Closed vs. Open Pistol Optics *Expanded*

As instructors, the gear market sometimes creates the questions that we have to answer for our students. And one of the questions I've been getting a lot lately is closed or open optics when it comes to a red.site on a defensive pistol. Now, if you're choosing a red.site on a defensive pistol, then this is a question that you're going to be confronting because more and more options are out there for closed or optics. Let me talk about exactly what I mean. Traditionally, when you talk about a red dot up on top of a pistol, you've got one plane of the glass that is going to be reflecting light back to your eyes and that's what you're going to be looking through to see the dot or the circle dot or whatever it is you using for a radical. And that's usually a very protected piece of glass that's inside of some type of frame, but it is essentially open. And that means that dust and dirt and all sorts of things can get in here potentially obscuring the dot And certainly getting onto the glass surface itself on the inside, not just on the front and this has been one of the concerns and complaints that a lot of us have had about red dot optics on life saving tools. The idea that if I might pull this out of a hole and rain or dust or dirt or lint or whatever else has caused this glass window to be very clouded or even shooting. The gun has caused the front of it to be very clouded that now obscures my ability to use the red.site for increased deviation control. So the market has responded with closed optics. And what this gives me is two surfaces of glass with everything contained between them. And it's not only going to be more secure. In other words, it's gonna be more reliable because it's less likely that the that light could be blocked by some kind of debris that gets inside of there or that the window pane itself could get dirty. But it also, and this is something I think gets overlooked a lot, makes it much easier to clean off. So if we take a close look at this open optic right now, there's just a little bit of lint in there. It's a little bit of dust and that's just from, from handling this. I haven't been using this lot. I've been shooting, I've been abusing it didn't stage it. There's just some lint in there from it being around my clothing, some dust from the environment in there. So if I drive this gun out. I'm gonna go ahead and close it. It's empty. I drive this gun out and I see the sunlight or the reflectors from the video light here on this lint that's going to obscure my vision. Well, if I came up to drive out and shoot, and it was really obscured and it may be diffracted that dot That I need for high level precision. Or if I couldn't see anything, it's going to be relatively difficult for me to get in there to actually whip it off. And with a narrow, like this is a 507 site from hollow sun. This is a very narrow design designed specifically for a single stack, concealed sealed carry guns. This is, it's gonna be hard for me to get in there and clean off if however, I were to take this 509 optic and have the same exact experience I could theoretically very easily wipe that lint or wipe that dirt off the front of the gun, whether I was using clothing or not. But even in the heat of the moment, it's gonna be much easier for me to clear this optic of rain or dirt or lint or whatever else might be on it, blood, whatever we have in this defensive environment. So there is a huge advantage to the closed optic and I, I have to admit it first when I saw the closed optics, they look big, they look bulky, but really in in surface area and in the potential for any negative, any downside to the red dot I think the balance is definitely there in terms of the closed optic. So more and more I'm leaning in this direction. And again, this is the 509 versus the 507 from hollow sun. But there are many different options that are available in the market and I'm sure there's gonna be more coming all the time. So when you're thinking about open or closed optics, consider the advantage and disadvantage of both, not just the aesthetics or the way it looks when it's sitting there on the counter or even when you're out there at the range practicing.