Riley Bowman: And welcome to the Concealed Carry
Riley Bowman: Podcast, part of the ConcealedCarry.com network brought to you by HK.
Riley Bowman: Today is Thursday, November 6, 2025, as of the recording of this episode.
Riley Bowman: And I am your host, Riley Bowman, joined by fellow host, Jacob Paulson.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I'm here.
Riley Bowman: He's here. He's so thrilled to be here, too. Can you see it in his face and hear it in his voice?
Jacob Paulsen: Yay!
Riley Bowman: I was just thinking as we watched the intro, we probably ought to update that.
Riley Bowman: I mean, there's some good stuff in there, but there's probably some more we could add to that.
Riley Bowman: Make that little opening pre-roll. For those of you that catch the podcast on
Riley Bowman: YouTube, I think that could be a fun tweak to update some footage there.
Riley Bowman: What do you think, Jacob?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, probably a good idea.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, yeah. Well, today we're excited to be with you to actually talk about
Riley Bowman: red dots on carry guns. Are they worth it?
Riley Bowman: Lots to discuss. We've got some big news to share on the podcast today as well.
Riley Bowman: Those of you that have been following our social media accounts recently,
Riley Bowman: some of you may even be almost tired of seeing the content.
Riley Bowman: For you know like a week or so now it's been like all about red dots and optics
Riley Bowman: on pistols and uh we're going to talk about it some more i promise you that
Riley Bowman: that's going to come you know to an end here before too long but we got some
Riley Bowman: important stuff we got to get through first i don't know what do you want to share uh first jacob
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, this episode is brought to you by, and the first spot, I already forgot.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, the PIQ. I'm going for a minute.
Riley Bowman: I messed you up there. You didn't see it coming. No, I didn't.
Jacob Paulsen: That's okay. So we are giving away free sample targets.
Jacob Paulsen: So the pistol intelligence target, you guys have heard us probably talk about
Jacob Paulsen: that before. Riley designed this target several years ago.
Jacob Paulsen: It's a highly functional, long-lasting, high-quality, full-size target.
Jacob Paulsen: And normally if you go and buy the piq
Jacob Paulsen: target you have to buy it in packs of 100 now
Jacob Paulsen: that that would last the average gun owner a long time but
Jacob Paulsen: you might be thinking i just don't know if i want to buy 100 of these and
Jacob Paulsen: i've never tried them before so we're now giving well
Jacob Paulsen: i mean giving away i suppose a little bit of a misnomer
Jacob Paulsen: but we're basically giving away free sample piq
Jacob Paulsen: targets just one target now you have to pay shipping so
Jacob Paulsen: that's why it's not free free but it's very reasonable
Jacob Paulsen: it's like actually the cost of like postage
Jacob Paulsen: plus the envelope it goes in is what you're paying us and
Jacob Paulsen: it's uh it is folded so you're gonna have some creases
Jacob Paulsen: in this little sample target as opposed to when you normally buy them we roll
Jacob Paulsen: them up but you know it gives you a chance to try out the piq target for you
Jacob Paulsen: know free plus the cost of shipping so you should check that out out at concealed
Jacob Paulsen: carry.com forward slash piq sample piq s-a-m-p-l-e.
Riley Bowman: Awesome. Yeah, check out the PIQ Target.
Riley Bowman: They're hugely popular, especially amongst those that have used them and are
Riley Bowman: familiar with them. They tend to keep coming back and buying more of them.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, they're not expensive. Even if you want to buy 100 of them,
Jacob Paulsen: you could do that for like 50 bucks or something. So it's not terrible.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Awesome. Again, concealedcarry.com forward slash PIQ sample.
Riley Bowman: And today we have another kind of sponsor announcement.
Riley Bowman: Got a new thing going on. It's relevant to the topic at hand.
Riley Bowman: What do you want to talk about there?
Jacob Paulsen: We're going to hold off. I think we're going to break the news of the second
Jacob Paulsen: sponsor a little bit later in the episode.
Riley Bowman: Okay. All right. Cool. We'll save that for later in the episode.
Riley Bowman: Keep people on the edge of their seats.
