How to Shoot Pistols Part 3 ~ Sight Mechanics and Sight Picture 

An older gentleman who I shoot with most of the time has been teaching me these exact same things . He use to compete in the military as well as an instructor for the military . I know he will enjoy these videos .Im actually going to have him over for dinner to watch these videos . Again thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience .

The VIRUS will not go away - I have shot for nearly 60 years, about 3 years ago a fellow retired LEO who trained kids for Olympic shooting had a pistol class where he convinced me to concentrate on the front sight. My scores improved within minutes right there on the spot. However, unless I deliberately think about FRONT sight I find my old habits take over... so I guess I still have the virus. Unfortunately we lost my friend a year ago & a lot of knowledge & wisdom died with him. You have brought some of it back for me...THANK YOU.👍👍👍

Great series. I think you have the best gun channel on youtube. Especially if someone wants to actually learn something. God bless.

Great series on pistol sight mechanics, I really appreciate all the knowledge you bless us with. I'm teaching my son (taking hunter safety course) with the help of your videos. My first safety course was at my elementary school in the lunch room after school. Lots of thanks and God bless from TN.

Thank you for passing on your wisdom, sir! Very thorough and precise when explaining things where even dummies like myself can understand. Thanks again, sir!

I always struggled with what was the correct sight picture and where to focus. This makes perfect sense and helps tremendously. Thanks and God bless you!

Loving my private classes. Thank you

Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I am a new subscriber. A minister and a shooter. Really appreciate your teaching AND your honor toward God. Grateful for champions like you in our midst!!

Thank you sir! You're a great teacher; Clear and concise. Enjoy your evening.

Excellent. The importance of center mass hold on large images of the same contrast versus smaller targets which are easier for the shooter to align the front site post beneath consistently. It's deceptive initially, but a few decades ago, I realized the critical importance of shooting center mass, essentially a precise '6 o'clock hold' below the very center of the target. Natural point of aim and site picture can produce the same results in accuracy when center hold becomes instinctive. This process is applicable to longarms or handguns of any type with a front site post, rear peep or open wing sites. 'Focus on the front site' is advice which places emphasis on the primary focal point versus the secondary image (target). That is why the U.S. Armed services train using 'center mass hold' for individual assigned weapons (not always applicable for crew served and sub-machine guns)

Greatest tutorial on Bullseye shooting I have ever seen !

Thank you for sharing some rare truth with us. No gimmicks , slide of hand , smoke n mirrors, just sound reasoning and proper fundamentals. Excellent!

Thank you for sharing the knowledge you've gained from a lifetime of experience. It is appreciated and humbling. God Bless, Jerry Burchfield

2:00 This part of the video was my lightbulb moment that I could in fact learn to shoot handguns despite visual impariment. Since implementing this advice ive been able to put rounds on paper at ranges I didn't know I could.

Wow! You might have just solved my problem. When I go to the range and I shoot steel silhouettes I can always hit the heart or the head, but when I move to paper, I can barely put it on the paper. Even my little daughter can outshoot me. It happens every time.i can’t wait to try your method!

My mind is blown here. It explains something that didn't make sense to me with my shooting. When I first learned, with my grandfather, I was like a savant heh - he'd love to show me off to his buddies with his old S&W 10 and M1 Garands. Then after he passed away, and my mom sold all of the guns he had left me behind my back, when I tried to get back into shooting, I was, to be kind, far less capable/successful. I never really could figure out why, because when I started at the kid, it seemed way easier, even the first few times, but then when I was all grown up (22, only 3 years since Grandpa Roy had passed), it was so much more challenging. Now I understand why. You see, when I was a kid, I was horribly near sighted. Since what was down range was always a blur, I focused on the sights themselves. But once I had gotten out on my own and got glasses, I was just enthralled with being able to see distant things clearly. So I wasn't focusing on the sights, rather the target. It makes so much sense now. My grandfather always said "focus on the sights" but I didn't even really process it because they were all I could see, so what else was there to focus on? Now I'm looking to get back into shooting again, this revelation has just kicked my optimism up significantly. It took me a lot of years to get back to be *able* to really shoot again, after I broke my back, and I'm still not sure 100% how successful I'll be (as long as I CAN I consider it a success). Thanks GunBlue490, very much.

Just reloaded 300 357 magnum, thanks for your video on the model 19 smith and wesson. one of my favorite revolvers.(new model). If it doesnt rain this weekend im going to do some target shooting.. Im blessed i can walk down my hill and shoot at my own range i built, but thanks for the videos. Learned a lot from the bedding stock videos too, i bedded 4 of mine just like you said and 2 of my rifles now are one hole guns @ 100 yards. good videos!!

Good points on focusing the eyes on the front sight and letting the target blur . A bit of a slow-moving presentation though .

