I got home this evening after a rough week of getting our apartment steam cleaned and prepped for our move out, a lot of which necessitated moving some firearms out for extended periods, as I'm just not comfortable being at work while there's some work crew inside my house and my carbines aren't in a safe (it's on its way, just waiting to move into the new house).
Anyways, I sat down and placed my EDC on the table next to me, and throw on some TV to relax. I began to think about the pistol next to me (PF-9), and how it would be employed if I had to bring it into action at that moment
Now, I am of the opinion that if you're carrying a gun outside of the house, you might as well get used to having one on/nearby you at home for the same reasons.
After unloading the weapon, and verifying a clear chamber, I did several test presentations at various areas of my apartment. The lights were off, except for the TV. When I presented the pistol to a mock target with the lit TV in the background, I immediately got confused as my front and rear sights (basically triple posts) became a jumble, and it took me valuable time to find and center the front sight post. Not good. Even worse, the 3-dot system of the sights didn't even register.
Next I switched to presentations in a darkened area of the living room, where there was light from the TV and the outside, but no internal lighting.
Even worse. If I had to take a shot in this situation, I would essentially have to have the outline of the pistol within the attacker's silhouette, if I was going to score any practical hits, but any kind of shot placement would be out of the question.
Is that a bad thing? Probably, as I only have 7 shots of 9mm, and even the better HP loads on the market do no good if they're hitting the wall or worse, having an unaccounted round.
Is it a bad thing if I have to pick out my targets? Yup. If my wife/girlfriend is in the room with an aggressor, I couldn't bet on that system.
So, this brings me to night sights. I'm not going into the particulars of the options here, as that's a book in itself.
What I want people to think about is their EDC gun. For those who have taken the steps to carry legally, we trade the size/stopping power/capacity of our carry guns in different proportions, especially in situational carry.
I, for one, am going to take a hard look at the sighting systems of the gun that's on my person on an everyday basis. The most useful gun you have is the one you always have. But even that may not be sufficient if you are unable to identify positively in a shoot/no shoot situation, and I think a lot of people, especially civilians, need to take a hard look at what they've got when dealing with different lighting situations.
Because Tombstone was a great flick, but most gunfights don't go down at noon at the OK Corral.
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