Page 18 - topcoverissue19

18 TOP COVER SPRING 2024

A BRITISH WINNER: A VISIT

TO SHIELD SIGHTS IN DORSET

The vast majority of today’s AFOs
won’t remember a time when they
haven’t had some sort of optical sight
mounted on their issue carbine –
and the majority of these will have
had an illuminated red dot. It seems
inconceivable now that we ever used
iron sights. The use of red-dot sights
on pistols though is another matter.
In the US, micro red-dot sights, or
MRDs, have only really caught on in
law enforcement in the last seven to
eight years, and so far, while several
UK forces are looking at them, only
two have actually adopted them for
operational use.
identical to those designed for rifles
Long history and carbines and were mounted on top
You might therefore be excused for of heavily customised, compensated
thinking that red-dot sights on pistols race guns. However, the concept took
are a new thing, in which case you’ll off and in competition, where speed
be surprised to find out that they first and accuracy were the aim (excuse the
appeared on the shooting competition pun), red dots started to win.
circuit well over 40 years ago! Back then, few if any manufacturers
Big and cumbersome, with poor saw any commercial advantage in
battery life, the early making a smaller, more practical sight
variants specifically for pistols. But in the
were mid-90s Jerry White, a top company Shield developed the world’s
British international
first commercially viable MRD.
practical pistol
With a UK pistol ban imminent,
competitor, had
Jerry visited forces around the country
that vision
to demonstrate his sight’s advantages
and his
for law enforcement. Sadly, he failed
Poole-
to sell the concept to a generation of
based
instructors brought up on traditional
iron sights, and I’m embarrassed to say
that I was one of the biggest cynics.
Middle age, deteriorating eyesight,
and my experiences of having to fire
my pistol operationally finally won
me round. Not being able to acquire
my sights in subdued light or focus
on them while fixated on an armed
suspect – and by then, the inability for
my eyes to acquire a crisply focused
front sight – got me thinking, but it
was range time that sold me.

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