Riley Bowman: Something well i guess with that out of the way then let's jump into the topic
Riley Bowman: red dots on carry guns i mean this is the concealed carry podcast so most of
Riley Bowman: us are talking about a concealed carry context we i know we have cops and others
Riley Bowman: that listen to that are carrying guns on in a duty or maybe folks are carrying
Riley Bowman: on a security job of some kind
Riley Bowman: But regardless of that context, we're talking about guns that are used for personal defense.
Riley Bowman: Optics, do they belong on defensive guns, Jacob?
Jacob Paulsen: You know, I recently, about three, four weeks ago, I attended an event called Revolver Fest.
Jacob Paulsen: The event is put on and hosted by some friends of ours over at American Fighting
Jacob Paulsen: Revolver. And there are 125 attendees
Jacob Paulsen: at this event who spent three days shooting nothing but will guns.
Jacob Paulsen: And I was reflecting on that today when I was thinking about this podcast episode
Jacob Paulsen: because here we are today talking about pistol optics, like the breaking newest technology.
Riley Bowman: You know what I mean,
Jacob Paulsen: As far as shooting. It's like the real cutting edge thing to have a pistol mounted
Jacob Paulsen: optic in terms of technology.
Jacob Paulsen: But here I was like four weeks ago shooting wheel guns that have been around for how long?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah ironically of course there were will guns with red dots on them but that's
Jacob Paulsen: really not the point i'm trying to make the point i'm trying to make is you
Jacob Paulsen: know when technology comes along there's always a couple things that are going
Jacob Paulsen: to be true first there's going to be cons you know,
Jacob Paulsen: very rarely does technology it's just all upsides you know it's 100 good um that's just not,
Jacob Paulsen: not the case most of the time uh you know i just talked about revolvers and
Jacob Paulsen: we could think about the transition that took place from revolvers to semi-automatics, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like that was a significant change when the gun community, law enforcement,
Jacob Paulsen: military, and others were transitioning to semi-automatics.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, obviously, when we see these big shifts, whatever it is we're talking about,
Jacob Paulsen: it tends to mean that the majority of people see more advantages than disadvantages to make that shift.
Jacob Paulsen: That's what we see with red dots. So I think what I'm trying to say is.
Jacob Paulsen: We can't suggest that red dots are all, as I said recently, all puppies, rainbows, and roses.
Jacob Paulsen: There are some fawns. There are some trade-offs.
Jacob Paulsen: But at large, what we're seeing with this new technology, like we have with
Jacob Paulsen: most technologies in the past, is that the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
Riley Bowman: Is that's a great way of looking at
Riley Bowman: it because you could talk about you know
Riley Bowman: revolvers like you kind of started us off
Riley Bowman: with in in saying that you know
Riley Bowman: i guess there was a transition at some point obviously at one time revolvers
Riley Bowman: were the primary defensive tool uh you know semi-automatics have been around
Riley Bowman: a long time i mean very simply put the 1911 as a as the most popular uh example
Riley Bowman: of that has been around since 1911.
Riley Bowman: And variations of that have been around since even earlier than that.
Riley Bowman: The precursors to the 1911, the John Moses Browning design semi-automatics.
Riley Bowman: And so those have been around a long time. But to your point,
Riley Bowman: even up into the early 80s, there were still law enforcement agencies that that
Riley Bowman: was their standard sidearm issue was a Model 15 or maybe even Model 19 in some cases, you know,
Riley Bowman: like actual true blue revolvers that were the primary defensive tool for law
Riley Bowman: enforcement officers until not that many years ago, relatively speaking.
Riley Bowman: And so that's a, you know, fair point or fair way of looking at this, that, you know,
Riley Bowman: the, there's, there was a transition from revolvers to semi-automatics and to
Riley Bowman: your point, something had to be, hey, this is, this is worth it.
