7 Firearm Fundamentals: SIGHT ALIGNMENT & SIGHT PICTURE

Panel: Trav, DY, Connolls, and JR

April 16, 2025, 4:39PM

Marshall Collins Alright, we are live happy to have DY and Travis with us for this discussion. We are just going to get into and talk a little bit about the next 2 firearm fundamentals. We talked about a STANCE and GRIP on the last discussion. Let's talk about SIGHT ALIGNMENT and SIGHT PICTURE. So STANCE, and GRIP are the first 2 fundamentals. The next 2 are SIGHT ALIGNMENT and SIGHT PICTURE.

Sight alignment essentially is marrying the front sight of your pistol… and we're talking about pistols. We'll get into rifles, I'm sure. Way on down the road.

But pistol fundamentals translate into rifle fundamentals and for whatever reason, it does not go the other direction. Rifle fundamentals do not translate into pistol fundamentals, but your pistol fundamentals will help you with rifle. So with sight alignment marrying up the front sight with the rear sight, typically with sight alignment on your pistols, you have kind of like a U shape on the rear sight and then you've typically got a post on the front sight. Nate, good to have you with us bud welcome.

Connolls 1:35 Hello. Apologies. Life's happening.

Marshall Collins 1:38 Oh man it. It will get in the way. It will get in the way. Well, get in the way. It's always a good thing, happy to have you with us, man. No problem. Thanks for being here. We are getting into sight alignment and sight picture and I was getting into pistols, and we're sticking with pistols.

Typically on that rear sight, you've got a like a horseshoe or a U shape. In the front sight, you've got a post.

The methodology, put that front sight post in the center of the rear sight and then you have equal height and equal light with your relationship between the front sight post and the rear sight. I kinda always understood that whenever I started shooting. Was that the same for anybody? Was that ever explained? Or kind of not explained? Did anybody not get that?

Travis Greiner 2:46I don't think I got it. I don't remember anything from when, you know, shooting in basic and then, redeployment, shooting. It wasn't anything like kind of specific geared towards like sight alignment sight picture of like you know marrying like the split, the field goals, people helping people like it wasn't anything like that. I kind of remember, almost verbatim, like one of the, dudes was like “All right. Like get your front sight, push into the picture and once it's in there, squeeze. Now just imagine… just do that every time.” And that was kind of the training that I got, at least for rifle, for like one sight alignment / sight picture look like it was find a spot that's comfortable for you and then just match it each time.

Marshall Collins 3:38Got you. It was kind of always taken that the shooter knew to do that from the DoD and the different places that I got to go and do some shooting. It was, “Yeah. This person, this shooter obviously knows how to accomplish sight alignment. So move on to whatever the next thing is or accomplish the course of fire.” DY? With the stuff that you got to go and do, when, or did you always know about hard front sight focus? Did you always know about that or did you get that from somewhere?

DY 4:27Yeah. So I like I said before in, in the past, I was fortunate enough to be taught the right way the first time, so.

Connolls 4:31Yeah.

DY 4:36It just wasn't explained the way we explained it and I think the way we do it is very comprehensive and detailed.

Marshall Collins 4:43Agreed. Yeah, agreed. And we draw from a lot of these other agencies or customers that we've had the privilege and the honor of working with and essentially learning from.

Nate? What about you, man? When did you get it explained? When somebody showed me hard front sight focus and to get the most accurate shot that way, it kind of opened up a lot of doors and it allowed me to get a bit faster and to get a bit more accurate. What about you? What was that like?

Connolls 5:18Yeah, I think the first fire was still using the M9 Beretta, and I remember the guy. That kind of got us both into an elevated, more, more trained way of shooting. Who is an IPSC GM at that point in time and a really good instructor as well. He would paint the white dots of our Beretta black on the front sight and he kinda… your brain tells you like, what are you doing?

Marshall Collins 5:42Yeah.

Connolls 5:45Why? Why? How am I gonna line these dots up? Well, if you think about it, these are mass produced weapons. Everybody thinks that military grade. Oh, it's military grade. That's not a good thing.

Marshall Collins 5:56No, it's not.

Connolls 5:56I would not want that. So having these, you know CATMS or whoever is training you just trying to get you on paper, they say line the dots up. That's not really always gonna work when you black out the white dots on the rear and front sight post. Now you really have to focus on equal height equal light. You know, almost having like a flat surface along the top, if you will, and draw on your eye.

Marshall Collins 6:23Mm.

