The Myth of Defensive Sighted Fire

Combat accuracy is defined as any shot that significantly affects the target’s ability to present a lethal threat. Many people think that in order to be able to get precise hits into the high center chest, even at close distances like 20 feet, you need to have precise sight alignment/sight picture.

Mythbusting

Rob Pincus is on the range and has taped over the sights on his semiautomatic pistol in order to make the point that constantly needing sighted fire is a myth. He’s at a distance slightly beyond what most people train at for defensive shooting. He drives the gun out, gets good kinesthetic alignment, keeps both eyes open and focuses on the threat. When doing all that, he doesn’t need good sight alignment/sight picture. He demonstrates getting hits that display combat accuracy.

Transitioning

Being able to transition from unsighted fire to sighted fire when using self-defense weapons is incredibly important, so you should never take the sights off your gun or not have sights that you can use for high-precision shots.

Rob’s demonstration proves that making hits that show combat accuracy at defensive distances without using sighted fire is possible. His point is that if he can do it, you can do it too. You may need to train and practice for longer to achieve that than Rob did, or maybe you can get there in less time than he took.

Unsighted Fire

Whatever your level of firearms training is, you are capable of doing unsighted fire. Being confident in that position — extended, with kinesthetic alignment, eyes both open and both focused on the target — is very important. Understanding that unsighted fire is possible, is responsible, and can reliably get you hits in certain defensive shooting situations is part of being a good, confident, capable defensive shooter.