weekly local group that included
a future many time US National Champion, and another person who was in the top
five nationwide.

Competitive pistol shooters actually use several different sight picture
styles.

In the speed styles of competitive shooting, the goal is to hit targets as
fast as possible, so you want to make each shot in the "worst" way that will
give you about a 95% chance of a hit. So for a close, low risk target, a
shooter may look only at the target and ignore the sights, for a tiniest
fraction more speed.

For most targets, the looking at the front sight is correct. Shooters tend to
lock their upper body into one shape, then pivot it from target to target
while shooting a string. This locks the rear sight in just the right place
behind the front one. When the front sight is put on target, the rear sight is
automatically in the right place. It's true that the target does become
blurred a little when you do this.

Then for really far targets, you do have to bring your focus back a little
farther, and see and care about both sights.

The sight picture is not the only thing that changes from target to target.
You usually budget the amount of time spent for each shot.

Surprisingly, many pros know where their round will hit before it reaches the
target. The time penalty for missing a shot is so high that it's almost always
better to take a second shot in case of a miss. However, it takes a while for
a pistol shot to reach the target, and for your eyes to see where it landed
(plus you'd have to change your focus to look for it, then back again to your
sights). To get around that, with practice, you can know in the moment you
pull the trigger where the round went, and follow it up in about a twentieth
of a second with another round.

In most competitive pistol matches, the sequence of targets to be shot on a
given stage is not rigidly defined. There are often plenty of constraints
(this group must be shot before these) or timing related constraints in some
sports (shooting this target will cause a pair of targets to pop up in 1.2
seconds). Given this, there's a surprising amount of planning that goes into
discovering the optimum run. The details of each shot are then worked out and
mentally rehearsed.

------
bawana
Gun safety should be taught in school. Just like driver's ed. Why do we give
no attention to these weapons which are real, commonly available and
impossible to eliminate from our world? Showing teenagers 3 months of
ballistic videos of various projectiles going through gelatin will give them a
better appreciation for reality, rather than relying on games like call of
duty to 'mis-educate' them. What can possibly be learned by an 18 year old in
a single hour safety course prior to getting an FID ?

And knowing when a gun is being handled safely will prevent many of the
accidents that occur when the naive start handling a gun like they've seen
done on television and film.

~~~
Helmet
No, it really shouldn't be. Math, science, language arts, etc should be taught
in schools, like, you know, every fucking first world country in the world.

~~~
cmbuck
> like, you know, every fucking first world country in the world

I don't find this a very compelling argument and it comes off as a personal
attack rather than composed intellectual rationale. Instead of saying why you
think this is a poor idea, you essentially say this is a poor idea because no
one else does it--which is the exact thought process that stifles innovation
and new ideas.

Regardless of whether teaching gun safety at that age is a good idea, your
argument against it leaves much to be desired.

------
leroy_masochist
It's also important to note for broader context that pistols, despite the
number of people who take pistol accuracy seriously, are not really designed
for precision marksmanship.

For the use cases that really matter, you won't be taking well-aimed shots,
you'll be trying to get rounds out of the weapon in the general direction of
the threat as quickly as possible, in order to buy yourself some time and/or
space.

The front sight rule is not just the best aiming mechanism for the reasons of
geometry described in the article, it's also the quickest way to acquire a
basic sight picture under stressful conditions.

~~~
Zak
While this is true in a sense, I suspect a great deal more pistol ammunition
is expended in competitive shooting sports than is fired at people. People in
speed-oriented pistol shooting competitions where optical sights are not
allowed usually use a front sight containing a colored fiber optic that's easy
to focus on quickly.

------
c517402
Instead of using convolution to produce the imagery, I think it should be
produced using fractional Fourier transforms. IIRC fractional Fourier
transforms are mathematically equivalent to Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction
integrals. Although, the convolutions look good.

~~~
wnkrshm
I'm also not super up-to-date on my Fourier optics but I had to research again
a bit, as I had something in the back of my brain telling me: Hey, there was
something with simple convolutions in Fourier optics and I know spatial
convolution with a response function is used extensively to gauge the
resultion of your system's image due to diffraction in the system.

