Anyone else using pistol micro red dots on PB guns?

[SignOfZeta]

So, I think it's interesting that this has been an axiom in paintball for a long time, yet real steel pistol shooters have gradually moved towards using red dots more and more. At action bay distances they are shooting more or less at the same distances as we shoot (or closer), so the accuracy of the respective platforms is essentially a non issue. They are getting tangible improvement in first hit accuracy, and speed of acquisition, and I think that can translate over to our game in certain situations.

ECAP has a good point in his comment above that with short, unsupported guns (i.e. pistols) a sight actually starts to make sense. If you don't have the extra point of contact with a stock, you easily lose your frame of reference for aiming by feel. You'll see them on plenty of old head stockgun setups.

Also for what it's worth, I always kept my dot sights dialed in for about 25-30 feet distance. Close enough where the spread doesn't really kick in, and you can guarantee first shot hits on elbows, hoppers, and through gaps. I actually became a dot sight user way back when because I was a kid on a budget...I had $20 to play a day. $5 gas, $5 entry, $10 for 100 paintballs. With 100 paintballs per day, aiming by walking my shots in was out of the question.

I hate to pop this bubble but…”real steel shooters” do nothing like paintball. Paintballers shoot 100s of thousands of rounds and get hit every day. They’re taking cover and squatting and falling down and running. People shooting actual firearms at each other in close combat don’t live long enough to become snap shooters and people shooting targets aren’t dodging shots. I’m talking about real life here. Paintballers know more about shooting and being shot at than anyone.

There is nothing that helps “speed of acquisition” like having no sight at all. Think about this…

You raise the gun, look through the sight for some non-zero amount of time, and then pull the trigger when aiming is complete.

Snap shooters in paintball simply point the gun and fire. I don’t have to look down a sight. I already know what it’s pointed at, what it was pointed at, what it’s about to be pointed at. The sighting phase is a waste of time so the sight is a waste of time.

Shorter guns are not as easy to point as longer ones, totally true, but the sight is useless on either of you’ve practiced with that gun enough. If you’re constantly making changes to the gun you’ll never master it but if you leave it alone you eventually will.

The best use of a sight, and this was sorta said above, is when you’re laying down or crammed in a very strange position that disallows pointing the gun like you usually do. Like if your gun is right up against your face and shooting 9:00 or something. At that point a sight would help to give you better than “who knows?” level hope. I don’t know how you’re going to pump the gun after that though without moving a lot so I hope it’s dead on.

[russc]

Shorter guns are not as easy to point as longer ones, totally true, but the sight is useless on either of you’ve practiced with that gun enough. If you’re constantly making changes to the gun you’ll never master it but if you leave it alone you eventually will.

A short gun is one thing, a gun that doesn't have a tank or stock in your shoulder is another. Snap shooting is a hell of a lot harder with a pistol because you've got extra degrees of freedom. I've got plenty of guns I can shoot confidently like you're talking about - none of them are pistols.

I've also found it can be difficult to really nail the first shot after posting up, even if it's easy to make those shots while snapping. it's like inertial reference drift in a guidance computer - without a sight picture for reference, the barrel tip wanders off. Not as much of a problem on something like a RF sniper with a full length rail to look down, while very much a problem on a centerfeed.

[The Inflicted]

I definitely prefer to have a sight on my guns, especially if it's a pump or magfed.
I'm partial to Armson OEGs because of their reliability and durability, and I've gotten good results with smaller cheap red dots, but haven't had good luck with the micro-sized ones. The one I tried were made 10 years or so though, before the trend of putting them on pistols, but I found they tended to lose zero or stop working a lot faster than their bigger cousins. Maybe things have improved nowadays.