People ask, “How does the Speed Sights sight picture work? What is the Point of Aim / Point of Impact?”
We design the Front and Rear sights to be properly sized with each other
so that the POA / POI is at the tip of the Front sight, at “combat distances”.
You can see that in the image below, from our website.
This can vary somewhat, depending on the shooter or what load you might be shooting.
But your group should center around the tip of the front sight.
The “Speed Sights group” is typically one big hole in the middle of the target.
The best way to use the Speed Sights is to just lock your vision onto the sharp tip of the front sight,
imagine you are “stabbing” it into where you want your bullet to go. Then relax, look “over”
them, rather than “at” them; let your peripheral vision let you know when the bright triple
diamond pattern locks together.
The sharp tip gives you the most precise pistol sight picture on the market.
The large, bright, interlocking diamonds lining up give you the fastest pistol sight picture on the market.
So you get speed AND accuracy for your hand gun.
If you choose any of the tritium night sight options, this speed and accuracy also helps you in low light conditions.
If for some reason your particular hand gun shoots significantly higher or lower, we would swap
out the Rear sight for one that is higher or lower to change your POI…no charge.
This is almost never needed, however, because the Speed Sights are already “dialed” in for each
brand of gun and caliber. But it is part of our famous guarantee: “Shoot better…or your money back.”
You can install your Speed Sights, shoot them for two months, if you feel you aren’t shooting better, you
can still send them back for a full refund. We feel that if you paid out your hard earned money to shoot better
and you don’t…then there was no point in spending the money and we want to return it.
But that is also very rare. The Speed Sights are not ordinary pistol sights, we have a lot of confidence in them. Most people
write and say, “I love my Speed Sights. I have them on all my pistols.” So odds are good they will
“do their job” for you, too, and give you more fun at the range and keep you safer on the street.
“How can you miss?”
More basics and details on the history of sight picture and sight alignment and how Speed Sights make an ultimate sight picture.
Very soon after firearms were invented, various sight mechanisms were developed in order for the
barrel of the pistol or rifle to be aligned with the target.
The most common sight picture in use today for pistols is called the “Patridge” sight system. It was developed by Eugene Patridge
in the about 1893. It had a front sight or post on the front of the pistol and two sight posts on the rear of the pistol.
By lining up the front sight inside the middle of the rear sight, this gives proper sight alignment or a proper sight picture, that
tells the shooter if the barrel of their pistol is in alignment with the target.
It was a huge improvement, but also had real problems. The front sight had to not only appear to be exactly in the middle of the two
rear sight posts to make the proper sight picture, but the front sight also had to be even across the top of the rear sight to create a proper sight picture
for the hand gun. So while the shooter was trying to get the correct sight picture on their pistol, their eye had to scan across the top, guess whether the
top of the front sight and rear sight was aligned, then scan the left and right “light gap” or light showing through on either side of the front sight of the pistol and the
two rear sight posts on the pistol. So their eyes had to scan one spot, then another.
In addition, the typical front sight and rear sight for a pistol are a dark metal color and very small.
So in order to create proper sight alignment and a proper sight picture for a pistol, the shooter has to focus on two very small, dark parts, the front sight and the
rear sight, then guess or estimate whether the front sight is sitting exactly in the middle of the rear sight and the top of the front sight had to be even
across the top of the rear sight as well. Then the shooter had to hold the front sight and rear sight in that correct sight picture during the shooting process,
But as the trigger was squeezed, or the shooter breathed, their hands would shake or tremor and the front sight and rear sight would come out of the proper sight alignment and they would lose their sight picture.
So maintaining proper sight alignment is even more difficult when under stress or very rapid fire shooting with a handgun, such as what happens in a real shoot out.
When under high stress, the shape of the lens of the eye actually changes and makes it impossible to focus on a front sight or a rear sight and especially a front sight and a rear sight in a proper sight alignment with the target, otherwise called a proper sight picture.
Over the years, pistol sight manufacturers have tried to remedy this issue by making the front sight and the rear sight more visible on the gun. Some made the front sight really large and added in a white ring. Some made a front sight and a rear sight with fiber optic rods that would channel light and glow brightly when exposed to sun light. Some tried to make the front sight larger or brighter and made the rear sights actually darker, for more “front sight focus”.
For night sights, sight manufacturers began to add in tritium lamps. Tritium night sights were a front sight with a tritium lamp in the middle and a rear sight with a tritium lamp in each rear sight post.
