Recently, I made a Facebook post concerning a shooting session I had where I shot poorly. I was frustrated because I shot far below what I know to be my demonstrated performance minimums and I expressed that frustration by ranting about myself online. A large number of friends reached out to me, either through comments on that post, or even by private message in an attempt to help me solve the problem. I am deeply humbled that so many folks would take time to do so, and I appreciate everyone who did. Thank you.

What they all were suggesting was that I put a red dot optic on my carry pistol, and they all felt it would take care of any shooting problems. Not to sound ungrateful, but I am rejecting that advice (for now), not to flat out ignore it, but for a very specific and needed reason – the red dot, while it will allow me to shoot better, will not permanently solve the issues I have.

I have two very specific problems, and I think it is far better to deal with them through software (built up skill and effort) rather than hardware that solves the problem only as long as I have the hardware available, but will allow the problem to arise as soon as the hardware is not available.

My first problem is physical. Essentially, I have opposing astigmatisms in each eye. That are somewhat at war with each other, and any corrective lenses requires ad odd mix. In fact, when I wore contacts, there was literally only one single company in the world that made soft contacts to that prescription, and I had to take their prices because there was no competition. So while one eye has poor mid-range and not great close range, the other eye has less than stellar distance vision but perfectly fine view within arm’s reach. So using glasses works for everyday things (except for the fact that I have to take the glasses off to read or see the dashboard of a car) works fine, it does not give me good perspective to shoot a pistol. Wearing them, I have crystal clear view of the target, but the sights are so blurry that I am almost point shooting. Wearing progressive lenses means I have to constantly bob my head up and down to see close and far at the same time. Shooting without glasses means the front sight is sharp and distinct, and the target is blurry, but not so much that I cannot tell where the midpoint of a B8 at 25 yards is (it is tough to do that, but I can just barely do it).

One of the things that contributed to my poor recent shooting was that I knew all this, but was stupid enough to think I could somehow “fix it” this time and I wore my correctives for the first two hours of the session. Once I dumped them – as my shooting buddy and mentor Chris L. told me to do – my performance quickly moved back to where it should have been. And my FB rant was mostly yelling at myself for trying to ignore reality.

So why then don’t I take all the excellent advice from tons of friends who are suggesting that I go to a red dot knowing that? I know how to deal with the issue, and a red dot would be a good permanent fix, yes.  But it is entirely down to the second issue.

This issue I have is one that is purely the result of poor mental discipline. I eye track. For those of who are better shooters than I am and don’t have that weakness, eye tracking is when your eyes bounce from the front sight to the target in order to make sure you are getting good hits. Unfortunately, that is a good way to not get good hits! Your eye jumps before the round has left the barrel and now instead of the gun being properly aligned it points elsewhere. Mine has a tendency to go low because I look over the sights.

So the hue and cry arises. “But Cecil! That will be fixed by a red dot! So stop being obstinate and jump on board the latest tacti-cool thing.” And I cannot disagree. If all I cared about was the basic accomplishment of a task, then going to a red dot would completely eliminate the eye tracking issue since I would be essentially looking at the target the entire time.

Here is the crux of my refusal. I am not focused on accomplishing that task. The simple fact is that I can shoot well enough right now that I have no doubt that I currently posses the shooting ability to take care of 98% of any plausible violent situation in which I will need to use a firearm to defend myself. In other words, any failure in such a situation will not be the fault of my shooting performance. So what I am spending all this time on is dealing with almost an abstract pursuit down the rabbit hole of tiny fractional improvements on the existing skill set.

Don’t get me wrong either. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. My continued training in jiu-jitsu is a perfect example. Once you get to purple belt level, your grappling skills will easily handle 95+% of any H2H scenario, so putting so much time, money, blood, sweat, and tears into the levels past that is just either for a purely enjoyment outlook, or for competition, or, as I said, going down the rabbit hole of little things. There is nothing wrong with that because arguably that is a far more useful and productive way to spend time in our lives instead of mindlessly cruising the internet, or countless hours drinking at a sports bar watching sports ball.

However, this allows me to try to fix what I am able to with my shooting performance through software instead of hardware, without risking a failure to perform when I need to. Will I go to a red dot sooner than later? Almost certainly. But I don’t feel like I need to do it RIGHT NOW.

Again, thank you to all that reached out. I hope this explains why I am not taking all that good advice for the moment.