Within the Fresnel approximation, the output field can either be formed in a
frequency-domain approach with a spectrum of plane waves or as a spatial
superposition of paraboloid waves (in which the transfer function is inverse-
fourier transformed and then convolved with the input field). And the latter
approach is simply a convolution of the input field (in position space) with
an impulse-response function of the linear (and shift-invariant) optical
system between. Shift invariance (i.e. the response function itself isn't
position dependent) is an okay approximation for the central FOV of the human
eye.

So what he's doing, the formalism, is kinda correct within the Fresnel regime,
only he uses an approximation for the impulse-response function itself. This
impulse-response function is called the PSF or Point-Spread Function in
imaging optics design, defined as the image (including diffraction effects of
course) of a point source. His approximation as a disk is okay-ish,
qualitatively (google "PSF of human eye defocus") but I didn't check the
numbers for the size.

------
xtreme
I wonder if this is related to [Hyperfocal
Distance]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance)),
a concept familiar to many photographers. Roughly, if you focus on the
background (infinity), the foreground would be blurry; and vice-versa. If you
focus about ~1/3rd into the scene, you'd have everything in reasonably sharp
focus.

Unlike camera lenses, our eyes can't easily focus on an arbitrary distance
without an object being present there. Perhaps the front sight is working as
an approximation of the hyperfocal distance.

~~~
kbart
To stay hyperfocused, you would have to keep your sight focused on a certain
dot (probably between sights and target), so it would be extremely hard to
align iron sights without focusing on them as our eyes/brain automatically
focus on things of interested. Peripheral vision training might help, but I
believe, it still would be much harder than aiming in traditional way (focused
on front sight only). Actually, our vision is extremely adaptive and after few
sessions of practice shooting you don't even notice blurring anymore as it
becomes natural.

 _" Perhaps the front sight is working as an approximation of the hyperfocal
distance."_

I haven't seen such gun yet. It would not be practical as distance of a target
and illumination (two key factors for hyperfocus of human eye) varies greatly.

------
euroclydon
I have this little drill I do, with a iron sighted handgun or rifle. I give
myself no more than 2 seconds to bring the weapon up, acquire the target a
shoot. I can pay attention to the rear sights, but then I never hit anything.
In this drill, I've found that maintaining a consistent body position, and
only paying attention to the front sight yields the best results. I just put
the front sight on the target and pull the trigger. Distance about 10-15
yards. Target is soda can.

~~~
madengr
I shoot the small size paper plates. If you are missing those, you are
shooting too fast. If you are consistently hitting center, you are shooting
too slow. 2-3x diameter of the paper plate is about center of mass for a
person, so that 3x spread in shot during stress should still result in a hit.

------
exabrial
I prefer shooting iron sights under 150yds, but I use peep sites, which don't
suffer as many problems.

Fascinating analysis!

------
tahabi
What are the rates of gun ownership among hackers? Conversations with old
alumni from school indicate that back in the day, a lot of them were firearms
enthusiasts, but it seems that trend died out near the turn of the century. I
know MIT still has a rifle and pistol range, however.

------
OliverJones
Interesting that the author didn't mention ambient light levels explicitly.

A constricted pupil (from daylight) has a much greater depth of field than a
dilated one (from darkness). So everything will appear sharper in the light of
day.

Do at least some practice in low light conditions.

~~~
rkangel
He explicitly does:

> That last number might be twice as large in the dimmest of light or half as
> large in bright light; and the blurriness from being out of focus scales in
> direct proportion to it. So if you’re shooting in full daylight, you might
> have only half as much blurriness as shown in the following images. But your
> enemies may not do you the courtesy of attacking in full daylight.

------
ajmarsh
There are improvements to be had in pistol sites that don't involve battery
powered gimmicks. The trapezoid sights on Steyr M pistols for example. I
rented one from my local range and it works well for new shooters.