Riley Bowman: Even though there are some trade-offs probably the primary trade-offs with
Riley Bowman: semi-automatics for you know coming from revolvers would
Riley Bowman: be well there's a greater potential i
Riley Bowman: guess you could say for things like malfunctions especially cycling
Riley Bowman: and ammunition in you know related malfunctions yeah
Riley Bowman: uh in those guns and so that was probably i mean i wasn't well maybe i was alive
Riley Bowman: to some extent i was just a little lad but uh i'm sure there were some debates
Riley Bowman: that were had about these new fangled semi-automatics aren't you know reliable
Riley Bowman: enough for me i'm gonna stick with my revolver and there's probably still some
Riley Bowman: people that would say that today even but yeah
Jacob Paulsen: But that i mean to your point that transition took like 80 to 100 years you
Jacob Paulsen: know like to to really transition and and and to be fair you know kind of where i started this off,
Jacob Paulsen: there's still revolvers there's still people who prefer revolvers there will
Jacob Paulsen: always be revolvers Like we have not eliminated them at all.
Jacob Paulsen: Like they're still out. Their market share is minuscule compared to the semi-automatic.
Jacob Paulsen: It's hardly there at all, but they still exist.
Jacob Paulsen: I just went to an event dedicated to the wheel gun, right?
Jacob Paulsen: So I think that that's the way you have to look at this kind of thing and think about it.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, you mentioned malfunctions, right? Like, because I said,
Jacob Paulsen: there's trade-offs, there's downsides.
Jacob Paulsen: We're just weighing the benefits versus the cons, which we'll probably talk
Jacob Paulsen: about a little bit today as it relates to the pistol-mounted optic.
Jacob Paulsen: But some of those cons are only perceived in the paradigm that we have at the time.
Jacob Paulsen: So let's go back and use our same example, the wheel gun to the semi-automatic.
Jacob Paulsen: In that transitionary period, I mean, certainly malfunctions came up a lot, which you mentioned.
Jacob Paulsen: And to this day, we still, I think, generally perceive that malfunctions are
Jacob Paulsen: more common on a semi-automatic.
Jacob Paulsen: It'd be interesting to see the data. But I think that that's still the general
Jacob Paulsen: perception and the way that most wheel gunners justify the wheel gun.
Jacob Paulsen: But at the time, during that transition, if we go back and look at the 70s,
Jacob Paulsen: 80s, and early 90s, a big, massive concern and pushback on the semi-automatic
Jacob Paulsen: was that they were unsafe because the trigger weight was so light.
Jacob Paulsen: We went from having these double action triggers, 10, 12, 15-pound triggers,
Jacob Paulsen: and then all of a sudden we moved over to the semi-automatics with,
Jacob Paulsen: in some cases, one-and-a-half-pound triggers, three-pound triggers, four-pound triggers.
Jacob Paulsen: And it was like, this is insane. These things are going off all the time.
Jacob Paulsen: Cops, I was talking to, or I shouldn't say talking to, I was listening to Daryl
Jacob Paulsen: Bolke at that event, Revolver Fest, and he was talking about how they trained
Jacob Paulsen: cops when he came on the job.
Jacob Paulsen: You were trained on the draw to get your finger in the trigger guard before
Jacob Paulsen: you even cleared the holster.
Jacob Paulsen: Many of them were running holsters that exposed the trigger guard so you could
Jacob Paulsen: get your finger on the trigger before you drew the gun.
Jacob Paulsen: Now today, in today's paradigm in which gun owners reside, that sounds insane.
Jacob Paulsen: We're like, holy crap, are you crazy?
Jacob Paulsen: Like you would never put your finger on the trigger while you're still in the
Jacob Paulsen: holster. That's nutty, man. That's so unsafe.
Jacob Paulsen: Like I can't believe you'd say that out loud. How irresponsible of you.
Jacob Paulsen: But that was the paradigm around the tool that was used all those years.
Riley Bowman: I was just going to add to what you're explaining. For those where this is the
Riley Bowman: first time they're hearing something like this, I've got, and it's not hard
Riley Bowman: to find, there's dozens and dozens and dozens of examples.
Riley Bowman: I've got photographic evidence of duty holsters from the era that you're referencing,
Riley Bowman: Jacob, that are designed with trigger guard exposed.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, and in many cases, the revolver also couldn't rotate if the holster was,
Jacob Paulsen: shaped properly to the cylinder of the revolver, then you couldn't fire it in the holster.
Jacob Paulsen: But it still sounds crazy to us that just immediately, even just immediately
Jacob Paulsen: clearing the holster that you have your finger on your trigger.