Connolls 6:25I like just a fiber optic front sight because it draws right.

Marshall Collins 6:31That’s right. Yeah.

Connolls 6:34But then again, there's still learning curve. So, knowing what your pistol is and being comfortable with it, but knowing the fundamentals behind why you're doing it, it's not just lining up dots. It's equal height, equal light on the actual sights. I don't know if you talked about this too 'cause, it is sight alignment AND sight picture. The target should be blurry.

Marshall Collins 6:56Yes.

Connolls 6:56The front sight should be clear and the rear sight should be blurry, which for people that don't shoot a lot seems counterproductive. Why is the target blurry? Well, I can't really affect.

Marshall Collins 7:06Counterintuitive.

Connolls 7:07I can't assess the equal height equal light or the positioning of my front sight in relation to my rear sight. If my target is crystal clear, that doesn't mean you lose PID of the target, which again is a discussion for another time.

Marshall Collins 7:09Hmm.

Connolls 7:22And I apologize if you already covered this. I think 1 important thing 'cause I found this out. I mentioned in the last talk. We had trained people that you know that they're trying to get better, but they might be a logistician or they might be ammo. They don't get to shoot a lot. These Air Force desk jobs or what have you.

Marshall Collins 7:37Yes Sir.

Connolls 7:40Drawing the gun high and driving out where your eyes are.

Marshall Collins 7:48Right.

Connolls 7:49And picking up that sight, you know, it's almost like you draw as high as you can. It'll be upper chest and you're driving out and almost like start to taper off at your chin, so your eyes can catch it. But what a lot of people do is they bring their eyes down or their head down to the sight. And now they're shrugging all the shoulders off.

Marshall Collins 8:05Yep.

Connolls 8:07And also then they start, “Oh, I can't see it.”

So they start manipulating it in the in their hands. I mean essentially if you…

Marshall Collins 8:14Messing the grip up.

Connolls 8:15Yeah, exactly. And now we're shooting halfway up the berm and you're like, “OK.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you actually looking at?” There's no way you can acquire both your rear and front sight post and the target, so you're essentially creating a straight line from your eyes through the rear sight, through the front sight to where your intended spot on your target is, I would…

Marshall Collins 8:22Hmm.

Connolls 8:39I would say if you were shooting at 7 meters…“Oh, OK. We want to keep the pistol completely level. Like if you put a level on top.” Well, I mean, if you're shooting at something that's a foot off the ground, that level doesn't make any sense. You know the bubbles not going to be in the middle, but you get what I'm saying. It should be a straight line from your eyes.

Marshall Collins 8:53Yeah. Yeah. Right, right.

Connolls 9:01Yeah, go ahead.

Marshall Collins 9:03Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought it up because that was going to legitimately be my next point. Fuzzy target, fuzzy rear sight, crystal clear, front sight post. And that will give you… where the tip of that front sight post is where the impact will be on your target. DY, you ever had those stock Glock rear sights shift on ya?

DY 9:36Oh yeah, the shifter, yeah.

Connolls 9:39Well, the new the new Sig Sauer that the Army and Air Force just…

Marshall Collins 9:39Oh yeah.

Connolls 9:46Won that contract, awarded that contract to now… they just explode.

Because I've had the rear…

Marshall Collins 9:52Oh really?

Connolls 9:53Yeah, the rear sight just explodes off and at 25 meter line it's about 6 inches low. That's military grade, that's military grade for ya.

Marshall Collins 10:02That, yeah, military grade. That is typically the lowest bidder. A military standard, which is not a throw shade at the people spending that money, but it is the reality of military grade.

Connolls 10:17You can throw me.

Marshall Collins 10:19Yeah, yeah.

Connolls 10:21But it's got a safety on it, so it's safe! (sarcasm) Doesn't matter where it shoots, it's safe.

Marshall Collins 10:26Oh well, we'll bring that up later! Yeah, we're gonna have to have the famous M9 rant or the external safety rant. That'll be another discussion, and we will have that discussion.

But Speaking of sights, you brought up not just the rear Glock sights and the problems that we've seen there for those stock sights, but also the Sig. One of the other gripes that I've got… The little moon for the front sight on the stock clock sights? You put the moon or the dot into the horseshoe and people say, “hey, I'm shooting high.” “Why am I shooting high?” “My fundamentals are great here!”

