GUNSMARTS: Sight Alignment & Sight Picture

New shooters often focus so much on gun handling, things like how to grip and stand that they don’t truly understand what they need to see with their sights. In this GUNSMARTS video, I’m not only sharing what a proper sight picture looks like, I dig deeper into how to align iron sights so that you can be as accurate as possible.

The most common sights you’ll find on handguns at your local dealer are post and notch, iron sights. The front sight, the one closest to the end of the muzzle is the post and the rear sight, closest to your eyes has a notch in it. Lining them up is pretty simple. You want to aim in a way so that your front sight lines up with the notch in the rear sight on your target. This is what we call acquiring a sight picture. The more perfect we can make this sight picture look, the more accurate we can be.

Tips to help you line up your sights

• Start with a target that has a defined, smaller aiming point to help you focus.
• As you bring the firearm up on target, switch your focus from your target to your sights.
• Line up your sights so that your front sight is centered between your rear sight and superimposed on the center of the target.
• Your main focus should be on the front sight and it should be crisp and clear, with the rear sight and the target a little blurry.

At this point, you can shoot and if you have good trigger control you’ll likely hit or come close to the center of your target. If your goal is to pile shots on top of each other in a tight group, you’ll want to examine your sight picture even more closely.

Finer sight alignment

As you look at your front sight, focus on the top, outer corners of the post. Then line them evenly with the inner, upper corners of the rear sight forming a straight line. After that, switch focus to look at the amount of light on either side of your front sight. You want to work to even things out so that you have equal bars of light between your front sight and your rear sight.

Equal space between the front sight and the rear keeps you centered left and right on target and lining up those upper corners of both sights keeps you in the middle so that you don’t drift high or low. By working on lining up your sights and by properly pressing the trigger, you’ll hit exactly where you’re aiming.

Want more GUNSMARTS? Visit GUNSMARTS for links to more videos, free downloads, and to enter in giveaways.