Chapter 14
EYES AND SIGHTS
THE DEFENSIVE SIGHTING CONTINUUM
Shooting against another competitor, no matter how seriously, does not produce the same physical reactions as dealing with a predatory attack.
It’s normal for the vision to focus on the threat when surprised by an attack. Your technique should take this into account.
Missing from the last half-century of defensive shooting education has been an understanding of how our visual systems work, particularly when in a threat response. This has lead to defensive shooting students expecting to be able to do things that are unlikely to happen when actually facing a lethal attack.
Much of this centered on the idea that, because such things work in competition, mano-a-mano, they must work in a fight. Perhaps this is true in the kind of altercation where the violence is mutual (or at least anticipated), but the body’s natural reactions make this highly unlikely when faced with the kind of sudden threat which activates them.
CHANGES IN THE VISUAL SYSTEM
In the chapter on the body’s natural reactions, I touched on the changes to the eye: an increase in resolution in the center of the eye and a corresponding increase in image detail to the visual cortex. The ‘why’ should be obvious: to better see our threat.
Humans are visual creatures, and especially so when we’re dealing with something that wants to harm us. Even in those cases where we achieve our initial startle reaction as a result of an audio stimulus, it’s our vision that gives us the information about what the threat is doing that allows us to protect ourselves.
That’s not the only thing that our bodies do to help us out. Along with increase in resolution comes a locking of visual focus on the threat. The eye locks its focus at optical infinity, which is roughly six meters, and becomes less able (or completely unable) to change focus at will.21 This combination of focus and resolution serves to fixate attention on the threat - which is exactly where we want and need it to be.
Given these very real physical changes, how reasonable is it to expect that you’ll be able to focus precisely on a one-eighth-inch-wide piece of metal being held at arm’s length? I’d say, not very!
How then should you practice in anticipation of the changes in your visual systems? By using your eyes the way they’ve evolved to function: focused firmly on the threat.
FOCUS ON THE THREAT, NOT ON YOUR SIGHTS
Your visual system wants to focus on the threat to gather all the information it can to help you survive. Let it! Focus on the threat - in practice or training, your target - and simply bring the gun into and parallel to your line of sight.
Most people, at the most likely defensive shooting distances, will have no problem getting high-center-chest hits, reliably and at speed, by simply doing this. Again: focus on the target, keep focused on the target, and as you do that simply extend the gun into and parallel with your line of sight. When the gun reaches full extension, stroke the trigger smoothly and swiftly. Make sure that you’re using the natural, neutral stance, that you have equal extension with both arms, and that you have the strong, ‘crush’ grasp covered earlier.
By doing this you’re using two methods of aligning the gun on target simultaneously: kinesthetic alignment, where you’re physically orienting the gun onto the target, along with a non-cognitive visual component that encourages you to do things that are nice and symmetrical: in other words, parallel.
Orient to the target, focus on it, and bring the gun into and parallel to your line of sight. It’s not hard, and it works - even people who have never fired a gun before can easily get vital zone hits, at 12 to 15 feet and in rapid fire, after less than a minute of instruction. I’ve done it with students and I’ve seen others do it with theirs. This technique is intuitive, because it works well with what the body does naturally.
This is most assuredly not ‘point shooting’ in the sense that most people use that word. The gun is being indexed by the natural interaction of your visual line of sight and the mechanical alignment that your equally extended arms provide. Just because you’re not using the little pieces of metal on top of the revolver doesn’t mean you’re not solidly indexing on target.
Start by focusing on the target and simply bring the gun into and parallel with your line of sight.
Extending your reach
How far can you shoot effectively with this technique? It varies from person to person; you’ll be different than me, and you won’t know until you try. You need to train at varying distances, with varying sized targets, to find out what your limits are. In principle, however, as the precision required increases you’ll need to apply more control over the deviation of your muzzle: you’ll need to hold the gun steadier, slow down, and pay more attention to a smooth trigger stroke.
There comes a point, however, when the maximum amount of deviation control you’re able to apply isn’t sufficient to do the job without increasing the precision of your alignment. As it happens, your gun has precision tools built in that allow you to do this - they’re called sights.
A sight is nothing more than an alignment guide. There’s nothing magical about the sights on your revolver; they just help you align the gun on target. If you’re a woodworker or a mechanic, you know all about alignment guides. They serve as handy references to help you put things together more precisely than you could by ‘eyeballing.’ Sights do the same thing.