Another great class! Thank you, Sir!

I really enjoy your videos, I'm learning alot from you!! Thank you!!

...don’t leave me hanging. What a cliffhanger I can hardly wait for the next video! Thank you.

I want to let you know, I appreciate your knowledge and thanks for sharing.

I went to the range today determined to utilize this instruction set. I focused on my front sight and not my target or rear sight and it took discipline at first. But just as you said, sight alignment and my shots became automatic. With each passing string of shots! And I was doing so good that I did not want to leave. I caught hell from my wife for being gone so long. I'll take one on the chin every time for results like I had. I'm not trying to prove you wrong but I noticed that I have not proven you wrong yet! One shot, make it count right? and when you do, then one shot and make it count etc etc etc...

Love this video. At 7:30 when you showed the difference in .22 vs. .38 shot patterns, I knew exactly why that happened. It has nothing to do with sight alignment. It's 'reactive interference' from the higher power round. We see it all day long with novice shooters. Totally predictable. The pattern of a .22 should be no different from a .38, .44 or .45 on any given target.

Worthy Brother, I am looking forward to the next installment. This has never been explained to me before. I fell for this virus as a kid. I will shake this virus right away! Thank you so very much! Peace, Love and Happiness to you and your family!

Concise, enjoyable and educational. Well done, Sir. Thank you! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Love this series. Keep em posting

So true...glad to see it kept simple and accurate!

2 great 👍 videos Sir and very well explained, always love how you articulate , 👍🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

The biomechanics of why this happens are as follows. The lens of the eye is elastic. Around its perimeter are attached tiny muscles. These muscles can contract, stretching the lens and reducing its curvature. Then, when the muscles relax, the lens rebounds back to its at-rest state which has greater curvature. The curvature of a lens - whether it's the one in your eye or a piece of glass ground to a lens shape - impacts the focal length. This is why only one object at a specific distance at a time can be brought into focus by the eye while everything else is blurry. We don't normally experience this in our day-to-day lives because our eyes are either constantly and unconsciously flitting about focusing and refocusing objects so quickly it all appears seamlessly in focus OR because we're focused so intently on one thing (such as reading text) that our brains block out the perception of blurriness of everything around it. But when you force your eye to gaze at three objects in a line all at different distances but all relevant (rear sight, front sight, and target) the phenomena becomes pronounced; you can only bring one of them into sharp focus. No way around it; it's the physics of light and optics. This is also why as we age our vision suffers. The lens becomes less elastic with time and the muscles surrounding it weaken, as well. This makes focusing at certain distances more difficult compared to when we were younger. Objects become blurry because the curvature of the lens can't be made to conform to the focal length necessary to bring them into sharp focus.

if you have progressive lenses in your glasses, it adds another variable to focusing on the front sight. You have to find the right angle to hold your head so that you're looking through the part of the lens that lets you focus on an object held at arm's length. If you're looking through wrong part of the lens, you can't focus on the front sight. I find I have to hold my head a little more upright than what feels natural.

The lessons I've been looking for! Been driving myself crazy not understanding why my aim is so inconsistent.

Excellent video, as always. Thank you sir.

What he said about the sight picture is the absolute truth that nobody ever seems to address. There is two kinds of accuracy. Combat accuracy and precision/ surgical accuracy. Both have their uses. I was taught from early on (age 3) that a handgun is an extintion of your finger when you point it. I actually saw this same thing in an old movie once. It is a very good place to start when learning to shoot pistols. And the smaller the object you first point at will be very close to your piint of impact as long as you dont focus on it but on the sights like this man says. What he is not telling you yet is when your peepers are old, your hands and arms are not able to be held steady then your going to have to work on these with exersise and specs. These are my main problems now. The peepers can be fixed with glasses. Steady arms and hand control might be a little harder. Hope he's got a tip on this subject. But a great video.

Another great series..you are truly appreciated 😎👍

This is great information. Thanks

Mr. Gunblue490, Your videos are great. Your drawings to illustrate the need to focus on the front sight is straight forward. Can you clarify one thing. In your illustration the top of the front post is at the very bottom (6 O’clock) position. When you shoot bullseye, do you try to adjust your sights so that you can hold like that illustration at the bottom of the target but hit the center of the bullseye? Pardon me if I sound ignorant. Just trying to learn how to shoot bullseye competition. Thanks and God bless.

Always enjoy your videos, thanks for taking the time to teach. Hope your doing well.

Thank you! This is perfect timing as I have just started taking my wife and son to the range to learn to shoot. We can all learn from you together. My wife requested that we all go together and I purchased a 10/22 to go along with my Glock 19. I have upgraded the sights and done trigger work on both to maximize precision shooting capabilities. I am now shopping for a .22 pistol for target practice as well. Looking forward to the rest of the series!