I ask, “Well, do you see a Half Moon or do you see a full moon?” You got a full moon. I'm dropping the circle into the horseshoe, OK. Well, you're supposed to be splitting it in half. That gives you equal height equal light on the stock clock sights. So just kind of caveat in on what you brought up knowing the ins and outs of those things can help. DY, did you have something, sorry?

DY 11:44Yeah, yeah. To your point. There's a lot of manufacturers out there that'll put that dot on the front sight and it draws your attention whenever you aim down the sights, you see the circle and you want to think up with the circle and the horseshoe without regard to.

Marshall Collins 11:56Mm.

DY 11:57The height of the front sight out of the front sight post. So like you said, if you're using a new piece of equipment, it's a consideration to get familiar with. When you aim down the sights, don't focus necessarily on any markings from the manufacturer, but focus on leveling the tops of the rear and front sight post.

Marshall Collins 12:16Yep, Yep. Give me just a second guys. I've got the young one.

Travis Greiner 12:29Like just to kind of talk about that point, right? Like the standard Glock sight. You know the aftermarket sights that you can get, I think you know do a better job of maintaining the fuzziness of the target versus the front sight post, right?

Where with that standard Glock sight at least, you almost lose it. But with, what is the one that Clark runs… the Proctor? Y Notch right? So if you have that equal height equal light but see the silhouette, you know on splitting the difference between those and still maintain that PID.

Where I think for me at least sometimes at distance, right, if we're shooting 25 meters, I lose. I kind of lose it all together and granted, I understand, that's a long ways away, but in my mind, I don't feel like even if I have equal height equal light, I don't feel like I'm on target just because I can't see that fuzziness at distance.

Marshall Collins 13:29That is… so you kind of segue into something else that I wanted to bring up real quick before we forget about it. Sight picture is taking the sight alignment and putting it onto the target to get your sight picture.

Now that that's out of the way. Back to what you were kind of talking about, Travis. 25 meters and doing our ten round slow fire graded. Slow fire for the Wilco standards. You start to lose the target to a degree, and you've got that arc of movement that you're never going to be able to get completely rid of. And I notice as well whenever I'm doing my 10 round slow fire.

Goodness gracious.

My eyes are getting a little fatigued when shooting. I need to take a minute. May even need to re holster and shake it out real quick and then go back to re-engage. My one round of 25 meters and that arc of movement, if you've got your trigger control and your stance and grip and you've got a hard front sight focus.

If those are all ironed out, you got a pretty good chance of putting the round, not only in the 8 ring, but probably in the Black.

And Travis, you got to see that on the last kind of training event that we that we had. Did you? Did you get to see some of that where if you just kind of rely on the fundamentals, more often than not, you're in the 8 ring and potentially in the black.

Travis Greiner 15:11For sure. Yeah, I definitely saw.

Kind of a later, in the course of fire that we shot where you were like kind of, in my ear almost and talking me through it.

Trusting that my fundamentals are gonna put the round where it's supposed to be and, oh, my gosh, it works. So yeah, I got, you know, to experience that first hand.

Marshall Collins 15:37Right on. Right on. And then DY, we were talking a little bit before the call. And Connlley, I know that you'll appreciate this trigger control, which is coming up next. So we're aiming right.

We're looking, we've got great hard front sight focus. Our sight alignment is square. We've developed a sight picture, stance and grip. Couldn't be any more appropriate.

And then it's all for not. It's all for, not. If we are inducing undue motion into the gun with a poor trigger press. And that will be one of our next discussions.

Trigger control and to quote Rob Latham, you know it's all for not with a new shooter if you can't stop inducing motion into the gun with a poor trigger press. Connolly. Sorry. I felt like I was stepping on you. Do you have something that you were gonna say?

Connolls 16:40No, you weren't stepping on me. But to your point, ARC of movement, for those that haven't seen it or know exactly what that kind of looks like, it'll look like a Figure 8. Exactly kind of how Clark's doing right now. The same thing happens with the rifle, especially as you get fatigued. Rifles are heavy. The more kinda, I'm sure Kit set up and gun setup will be a topic for a different time, but the heavier that your gun gets, you start putting packs, flashlights, ATAK...

You know one to six or 1 to 8, or whatever you wanna put on it now.

The gun's heavy. And more movement.

To your point though, that you just made just real quick, you said trigger control.

Marshall Collins 17:15Yeah.

Connolls 17:20Well, if you don't know that there's a natural arc of movement, or I just call it a Figure 8, then you're more prone to anticipate… exactly. You're more prone to anticipate because you're trying to guess and time it. And now we're just throwing all our fundamentals out the window. We're just trying to time it and that's not really how it works.