I say this not to be overly simplistic, but rather to put you in the right frame of mind. For too long handgun sighting has been taught as an arcane art, one that you mastered only after learning the proper mantra and doing lots of gun kata. Get that out of your head: sights are nothing but alignment guides, and they have a range of use from coarse to fine.
Sights exist to help you more precisely align the muzzle on target. They’re alignment guides in the truest sense of the word.
Focus on the target, let the sights blur - they’ll still work to align the gun!
You’re looking through the sights, not at the sights.
Once you’ve found the limits of your ability to align the gun on target by simply bringing it into and parallel with your line of sight, it’s time to bring those alignment guides into play. Just as before, you’re going to use that natural stance, keep your focus on the target, and extend the gun into and parallel with your line of sight. This time, though, you’re going to take notice of your sights.
Note that I didn’t say “focus on your sights” - I said, and meant, take notice of them. Your focus will remain locked on the target, just as the clinical and empirical evidence suggests it will - but you’ll be deliberately aligning your front and rear sight onto the target. You’ll simply superimpose the front and rear sights over your razor-sharp target. You’re looking through the sights, not at the sights.
Put the blade inside the notch, with the tops level and an equal amount of light on either side.
If you have more light on one side of the notch than the other, you’ll shoot to the opposite side.
… or you may shoot low.
If the blade isn’t level, you may shoot high …
Your sights will be blurry and the target will be sharp. Don’t worry, the alignment guides will still align, and with far better results than the traditionalists will ever acknowledge.
Sight alignment
Let’s take a moment to review how to use those alignment guides.
Unless you’ve done something absolutely wild with your revolver’s sights, you’ll have some sort of a blade at the muzzle and some sort of a notch at the rear of the frame. Using them is simple: put the blade inside the notch, with the tops level and an equal amount of light on either side.
If the blades aren’t level with each other, you’ll shoot high or low. If you have more light on one side of the notch than the other, you’ll shoot to the opposite side.
Normally, the bullet will hit at the top edge of the front blade. If it doesn’t, adjust your sights or change your ammunition - the middle of an attack is not the time to try to remember if your gun shoots high or low.
Proper sight picture
So, what does this focus-on-the-target sight picture look like? The target is sharp, the sights are slightly blurry - but aligned. That’s the key. Stay focused on the target as you align the sights and superimpose them on the place where you want to hit, then stroke the trigger smoothly.
The traditional method is to focus sharply on the front sight, align it with the rear, and superimpose the sharp sight picture onto the target. I don’t deny that this is the best way to get highly accurate results, as long as a) you can in fact focus on the front sight and b) the target is of sufficient contrast to make the superimposition accurate.
As I’ve already mentioned when talking about the body’s natural reactions, what science tells us in regard to our eye’s performance under a threat reaction makes it unlikely that you will be able to focus on that front sight. There are also many people (like me) who can’t do so without special glasses. If you’re one of those people who wears multi-correction prescriptions, you’ll probably be physically prevented from focusing on your sights even if your body would allow it.
In addition, low contrast between the sights and target can make the superimposition error greater than it would be by focusing on the target.
If you have the eyesight, it’s occasionally helpful to practice with a traditional front sight focus to remind yourself what a good sight alignment looks like. My firm belief, however, is that all of your actual defensive shooting practice should be done with a target focus, with or without the addition of the alignment guides we call sights.
SO, WHEN DO YOU USE YOUR SIGHTS?
Simply put, use your sights whenever you need to. Note that I didn’t say whenever you can, but when you need to. It may not seem like much of a distinction, but it is.
Unless I did something extremely choreographed and unrealistic, there’s really no training drill that I could give you where you couldn’t use your sights. On the training range you’ve got full control of your responses, capabilities and faculties - nothing is interfering with your eyesight, no one is shooting at you. Under those conditions it’s almost impossible to not use the sights.
During an attack, the body’s natural reactions cause your eyes to stop accommodation – the changing of curvature to focus at different distances – and lock their focus on the threat. This makes it highly unlikely that you’ll be able to focus on that narrow piece of metal at the end of your arm. If you can’t do that, you can’t use those sights as traditionally taught. There is, therefore, a gap of ability between what you can do in practice and what you can do when attacked.
Training to use your sights whenever you can - which on the training range is always - and then getting yourself into a situation where you can’t, is a prescription for inferior performance. Instead, practice using your sights only when you need to, when you need the additional precision that the alignment guides on the top of your revolver give you. If you’re getting the hits you need to get without them, there’s no reason to be using the sights.
