9mmepiphany said:
At 7 yards, shooting a 9mm CZ, he demonstrated the difference in POI between holding the front blade completely over to opposite sides of the rear notch was only about 1"
Out of curiosity, I measure the sight radius as well as the front and rear sights on my M&P, and did a quick measurement to confirm this. Yep, 'tis true. Couple of points for those shooting for tightest groups, though:
First, it's still an unnecessary 1" (technically it'd be closer to half an inch with a mathematically
perfect shot release) at 7 yards, and roughly double that at 15. If you're working hard to improve your 15 yard groups, getting even an inch improvement is a hard won effort. Misaligning the front sight even a quarter of the way towards the rear notch will cost you an inch or more at 50 yards, which would be a big deal for bullseye shooters.
Second, as 9mmepiphany points out, it really underscores the importance of trigger control
*. If your gun and ammo are reasonably accurate,
it ought to be capable of a half inch at 15 yards. Add in a little sight mis-alignment (say the aforementioned quarter of the way towards the rear notch) and an inch and a half hold, and your groups ought to be just a little more than an inch and a half. Now look at your target. How big's your group? Bigger than an inch and a half? The difference is your trigger control.
This is
not to say sight alignment's not necessary for good shooting. It is. But the low-hanging fruit is trigger control. Do your best to align the sights and improve your hold, but if you've got a decent gun and ammo with a decent trigger and sights, and you're working towards good fundamental marksmanship, work first on trigger control.
* The center of an USPSA and IDPA target is a whopping 6 - 8". Get your hit in there, and you get full credit for the shot. Yet, it's quite common to hit outside this area, so it underscores the importance of not just trigger control, but seeing what you need to see when you break the shot (especially when shooting quickly). Good USPSA/IDPA shooters know the best match performance comes from balancing speed and accuracy, so they don't mind some hits outside the 6 - 8" center, but many loose
too much time to bad shots because they don't really see the 6-8" center, but merely the larger 24" tan target.