But having only tiny small green glowing dots in low light shooting made finding the proper sight alignment and sight picture even more difficult.
But all these efforts to create a better sight picture failed when tested in the real world. Research by police scientists found that during real shoot outs, users would report that they did NOT remember seeing their sights. In the extreme stress of a life and death situation, the front sight and the rear sight, the sight picture, “disappeared” to the shooter.
Even well trained shooters who had years of practice acquiring the proper sight picture would not remember seeing or using their sights.
During a real gun fight, for a pistol shooter to try and slow down and carefully align the front sight with the rear sight and acquire the proper sight picture could be fatal. In addition, during a real gun fight, when fractions of a second count, the sight picture, the sight alignment of the pistol, is thrown off by the sharp recoil and must be found again. The shooter must control the recoil as it makes the gun violently move and then work to again line up the front sight with the rear sight to set up the proper sight picture and sight alignment of the pistol to the target. To find the front sight and rear sight over and over again and to get the proper sight picture over and over during high stress, rapid fire pistol shooting, when the sights are small, dark and with no intuitive recognizable pattern was essentially impossible.
This is where Speed Sights have been PROVEN different.
Read the “Combat Reports” or “incident reports” on the Speed Sights website for true stories, true reports from Speed Sight users that were in actual shoot outs with Speed Sights on their pistols. They all reported that the Speed Sights front sight and rear sight, the sight picture, did NOT disappear during the extreme rapid fire shoot outs and stress. One officer reported that during the “condition black” his bright orange front sight actually seemed to “magnify” and enlarge during the shoot out. His “tunnel vision” actually focused on his front sight and magnified it in his visual system.
The Speed Sights pistol sight picture is NOT dependent on “guessing” or estimating whether the front sight and rear sight are in proper alignment to make a correct sight picture on a hand gun. The Speed Sights sight picture just snaps instantly together for your eyes in a highly visible and recognizable symmetrical pattern.
The Speed Sight triple diamond pattern is large, bright, sharp and exact. There is no guessing the “light gap” and whether the front sight post is exactly aligned in the center of the two rear sight posts, in the “notch” of the rear sight.
The Speed Sight hand gun sight picture is completely independent of the target lighting environment or the color of the target itself. Ordinary “legacy” pistol sights from 1893 are seen best when the target is bright like a piece of paper or paper target, to create maximum contrast between the front sight, the rear sight and the target.
But the Speed Sights sight picture is completely independent. The Speed Sights pistol sight picture uses only the large, bright, sharp triple diamonds, one on the front sight, two diamonds on the rear sight, to create an instantly recognizable sight picture. This tells the shooter instantly whether their front sight and rear sight are exactly lined up to make the perfect sight picture.
In the Speed Sights sight picture, the triple diamond pattern aligns tip to tip, or point to point, so there is no guess work, no estimation needed.
In addition, the Speed Sight front sight is the largest, brightest, sharpest front sight on the market. The rear sights are also large, bright and sharp. The front is uses a special high visibility fluorescent pigment to make it even more visible. They can be seen over 20 feet away, indoors or out. You get your choice of a bright fluorescent orange, green or hot pink front sight. The rear sight is always bright white. The hot front sight color catches the attention of the “focal vision” of the eye, the peripheral vision is less concerned with color than contrast and movement. So the peripheral vision works with the rear sight. Between the two, the Speed Sights work with your eyes natural function and that is why it feels so easy and natural to acquire a proper sight picture and proper sight alignment with the Speed Sights on your gun.
So…do you want to quickly acquire the proper sight picture on your gun, to have a razor sharp sight picture that instantly tells you whether your front sight and rear sight are aligned exactly with the target? Speed Sights is PROVEN to provide the ultimate high speed pistol sight picture that is right there when you need it, giving you more fun at the range and keeping you safer on the street.
Speed Sights is the only gun sight on the market to offer our famous guarantee: “Shoot better…or your money back…” You can actually install them on your gun, shoot them for two months and you can still return them for a full refund if you are not shooting faster and more accurately.
We can offer that guarantee because almost no one ever sends them back! Most people say, “I love my Speed Sights, I have them on all my guns.”
So…Speed Sights…the ultimate combat sight picture. Made in the USA.
Additional links that discuss sight picture and sight alignment.
https://www.nrawomen.com/content/sight-alignment-and-sight-picture-means-hitting-your-target/
