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Old 03-01-2016, 09:21 PM
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Excalibur Excalibur is offline
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The trend has been around since IPSC in the 90s. There has always been a market for putting red dots on handguns. It's only recently in the passed few years where people have decided it might work as a defensive/offensive option on your carry gun/duty gun/ sidearm.

An excerpt from a blog post:
History and Evolution:

Red Dot equipped pistols have been around for over two decades. In the 1990 USPSA Nationals Jerry Barnhart used a red dot scope to win and the same year Doug Koenig won the IPSC World Shoot with a red dot equipped CZ.

The first defensive gun I saw with a red dot was in a Kelly Mccann video back in the late 90's. He had a Doctor Optic mounted to a Glock 19 and I thought it was the most revolutionary thing I had ever seen. After getting one and shooting with it, I quickly lost interest. The window was too small, the optic was too fragile and I had no back up sights.

Fast forward to 2010 and I was reading about Gabe Suarez mounting an Aimpoint T-1 to a Glock. While I liked the idea, the T-1 was still way to big for a carry gun.

A few years earlier, David Bowie of Bowie Tactical, was starting to mill Glocks and M&Ps to accept micro red dots. The major difference between what Bowie and Suarez offers is where the rear sight is positioned. David strongly prefers to put the rear sight in front of the optic and Suarez prefers to put it behind the optic.

In the last year an exciting new mounting option has come out from Unity Tactical. The ATOM mount allows users to change the mounting plate to accommodate the use of different optics. I see this as a critical feature moving forward to provide a platform that can evolve with optics technology.
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