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Old 03-02-2016, 09:11 PM
Yournamehere Yournamehere is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
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Red dots on pistols is still a relatively new thing (2010s and later), mostly for the reasons stated previously (technology becoming effective enough for the application). There may have been red dots used on pistols as early as the 1990s but they were big, clunky, and not very reliable.

In fact, the COMP series which gave rise to the M68CCO used on US military rifles was originally designed to be used on pistols (Aimpoint's website details this). Before that, competitors would use old Tasco sights on their guns which were so heavy and so unreliable that competitors would have three different guns because one would be broken and need to be sent in for repairs, one would break during competitions, and one would be the spare gun (this was from an article in Guns and Ammo).

Additionally, that clunky old red dot scene, while worth noting to some degree, it still something that only really happened in competition shooting prior to 2010, and most definitely not tactical shooting. Moreover, their limited used in this arena (pun intended) doesn't air legitimacy to the use of of a red dot on a pistol by an average joe in 2007. The red dots we see fairly often now (and arguably still not that often for a number of reasons) weren't around in 2007, save for the Aimpoint T1 (which had just come out and probably wouldn't be widely available) and Trijicon's forerunner to the RMR (which would be in the same situation as the T1). Not to mention that installing either of those would require customization via drilling or milling out the slide of a pistol and function checking to make sure the added weight didn't make the gun unrelaible. 9 times out of... 9, if a guy has a pistol in 2007 in any operational or any other capacity, it will have vanilla sights and nothing else.

And this is before the general discussion of whether or not to have a red dot on a pistol now, hehe.
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