Front Sight Folly

​I am sure that every one of us has been told to focus on the front sight in order to get an accurate shot off. Unfortunately, this is a concept that was misapplied and misinterpreted for decades. Imagine if you were told to focus and stare at the front of your vehicle while travelling a hundred miles per hour while the rest of the world is completely blurry. This is practically the same thing, especially when people recommend this technique for combat shooting where your threat and you are both moving.

THE ORIGIN

​Front sight focus has been around for as long as precision iron sights have been around. It has its origins in target shooting as a last step in verification that your sights are properly aligned and placed in the proper hold. At this point you can begin to manipulate the trigger. However, front sight focus is a training aid for those who couldn’t tell what properly aligned sights looked like when they simply super-imposed them on the target. It was never meant to be a focal point in the shooting process, certainly not for combat shooting.

MY EXPERIENCE

​I first encountered the folly of the front sight focus technique when I was at Edson Range in Camp Pendleton, California. I was practicing for my boot camp qualification on the rifle range for the 500-meter shots. I would get good bone support, shimmy my body where it needed to be for my natural point of aim, just as I was trained. Then I would take a breath in, close my eyes, exhale, open my eyes and see where my sights rested. They were on. At that point, I loaded a magazine of five rounds of M855 into the rifle and started the process again, but this time I focused on my front sight and then manipulated the safety before sending my shot downrange. The target would be lowered into the pits and sent back up with a shot marker or miss indicator. I missed 5 out of 5 times. The coach grilled me about ensuring my sights were aligned and that I focused on the front sight. “Aye aye, sir!” I would respond, but in my head 

​I got out another magazine of 5 rounds and tried again. I did the same process but this time I tried something new. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I was doing was called focal shifts. I would focus on the target and superimpose my perfectly centered front sight on the target and then shift my focus back to the very close front sight. With the front sight completely crisp and clear, my target would disappear completely. I would move my front sight to the left, right, and even down somewhat and still not be able to see a blurry target. I was shooting a man sized B27 target and there was nothing black to be seen and referenced on when I focused on the front sight at 500 meters.

​Noticing that I couldn’t do as I was trained, I had to make it up as I went along in order to MAKE SURE I hit my target. Therefore, what I did was start out superimposing my front sight on the target, then I performed a focal shift to my front sight to very it was centered in the peep sight. After this confirmation, I shifted my focus back to the target slowly so I could verify that the tip of my front sight was sharp enough, even when fuzzy to be rested on the exact area I wanted it to go. Once I centered my fuzzy front sight on the target, I conducted a couple small focal shifts just enough to verify that my front sight, though fuzzy, was reliably resting where it needed to be. I even verified that the wind hadn’t picked up from the usual half-value we were getting consistently that day. Once I was satisfied, I disengaged the safety lever and let it fly with a gentle squeeze of the trigger. The target went down in the pits and came back with an impact in exactly where I had superimposed my fuzzy front sight. EUREKA!

COMBAT MISAPPLICATION

​I cannot even count how many times I have heard people say that you should train to look at your sights when in a gunfight. I have always had mixed emotions about this ranging from shock to utter disappointment in that person’s inexperience or poor training. Not that I was some kind of combat master, but I was fortunate enough that life presented me with a problem that I had to solve, which led me to realize how useless and misapplied this not-so-fundamental ‘FUNDAMENTAL’ of marksmanship was.

A SMALL DEMONSTRATION

​If you are reading this article, do me a favor and step back from the screen about 5 feet. Raise your thumb like a sight and point the tip of your thumb on the five, above. Once you have done that, focus on your thumbnail so it is completely clear. Then move your thumb left and right, up and down at random and try to find the 5 again while focusing on your all-important thumbnail. 

NEGLIGENCE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE

​Focusing on your sights is a violation of the 4th rule of firearms safety when your job is to read your target and analyze whether your threat is actually a threat. If you just did the little drill in the last paragraph, you might understand why. Also think about it this way: You had the visual acuity of someone with severe visual impairment, I.E., legally blind. Pulling the trigger while watching your sights instead of the threat is no different than closing your eyes or looking away and firing. You are criminally and civilly liable for every shot you take, so I would hope you can say that you could clearly see the threat and not say to a jury that you were looking at your gun while shooting at someone you couldn’t even clearly see.

DEVELOPMENTAL COMPONENT

​Front sight focus has been morphed to mean something I highly doubt it was ever meant to mean. Just like when you perform lots of reloads, it becomes unnecessary for you to stare at the magwell to ensure the magazine goes where you want it to go. Even now, people will say it is fine to stare at your gun while reloading in combat, but more professional combat shooters such as the SAS would say looking at your gun while reloading is a sign of poor training. Reloading should be done reflexively and without cognitive functions being robbed from the tactical situation. Combat is a competition against time and the wager is not a medal, but rather lives. Save the cognitive focus for the task at hand. Unless your gun is really presenting an issue such as a malfunction, you shouldn’t even need to glance at it. 

​When you are first learning what it looks like when your sights are fuzzy and superimposed on your target, yes, you should do a focal shift to verify that you have equal height and equal light and are aimed in the proper spot on the target. But this is assuming that you are conducting intentional practice and your goal is not to continue having to rely on focusing on your sights. Trust me, you do not need to stare at your sights to know if you are going to hit your target. This is merely an aid for your development as a shooter.

CLOSING

I have heard for years that shooters should be looking at their gun with a glance while reloading, focusing on the front sight, pinning the trigger to the rear, etc. Funny thing is that most of these things on the list have been found to be only useful when building skills at a very novice level. Unfortunately, the so-called experts were/are just regurgitating information that was said to them over the years and they are trying to force it down your throat now. But hey, that is just the way it is. But the buck stops with you. You can change it all by using your brain and thinking for yourself about whether it makes sense to stare at your gun or watch the threat as you're engage them.