Sight Radius?
I’ll be willing to admit that I have a tendency for long winded introductions to my articles. In fact, I’ve made fun of myself for it on more than one occasion. Case in point, the first draft of this article on sight radius was a shining example of that tendency. You know it’s bad when I was like “get to the freaking point” even before I was halfway through the opening text.
It was glorious.
I was going into geometric principles and pythagorean theorem. I was even able to fit in a relation to quantum physics. In hindsight, I probably would have lost some readers.
So let’s trim things a bit…
You might have heard someone say they prefer gun A over gun B because gun A has a longer sight radius. So why is that a good thing? How does sight radius affect your shooting? What is sight radius anyway? Are you sure you don’t want to see that opening with the quantum physics discussion?
Let’s start with the “what is” part. Sight radius simply refers to the distance between the front and rear sights on your gun. The closer they are to each other, the smaller the sight radius. In most cases, the bigger the gun, the longer the sight radius. A rifle will have a larger radius than a full size pistol and the full size pistol will have a larger radius than a pocket pistol.
So yeah, big deal. Different guns have different sight radiuses…radiusi? ra…hmm…
Be back in a sec. Look at this Schnauzer for a moment:
Ok, so as it turns out the plural of radius is radii. Thanks Wikipedia! Probably should have payed attention more in that class in high school. Hey, I’m a Gun Noob not an English/Math major.
So yeah, big deal. Different guns have different sight radii. What does it matter? Well, with a shorter radius, imperfections in your sight picture aren’t as noticeable. If you recall from our Sight Picture guide, the deflection over distance (Tan(Barrel Angle) x Distance to Target = Bullet Deflection) is greater when the distance is increased. You’re just not going to notice those tiny movements with a shorter radius.
Increase the distance between the sights, however, and suddenly that 64 ounce soda you had before you left for the range will start to seem like a bad idea. You’re going to see every twitch, shake and jerk your body makes reflected in the sight picture of your gun.
Believe it or not, that is a good thing.
By being able to see and adjust for those slight deviations, your shot is going to be more accurate. Considering that a long sight radius is accompanied by a similarly long barrel, the bullet will generally be more stable and will be travelling faster when it hits the target.
So it really comes down to what you want to do with the gun (I think I’ve said that before, haven’t I?). You’re probably not going to go out shooting USPSA competitions with a Ruger LCP pocket pistol. At the same time, you’re not going to be using a tricked out STI 2011 competition gun for your daily concealed carry gun either. If you’re wanting to do a lot of target shooting then you’re going to want to go for the longest radius possible. Beyond that, it’s just good to know how the shorter radius is going to affect your accuracy when shooting a gun.
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