Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns !911 Giovt. GI sights

90% of my pistol shooting anymore is steel plates out to 50 yards. I thought some aftermkt. "better" sights for my 1911 Rock Island GI model might help my accuracy on the smaller plates past 10 yards. I was considering something similar to the taller, three dot sights on my son's Springfield 1911.

We took both guns to the range. I shot fifty shots of Federal 230 ball with each gun on paper at 10 yards and various size steell targets out to 50 yards. I changed guns every 10 shots and couldn't shoot the Springfield with the taller, three dot sights any better overall than the std GI type sights on the Rock Island. My son who is a lot younger than me shot the Springfield better on the 10 yard bullseye target but not by a lot. I'm sure the sights on the Springfield are capable of better overall accuracy as well as bullseye accuracy but if your not a serious bullseye/target shooter, have old eyes and maybe aren't as steady as you used to be the standard GI sights might be all you need. One thing about the GI sights that seemed to give me a quicker/steadier sight picture was the narrower front sigh6t.

GI sights work, but if you're in a hurry, they're pretty slow. Most of the competitions these days are speed-oriented, that's why most makers are using bigger sights now. I can barely use the cursed things, I look for better sights before buying any pistol these days.

I used a Harrison Retro rear and MGW dot front sight on this one.

https://www.thesixgunjournal.net/staking-a-1911-front-sight/

Yep.

Kind of like saying my P3AT is surprisingly accurate.
It is.
If you concentrate like a Monk, grip the hell out of it, and take all day to aqueeze
off a shot. But it ain't meant to be used that way, and in that world it sucks.
Being hard shoot good enough, fast, means it sucks in its world too.

Never shot little fixed sight well, decades haven't helped that.

Good looking gun and great info. Thanks.

The sights on my 1943 Colt 1911 Property of the US Army absolutely suck. Yes, at close range and taking a lot of time I can shoot them. But they really hinder a guy's capabilities overall.

Notice that the sights on SargeMO’s pistol consist of a dot front and plain black rear. In my experience, the better pistol shooters avoid distracting dots, bars or white outlines on their rear sights, just as SargeMO has done. They’re inclined to think of the rear sight only as providing a window through which to view and focus on the front sight.

SargeMO offered a very good photo example of what the shooter should see:



Focus is on the front sight, precisely where it should be for best results, and not on the target.

That will shoot low.

3 dot combat sights suck for accuracy work imo. The front post is too wide so it covers too much of the target at distance. 3 dot combat sights are set so that POI is where the dot lies, not the top of the post, so you have to let that big fat front post cover up the target or you will shoot low.

3-dot combat night sights are great for those who think they need to be shooting down dark alleys.

My favorite 1911 sight is the low-profile Novak-style, black on black.

sight pictures

From the linked article- "The notch looks wide because photo was taken much closer than arms’ length." And no, the alignment in that photo wasn't perfect either. But the elevation was easily filed in. the pistol zeroed fine and it shot pretty well.

Three dots, like any other sight, can be zeroed for any hold you like. The dots have nothing to do with zero, or POI vs POA.

Because the focus was where it should have been, you quite easily detected that front sight was aligned slightly low, something the shooter could just as easily detect and correct before squeezing off the shot.

Too many pistol shooters misunderstand how proper iron handgun sights are intended to be used for precision work, mistakenly believing that the front sight must be narrow for best precision. Actually, the opposite is true; the front sight should be wide and bold enough to be easily seen and its corners sharply defined (a white dot helps define the corners in poor light). The front sight’s purpose is to precisely align the gun, not aim at a small spot on the target. A narrow front sight is actually more difficult to align precisely.

Precise sight alignment is far more important to accuracy than aiming at a precise spot. The best way to demonstrate this is to shoot at the reverse side of a paper target, concentrating the focus on sight alignment rather than on the target, vaguely keeping the aligned sight picture sort of in the general area of the all white target’s center. You’ll be amazed at the resulting precision of the shot placement. Try it and see for yourself. If your group sucks, it’s probably because you’re not focused sufficiently on the front sight (or maybe trigger control issues). Try again.

When I was first starting out in PPC competition, at one match, I had to shoot the 50 yard stage in dense fog, not unusual on the West Coast. I could barely make out the standard silhouette target as a dark blob. There was really nothing else to look at except the front sight, and the clock was running. So, I just concentrated on the front sight and banged away. Results were about 20 points higher than my previous best score, and I instantly became a true believer. The actual width of my groups on a target were thereafter just a tiny fraction of the apparent width of the front sight on that target.

About as wrong as you could be without really working at it. Have you actually picked up a run of the mill pistol with 3 dot sights? Shot one?

Unless the manufacturer says otherwise, 3 dot sights are setup for a combat sight picture, and they are almost never adjustable.

Perhaps you meant that the shooter can overcome the sights to make the pistol shoot where he/she wants - and that is true. But one of the most common complaints from noobs is that their pistol shoots low - until they learn the 3-dot combat sight picture.

The front dot sits low enough in the post that you can't see a 4" clay pigeon at 50yds because the front post completely blocks it out. Either you've never shot combat 3-dot sights, or you've never tried shooting them at 50yds.

3-dots are a great sighting system for silhouettes 10yds, but they suck for distance work.

Guess I don't know better.

The plastic Glock sights everyone condems let me break claybirds at 50 easy.
100 is a struggle.
More like hitting a 5 gallon lid.

Different day, different use, different time....................obviously, sights have greatly evolved for the better, but they worked for the intended purpose of the gun when it was developed.

MM

Neither Gen 2 & 3 G19 have combat sights - they're set for a center hold. I don't know about Gen 4&5.

Very true. However, this thread is titled "1911 Gov't GI sights" and that is exactly what the '43 Colt Government Model US Army .45 has on board. I thought my post was a direct apples to apples observation.