All posts tagged tactical sights

Forget about lasers and flashlights, now may be the time to put new sights on your gun

Trijicon Night SightsThe Trijicon High Definition nights sights have been our fastest selling night sights and we didn’t even know how hot they were until we started listing them  on our website.   Several Special Forces groups stopped in our store and told  us that those were their chosen night sights on all of their Glock handguns.   I was kind of shocked to hear this because so many old guys, or people with bad eyesight are the ones that usually ask us for the hi viz sights and I first started seeing them on shotguns and lever actions.   There have been major changes  in optic colors in recent years from red, to the green sights, and major tests on how the human eye picks up green illumination, especially over longer distances with Green than with Red.

The beauty of these nights sights is they aren’t those old green tritium sights, they are tritium with an even high definition sight for day time use.   These Trijicon Night sights are probable just as marketable in the regular sight market as they are for night time.   I have been checking out the GL101Y and GL101O sights for sometime and when my Sig 228 night sights burn out, I will definitely be looking into updating with the Sg101Y or SG101O sights.   These will absorb light from any available light so if you move from indoors to outdoors they will still hold a certain amount of illumination that will be brighter than the Tritium.   I expect to see more of these showing up on new Glocks considering how popular they are.

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Rear sights, front sights and all of the other issues with iron sights

I never thought picking out sights for my AR15 would be so hard until I put optics on it.  I started out with a Bushmaster XM15E2 a few decades ago and that was the simplest design.  You had two aperture sights for close up or long distance shots.   The carry hand design would allow you to put an ACOG or other optic on it but this was not a popular way to do this.  Flat tops became more and more popular in the industry because optics became rugged  and durable and even though shooting with iron sights takes great skill, using them as  primary sights, especially in the military makes you limit your firearms abilities.

Many optics are used for identify targets as much as they are for hitting then.  You do have to be careful about what type of sights  you want to put on your firearm because Troy Battle sights are very popular but there are big differences in clearance for fold down front and rear sights.  Gas block mounted sights are lower and if you get fixed sights, you won’t be able to mount magnifiers behind something like and Eotech.  I’ve got iron sights sitting in my house that got about a year of range use and then I picked up a new  optic and the configuration just didn’t work.  The best thing to do is think ahead or just plan on having more than one upper for your AR15 and configure them differently.

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Eotech magnifier gives you distance

We’ve heard time and time again from our friends and customers that are serving in the military that the Eotech gun sights are the fastest combat sights around.  I recently got to check out some of the optics coming from Trijicon and they are really making some nice 1x magnification gun sights also.   It’s been over 2 decades that the ACOGS have been around, but it seems that just about everyone and their dog has them on an AR15 and in many cases, the Trijicon ACOG is a bit of an over kill depending on the gun sights that you are using.   We got a first hand account today about a guy using a Trijicon gun sight in a police call that identified an individual that was thought to have been holding a gun.  Someone with a standard Eotech gun sight could not identify an object in his hand and there was a call to shoot.

The only real drawback to the Eotech gun sights besides magnification are the batteries they are using.  Some people have issues with the CR123 Eotech sights, and mostly want the AA battery versions.   At some point someone from Eotech is going to have to come out with a non battery illuminated version of the sight because given the trends and technological advancements I have seen in the last decade, anything that is battery powered now is going to be obsolete in the near future.   Flashlights are going to get better when it comes to being rechargeable and holding power and gun sights should be self illuminated or controlled without battery power.

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Some time with the Eotech Flip to side Gen 2 magnifier

I have been using one of these on my LWRC M6A2 for several months now.  It’s taken me awhile to get to where I am at with using it, but it was a learning experience.   When I first looked at these I was trying to decide if I should get an Eotech magnifier or the Mako magnifier.   I figured I would start out with the higher end and work my way down.  The first thing that hit me was the cost of the Eotech 556 I have and the Magnifier were the same as some of the Trijicon rifle scopes that I have been looking at.

I’ve learned to keep my guns in a configuration that they are meant to be in, and M4 carbine is meant for close up fighting so why turn it into a long range shooting weapon.   Eotech gun sights are my favorite for close fighting but there are major drawbacks to using them at medium ranges and in low light environments.   The magnifier gives you that medium range visibility and  helps ID targets and become more effective at hitting targets. with the flip to side mount, it takes a second to go back to close range shooting.  Definitely worth it in my book.

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