(Photo courtesy of Richard Nance)
September 10, 2024
By Richard Nance
Sight alignment and sight picture are two of the seven widely accepted fundamentals of marksmanship. They are the only two that deal with aiming a firearm, which is important if you plan to hit your target using open sights or “iron sights”. (Sight alignment is a moot point with an optic or a laser, which is why they are so much easier to use).
Understanding sight alignment and sight picture will make you a better shooter. With this in mind, let’s define these terms, consider the difference between the two, and examine how they work together to guide your bullet to the target.
Sight Alignment Sight alignment refers to the orientation of the front and rear sights. It’s a two-step verification process. (For simplicity, let’s use the example of a handgun with a front sight blade and rear sight notch). When peering through the rear sight notch, ensure the top of the front sight and the top of the rear sight are level. That’s step one. Step two is making sure the front sight blade is centered between the left and right sides of the rear sight notch.
(Photo courtesy of Richard Nance) This vertical and horizontal alignment is summed up by the oft-used axiom, “equal height, equal light”. Height seems self-evident. Light refers to equal spacing on either side of the front sight blade when viewed through the rear sight notch. The gap should be the same on both sides, allowing an equal amount of light to shine through.
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Sight Picture Now let’s consider sight picture. This simply refers to overlaying your properly aligned sights onto the target. But your focus at the time the bullet leaves the barrel is important. Aiming, which combines sight alignment and sight picture, requires you to shift your focus several times before pressing the trigger. First, you’ll look at the target. If it’s made of paper, this part of the aiming process is no big deal. If your target is someone posing an imminent deadly threat, however, things get more complex.
Under duress, we tend to focus on the threat to such a degree that we lose a significant portion of our peripheral vision. This is commonly referred to as “tunnel vision”. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, tunnel vision can help you determine if the object in a would-be attacker’s hand is a gun or a cell phone. But tunnel vision makes it difficult to focus on those three protrusions atop your gun that enable you to aim. In fact, many claim you won’t be able to focus on your sights in a shooting. I think that depends largely on your skill level and the immediacy of the threat.
Against someone charging with a knife, your sight alignment and sight picture will be less refined than if you were preparing to shoot an assailant shielding himself with a hostage. In the case of the former, you may be only able to catch a glimpse of the sights but with the latter, your sight alignment must be precise.
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(Photo courtesy of Richard Nance) After orienting yourself to the target, your focus must shift to the sights to ensure they are properly aligned (sight alignment). Then you make sure the aligned sights are covering the exact point you are targeting (sight picture). Before pressing the trigger, your focus should be on the front sight. The front sight should be crystal clear. For this to happen, the rear sight and the target will blur.
Critical Misses What if your sight picture is off? An error in sight picture will result in your bullet impacting wherever the aligned sights are overlayed (assuming your other marksmanship fundamentals are on point). Even at distances further than 25 yards, an error in sight picture is likely to result in a hit somewhere on a torso-sized target.
As important as sight picture is, sight alignment is even more critical. Wherever your front sight is, is where your round will go. If the front sight is higher than the rear sight, your round will impact high, and so on. But that’s not all.
Unlike with sight picture, a sight alignment error becomes exponentially worse as distance increases. Renowned handgun instructor, Dave Spaulding teaches that misalignment of just 1/16-inch at 20 feet could result in a 4-inch variance in point of aim/point of impact. With this formula in mind, it’s easy to see how improper sight alignment could result in a clean miss on a torso-size target, even at a relatively close range.
Training Sight alignment and sight picture can be practiced without firing a shot. Confirm your gun is unloaded, with no ammunition in the vicinity, and that the muzzle always remains pointed in a safe direction. Or better yet, practice with an inert training gun.
One with a functional trigger that projects a laser, like a SIRT pistol, provides valuable feedback because the laser will either appear where you were aiming, or it won’t. Of course, even a properly aimed handgun can come off target if you slap the trigger or commit another error.
Concentrate and honestly evaluate each press of the trigger to see if it resulted in a hit or a miss. If you missed, was it an aiming problem or a trigger control problem? This is something you should ask yourself even during live-fire training. After all, diagnosing and correcting errors is the whole point of training.
Combined, sight alignment and sight picture facilitate aiming a handgun with iron sights. They work together but they aren’t one in the same. Understanding these marksmanship fundamentals will help make you a better shooter.