Greatly appreciate your expert tutorials. You are the needle in the haystack. Thank you for sharing.

Dear Gunblue490, firstly i have learned so much from you and your channel. Thank you. This is a great series and i am eagerly awaiting pt4, but for the record ive always really enjoyed your long vieos aswell. Im 25 but i find it very relaxing to listen to you, you speak very naturally and its nice to listen to while i have breakfast or coffee and a smoke or whilst cleaning my guns. So i do appreciate the series format, the long fireside chat videos are also very dear to me haha. Just my 2 cents, cheers from BC Canada

Absolutely right on the sight picture! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, sir.

Thanks for the great lessons.

Learning is occurring! Thank you.

Outstanding content. Thanks so much for sharing your experience!

Great explanation. Thanks.

Great Content.

That virus picture you spoke of is called sight alignment. Sight picture is when the bullseye AND the rear sight are fuzzy, because once you have your sight alignment, you concentrate on the front sight only. At least that's what the USMC taught me. I qualified high expert with an old Vietnam war m16. 100, 300 & 500 yards.

Thanks Again

Great video! Thanks

I like to place the top of my front sight on the very bottom edge of what I want my POI to be so I'm not covering up the target. I can put 3 consecutive holes in a 1 inch target at 25 yards.

I think most people know that sight picture is printed that way for "illustrative" purposes only. I believe what you're doing is called nitpicking... I'm almost 80 years old I would appreciate it if you'd get directly to the point. That's my problem with most people on RU-vid, it takes them forever to get to the point LOL PS... I do enjoy your videos. I just hope I'll be alive long enough to get info I need. Thank you for posting

GunBlue490 - I'm an older shooter just digging my SW 686 out of the closet again. I'm having troubel with seeing sights and target, much less alignment. I'm looking into progressive prescription safety glasses for the range. If that fails, what would you suggest in the way of optical sights? Red dot? I'd hate to mount a huge scope tube on a 686. Red dot wouild be aesthetically bad enough.

Thank you🌄

Professor GunBlue490, Most of the target examples depict a "6 o'clock" sight picture hold using iron sights. Are all firearms designed for 6 o'clock?

Thank you God bless...

Never considered that virus. Learned something today. Thanks.

I noticed that you have fiber optic front sights on both of the hand guns in this video series. Would you recommend this type of sight for those of us with older eyes?

Enjoy your channel. Thank you!

As I age my need for reading glasses has increased. I'm having difficulty getting a crisp sight picture w/o glasses, but with glasses, sight picture is in better focus but the target is much fuzzier? What to do? Scope only or?

Exellent video 👌

My site picture is two blurry rear sites, two blurry targets, one sharp front site. I align the left rear site, the front site, and the right target.

What about 'point shooting'? The position of the shooter and the hold without sighting. Lots of practice.

How does this guy NOT have a million subscribers?

Greetings from NH. I would like to second sackett68 that you have the best gun channel.

Thank you! Any suggestiins coming up regarding the older shootrr?

Took my dad shooting a couple months back. The whole day I was shooting terrible, couldnt figure out what the problem was. It occured to me, my front sight wasnt illuminated, so, when I was cleaning it I noticed the rear sight set screw had backed out and was filling the sight picture perfectly. This illustrates exactly what you're saying, there wasn't any sight radius who knows where the muzzle actually was.

Hi Gunblue Do you recommend shooting with both eyes Open or just one eye?

I bet the reason people missed the human silhouette target with the .38 was flinch and not because they focused on the X in the center . If you don't flinch, you ca hit the old B-27 target acceptably at 7 yards even with sloppy sighting . See also Rob Leatham's video on RU-vid , " Aiming is Useless ..." I also dislike the 6 O'Clock hold diagrammed for the bullseye targets because it makes the shooter control both the horizontal sight alinement and the vertical relationship of the front sight to the bullseye . See also : " The Marine From Manatee " by William Curry Harlee .

Great stuff. By the way, God always blesses even if only by His common grace.

My question is If the front post is at the bottom of the black ring, HOW does the bullet travel UP and into the ten ring?

I am old, all three are blurry.

Logical Captain... 🖖🏻🇫🇷😎🇫🇷😇🇫🇷🖖🏻

Blue gun 690 , sir thankyou this is one of my big problems thinking i must have focus on all three sights of view clearly . And thinking its normal that they must all be in focus . Im a dumbfer lol

I need so much more practice.

Are you assuming a perfect zero weapon?

If you have ole man eyes go with Diopter safety glasses their cheap until you get bifocals. Brought the enjoyment and safety back to my game.

Nice sight picture if you want to shoot low.

🙏

Ok

Is this the same guy that says it's fine to drop the slide on an empty 1911? (If so, I'd say we are done here) :)

Now _that's_ a virus to be worried about...

Very valuable content. Thank you