Marshall Collins 17:39Yeah.

Connolls 17:39Logically it would, but it's not how it works. It doesn’t work that way. The trigger is going to break, and if you're within the black that you're aiming at or the intended spot that you're aiming at, the gun will go off in that area and more than likely, with everything else being correct, you'll hit where you want to hit.

Last point I wanted to make, you're talking about your arc of movement. This is kind of, you know, for either rudimentary shooters or people that have shot a while. Or even like you know, if there's guys that we've been training in SRT and they run red dots on their guns.

OK, now it's not really a Figure 8. Now it looks like a tremble.

If you haven't trained to a red dot on your pistol now.

Marshall Collins 18:19Hmm.

Connolls 18:23It looks like a tremble. The rifle. Not so much. It won't tremble, but the pistol, for whatever reason, it just looks like it's moving sight to sight and it's all over the place again. You don't guess. You anticipate and that again is another learning curve for sight alignment sight picture. 'Cause you have to find the dot now and it's really important to bring it high to your eyes essentially. Exactly.

Marshall Collins 18:48Yeah.

Connolls 18:49That's the only thing I wanted to bring up.

Marshall Collins 18:52Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you brought it up and it's having your sight window ingrained to come out at the same spot with every draw and every presentation. How many repetitions does it take, DY. You would know as well as the rest of us it takes….?

Connolls 19:12Yeah.

Marshall Collins 19:142 to 3000 repetitions.

Connolls 19:15Turn up next.

DY 19:17Yeah, exactly.

Marshall Collins 19:19Yeah, to build that muscle memory. So for folks going right out of the gate with a new pistol, “I'm throwing a red dot on that thing and leaving the 20th century in the rear view.” “Hey, man. Great.” But I can't imagine anything worse than drawing the pistol in a deadly force encounter and then having to find my dot to be able to put it with a sight picture onto the threat. And then pull the trigger to make the threat go away.

Connolls 19:53And that's free like we talked about last and those reps are free.

Marshall Collins 19:58Yeah, yeah. And you can get all of that and iron all of that out for free in the comfort of your own home after you've safed and cleared the weapon to accomplish dry fire. Absolutely. DY, Connolly, Travis… did we forget anything for this discussion? I think once again, we're right at about 30 minutes for sight alignment & sight picture.

DY 20:23No, I just wanted to say something from way earlier. We talked about sights coming out on some of the stock stuff, but I wanted to reiterate that.

Marshall Collins 20:27Yes.

DY 20:32New shooters, please don't assume that the sights are off before you get plenty of repetitions on proper fundamentals.

Marshall Collins 20:40Oh man, you said it.

DY 20:40So don't assume the equipment's malfunctioning even though we did say it in the podcast.

Marshall Collins 20:43You said it. Oh. Yeah.

Connolls 20:50It's not this sight. It's the ammo, obviously.

Marshall Collins 20:54That was going to be my next statement.

DY 20:55Exactly.

Connolls 20:57It's the ammo.

Marshall Collins 20:57Yep, Connolly. He knows me so well. He knew exactly what was about to come out of my mouth, was going to be. “No, it's not the sight.” “It's definitely not the shooter.” “It's the ammo. Is this quality controlled ammo?” I don't think so. Call the phone number on the box. I've got some comments and a question I'd like to ask them.

Connolls 21:19The 82nd Airborne sold it 'cause they shot 500 rounds through it and they said this isn't good enough.

Marshall Collins 21:26Exactly, yeah. Oh man, touché.

Connolls 21:29No, I don't. I don't have anything else.

Marshall Collins 21:32Alright, well, that once again, man, we fit on about four or five things that could be their own discussion. And I'm writing them down over here. So here in the future, we do need to have a conversation about issues or shot diagnosis that are not fundamental related that are hardware related, be it sights slipping or ammunition that you've thrown in there from Tony's gun storage or pawn shop or whatnot.

That's not quality controlled ammo. So a bunch of great perspectives, gentlemen. As always, I am thankful to be able to chat with you this week about sight alignment and sight picture. We'll get up next week and hopefully start looking at trigger control and we gonna dedicate probably the whole discussion to that. But alright, I have figured out how to stop the recording, so I'm gonna go ahead and do that, you guys. Thank you again. I thought I'd figured it out.

Connolls 22:37Go ahead.