Sights, Eyes, and Brain

 Let me preface this article with some disclaimers. One, I am not a PhD, nor do I have extensive coursework in vision and the human brain. I am not a medical doctor, optometrist, ophthalmologist, nurse, medic, EMT, or paramedic. I'm just a guy that has spent a few decades teaching people how to shoot. That has put me alongside shooters that are brand new and shooters that are GM level, and everybody in between. I'd like to mention two individuals who have probably delved deeper into shooting and vision than most others, and those two would be Gabe White and Tim Herron. If you want an extensive discussion on vision and shooting, those two guys should probably write a book on it, or maybe two. But since they haven't, I'm going to be using some of what I know and what they teach to discuss vision and shooting, especially as it relates to using iron sights on a pistol. If you have a chance to take a class with those gentlemen, I highly recommend it. While you're there, if vision as it relates to shooting is something you're interested in or invested in, ask them direct questions about it. Tim Herron's methodology of using iron sights is a real game changer, and it explains his accuracy at speed. Gabe White's work revolves around focus and how some functions of the eye can be isolated. Once again, take a class and bother him with questions about this, it is worth your time.

If we look at the problem of using sights to aim a pistol, it sounds a little wild on its face. We are asking a shooter to line up 4 things and hold that line up as we complete the process of shooting the gun: eye, rear sight, front sight, and target. We are also asking them to learn that line up well enough to be able to do it repeatably and rapidly, such that it can be done in fractions of a second. And as we are repeatedly told, we can only focus on one of those things directly at a time. If you've ever been on a police agency firing line, you've doubtlessly heard one or more instructors chanting over and over: FRONT SIGHT! While such admonitions can be helpful at times, this instructor has doubts that if you've told somebody "front sight" 100 times, that the 101st time will be the magic trick to make them shoot accurately.

From: Align The Sights

Of course some of these issues go away on a pistol mounted optic setup. Now we take the line up from 4 down to 3, and the shooter can stay target/threat focused through the entire process. The only issue is that if you're an instructor and you are teaching open enrollment classes, somebody is going to show up with an iron sighted gun and you're going to have to be able to teach them. Even if everybody is running a pistol mounted optic, we still have to be able to teach people how to shoot efficiently should that optic fail, and that typically involves iron sights.

Higher level shooters will often describe sighting a gun as "seeing what you need to see in order to get your hits." That is a very simple phrase but not helpful to a beginner at all. They have zero frame of reference in order to make it work in a practical sense.

The basics of teaching people how to use iron sights tend to fall into categories like visual aids and descriptions. Everybody has probably seen a power point with pictures showing a perfect sight alignment on a background target. Such visual aids as those made by trainingsights.com are also very helpful. There is always the oft used mantra, "equal height, equal light." If you have a blue gun or other inert gun like object with sights on it, you can use it to aim at the student's eye so that they can get a reciprocal/backwards view of what a proper sight alignment looks like. I find that if you've used all of those, you'll probably capture something like 95% of your students enough to get them going.

That last 5% is where things get interesting, and what has led me to believe that we don't all perceive things the same way. Differences in visual acuity, astigmatism, physiology, brain chemistry, planetary alignment, and such, all make us different. Something about that Fight Club quote about us all being unique snowflakes? Because if we were all the same, those pictures and descriptions would fix all the problems and we could go on with teaching how to grip the gun and properly press the trigger. But sometimes the sighting issue is the sticking point. One of the things that plagues new shooters is the want to see what is going on at the target. This is perfectly natural and very normal, but it is also something that must be overcome to some degree if we want them to become proficient with iron sights. Even if a new shooter doesn't focus completely on the front sight, but they can interrupt their visual line with a properly lined up set of sights, they'll hit. Soft focus is a thing and I find that as I age, soft focus is basically my only means of using iron sights.

But back to our struggling shooter. Here is where some specialized tools and techniques will often help you diagnose the problem. The first one I resort to is typically a SIRT pistol. Have your student aim at the target, or at least how they think "aiming" works, and then have them press the trigger while you look at the target. Where the laser lands is a huge clue as to what they're doing with the sights. Many times people think they are looking through the sights when in actuality they are looking over the sights, still attempting to see the target. Historically a lot of instructors have placed an empty shell casing on the rear sight, forcing the shooter to look through the rear sight properly. That works, but it can't be done at speed, as the instructor must place a shell casing on the rear sight, then have the shooter shoot. Obviously recoil and the firearm cycling will throw the casing, so then the instructor has to do it again. I've taken the shortcut of putting a piece of masking tape across the top of the rear sight. I just tell the shooter than if they're seeing the front sight under the tape, they're good, and if they're seeing it over the tape, they're wrong. In most of the cases where I've done this, I've helped the shooter immensely.

I am so happy with this that I may very well pre-emptively do it on the first few days of working with new shooters in order to teach them how to see through the sights, rather than over them. I don't think this is a panacea, but it definitely works for some of that problematic crowd.

One last thing that you may wish to try if none of the above techniques work, and that is give the student a marker and some paper and have them draw what they're seeing. I have seen some excellent instructors stymied with frustration until they've resorted to that. From the student's drawing you can sometimes steer them in to what they should be seeing.

As a very experienced shooter it is often difficult to translate what you do and see into something usable for a newer student. This is probably the biggest challenge of being a long time firearms instructor. I combat this by watching and learning from a lot of other instructors, because their viewpoint and verbiage gives me a lot of ideas as to how to communicate these concepts. If I stay a student, then hopefully I'll continue to be able to communicate to a student.