SIGHTS AND EFFICIENCY
Remember that your goal is to be efficient. Using the sights in any manner will take a little more time than not using them. If you’re spending time using the sights when you don’t need to, that time is wasted - you are being inefficient. Not using your sights when you need to means inaccurate shots, which is also inefficient. Using your sights only when you need to is the most efficient method.
In practice, ‘whenever you need to’ means whenever you recognize (see the ‘expert’ concept coming in again?) that you can’t achieve the level of precision dictated by the target without them. This means, again, that you’ll need to train with various target sizes at various distances, preferably called at random by a training partner, and default to not using the sights until you reach failure. When you can’t achieve the precision you need with the default, then you bring your sights into play.
Practice to failure, then change something to fix the failure. That’s the only way you’ll really learn when you need to use your sights - or anything else in defensive shooting.
THE MYTH OF EYE DOMINANCE
A staple of defensive shooting courses is the test to determine your dominant eye, then a prescription of what to do if - like many people - your dominant eye and dominant hand don’t match. Usually this test involves some variation of focusing on a distant object, framing that object with your hands, and bringing your hands to your face while keeping the object in clear view. The eye over which your hands land is your dominant eye.
It’s common, it’s misunderstood, and it’s irrelevant to defensive shooting.
A bit of knowledge goes a long way. You have a dominant eye only because your brain has become accustomed to using one eye, the dominant one, for precise X-Y positioning and your other, subordinate, eye for z-axis (depth) information.23, 24, 25 This preference doesn’t appear to be a function of physiology; it’s just habituation, and as such it’s possible to retrain your brain to make the other eye dominant, then switch back (I’ve done it myself).
The use of the eyes in a dominant/subordinate manner is how we see everything, how we gather all our visual information, and - most importantly - how we use tools. Our brain expects to see X-Y-Z information, and it puts that information together to form a three-dimensional image. Evolution has produced a visual system of tremendous ability that has facilitated not just our survival, but our progression as a species. Without it, man would not be a tool-using animal.
If you’ve ever done this in class, it may be a sign that you weren’t training in realistic defensive shooting skills.
The gun is a tool, and the brain expects to be able to use it like any other tool.
When you use a hammer, do you focus on the hammer head and let the nail go blurry? How about putting a key in a lock - do you focus on the tip of the key as you bring it to the keyhole? The answer in both cases is no; you’d find it insanely difficult to hang a picture or open your front door if you did.
We use tools (this is going to sound very familiar) by focusing on the endpoint of the task, putting it in the middle of our line of sight, and bringing the tool to the work. This is how we’ve evolved to use tools. That is how our vision works naturally.
When under the full force of a body alarm reaction, your visual system is unlikely to operate counter to the many thousands of years that has produced it. It is going to work as it always does, only now it won’t be possible to voluntarily change it the way you can when practicing at the range. The body’s natural reactions that occur as a result of the threat response ensure that the eyes work the way they’ve always worked - the way they want to work.
YOUR EYES AND YOUR SHOOTING STANCE
Being intuitive means using the tools of defense, your revolver, the way that your body works naturally, in this case by focusing on the target. It also means bringing the gun into the center of your field of view and parallel with it.
If you adopt a shooting stance in training that brings the gun off-center, your visual system no longer works naturally. Instead of the gun being in the center of your field of vision where your eyes can work together naturally, the gun ends up in front of one eye. The brain can no longer put together the X-Y and Z-axis information, and one eye produces a picture that the brain can’t integrate properly. If the dominant eye is not behind the gun, you won’t be able to properly align the sights on target unless you close it - or do something else completely non-natural, like craning your neck at a severe angle to compensate.
Once-popular bladed/bent elbows stances bring the gun out of optical alignment with both eyes and are non-intuitive by definition.
These off-center stances are non-intuitive because they don’t work with your body’s natural reaction of squaring to the threat, or your body’s natural use of dominant and subordinate binocular eyesight. Focusing on the target, with a natural stance that puts the gun in the center of your field of view, is intuitive because it all works with how your visual system operates.
This is why the very tests that show you which is your dominant eye also show why it’s unimportant: because you have to force your visual system to do something that it’s not used to doing, something non-intuitive - which only proves that it doesn’t work well that way.
This, I believe, goes a long way to explaining why, regardless of prior training or experience, we consistently see people on surveillance videos adopting the squared-off, neutral stance with both arms extended directly in front of their face. It’s the way their bodies - including their visual systems - want to work. Why fight city hall when you don’t need to?