~~~
ianamartin
Came here to say this. The Steyr Triangle front sight/Trapezoid rear sight is
a really great improvement. Actually, the weapon itself is pretty much a work
of art. I've had the 9mm and the .40 S&W versions, and they are my favorite
shooting pistols of all time. Very low bore axis helps with aiming and recoil.
It's technically a double action firing mechanism, but the trigger is crisp
with a travel almost as short as a single action. Not at all spongy like
_cough_ some other striker fired polymer handguns. _un-cough_

I know this discussion is really about sites, but after all the off-tpoic-ness
we've had so far, I don't really feel bad derailing a little to talk about how
much better this handgun is than pretty much any other. For reasons including
the sights.

------
RUG3Y
Near the end of the article, he mentions that some people say that it's more
difficult to aim a weapon that has a shorter sight radius. Actually, I think
it's more accurate to say that having your sights out of alignment with
shorter sight radius will have a more dramatic effect on your accuracy.

~~~
electrograv
Or put another way, a shorter sight radius by a factor of X makes it X times
harder to visually confirm your iron sights are correctly aligned. This makes
the visual-mental-physical feedback loop of keeping them aligned as
_precisely_ as you possibly can, much more difficult.

Shooting accurately is much more than just physically holding the barrel
steady; it's a whole "symphony" of coordination, involving physical, visual
and mental components.

~~~
RUG3Y
That's a great way to explain it.

------
csours
> "But optical sights small and robust enough to be mounted on a pistol slide
> are a recent development, and are costly; very few handguns have one
> mounted."

This is still true, but pistol red dot sights are becoming more prevalent.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Do be warned that there are jurisdictions that do not look favorably on self-
defense shootings, and often page 1 in their playbook is to play up any
modifications to the gun involved. The argument is that if you're interested
in enhancing the performance of the gun, you must just be walking around
itching to pop off a few rounds. Personally I'd feel like I'm in a weak
position if a DA started telling a jury all about my high-tech "holographic
reflex sight".

So by all means mount a red dot sight for your 3-gun competition. Personally,
after speaking to a few folks in the know in such places, my concealed carry /
home defense gun is _very_ conservative. I opted for the most popular handgun
used by police with a very mainstream laser / flashlight combo instead. Hard
to make me look like an extremist / survivalist gun nut if I ever had to use
it. Something to think about, depending on where you live.

------
cynicalbastard
> _I was told once by a proficient pistol shooter that he ignored where the
> front sight was on the target, and paid attention only to the alignment of
> the two sights relative to each other. Since he did in fact hit the target,_

is the "two sights" here the rear sight which has two posts, or the two sites
as in front sight + rear sight?

several pages of reading and then .. an ambiguously worded conclusion.

~~~
mgarfias
He means the front sight and rear sight.

------
plazmatic
Isn't this supposed to be a HACKERS NEWS blog? What in the hell does some
article about pistol sights have to do with this?

I literally only made an account to post about how absurd and out of place
this article is. If I wanted some second amendment lovers blog (and I don't),
I'd simply find one.

Strike one, "hacker news". Strike one.

~~~
squeaky-clean
It's not news about hackers, it's news for hackers (in the older usage of the
word). And clearly lots of us find it interesting. You've got an account now,
so you can click "hide", flag it if you feel it's inappropriate, and move on.
If enough people agree, the flagging system should take it down.

------
baby
Kind of off-topic. But I had a thought the other day: without the US we
wouldn't have action movies like James Bond or FPS and other shooters video
games. It's interesting to see that guns are rare in other countries'
movies/discussions. Maybe FPS would all be like Nintendo's octopus thing.

~~~
tim333
Dunno - James Bond is kind of English. Not just the character but the writer
and the film production. The character was actually fairly closely based on
the author
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/11026227/I...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/11026227/Ian-
Fleming-the-real-James-Bond.html)

~~~
baby
Good point, but the James Bond of nowadays (Jack Reacher, john wick, etc...)
are all American movies now.