Jacob Paulsen: But in an era where you're running 12 pound triggers, that might've been reasonable
Jacob Paulsen: because you could start to roll through that trigger and then change your mind
Jacob Paulsen: halfway through and be like, oh no, cool, we don't have to shoot this dude.
Jacob Paulsen: So at that time in the paradigm that existed because of the best practices that
Jacob Paulsen: were crafted around the tool at the time, which was the revolver,
Jacob Paulsen: people tried to apply the same paradigm to the semi-automatic.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's why we started having these issues of, oh, it's an unsafe gun.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think we see some of that too with the red dot, where we,
Jacob Paulsen: even in my opinion, the majority,
Jacob Paulsen: I don't know if I can say majority, a large percentage of shooters who have
Jacob Paulsen: adopted carry optics, pistol-meted optics, are still utilizing them the way they did iron sights.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's leading to those gun owners not getting the advantages completely
Jacob Paulsen: that the tool offers them.
Jacob Paulsen: So those are some of the parallels I'm drawing in our little comparison.
Jacob Paulsen: First, that, hey, there's always going to be cons to new technology.
Jacob Paulsen: And if you adapt it, it's because you see more pros than cons.
Jacob Paulsen: And second, that if you, if you, when you move into new technology,
Jacob Paulsen: you can't use it the same way you did the old or you're, or you're,
Jacob Paulsen: it's, you're just not, it's not going to work.
Jacob Paulsen: It takes time for us to figure out like, oh, wait, with this tool,
Jacob Paulsen: we don't need to do this anymore.
Jacob Paulsen: We don't need to do that that way anymore. We need to now do it like this.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's how we're going to squeeze out the incremental performance or safety or whatever it is.
Riley Bowman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Actually, so I'm going to go ahead and throw this out there right now.
Riley Bowman: I put it up on the screen earlier, but I wanted to come back to it.
Riley Bowman: This is a question from Dwifta on YouTube.
Riley Bowman: It says, his biggest thing is
Riley Bowman: focusing on the target, not my sites when using a red dot. Is that wrong?
Riley Bowman: What kind of consideration should be made in that regard? And I'd say that,
Riley Bowman: like, that's exactly the right path you should be on, DWFTA.
Riley Bowman: That's quite a name. I appreciate you chiming in there, DWFTA.
Riley Bowman: That is the idea. Like, you should be target-focused. And to what you're explaining,
Riley Bowman: Jacob, that people maybe, you know, try to use the current tool,
Riley Bowman: meaning this modern technology of the red dot, the same way they are used to
Riley Bowman: using things like iron sights,
Riley Bowman: meaning where we've been taught since I was a kid, and for decades now,
Riley Bowman: the mantra has been front sight focus, front sight focus, front sight focus.
Riley Bowman: And so we're so used to, I mean, even with the transition over to a red dot
Riley Bowman: on a pistol, to be like, well, I'm going to, you know, we just have a tendency
Riley Bowman: to want to focus on the dot,
Riley Bowman: Even though the way it should appear to us
Riley Bowman: is that that dot is at the same focal plane
Riley Bowman: as the target and really where the focus should be and where
Riley Bowman: it always should have been was the target that's where our focus should be that's
Riley Bowman: what's the most important thing that's what we're actually trying to shoot that's
Riley Bowman: where the threat's located that's where we need to read information about what's
Riley Bowman: going on what the threat is doing or not doing you know so we can make good
Riley Bowman: and proper and moral decisions um
Riley Bowman: And so this is a total shift for a lot of people of, hey, stop focusing so much on the site itself.
Riley Bowman: Focus on the target and allow the dot to come and be there.
Riley Bowman: All right. And there's ways to make that happen more consistently and more repeatably for the shooter.
Riley Bowman: And we can get into that. But, yeah, good comment slash question there from Dwifta.
Riley Bowman: Just make sure, yeah, with using a dot, you should be target focused 100% all the time.
Riley Bowman: And really what that entails then is that you learn to have a visual awareness
Riley Bowman: of where the dot's located relative to where your eyes are locked on, on that target.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, that's a great example of what I was getting at.
Jacob Paulsen: And it kind of lays the groundwork for the foundation that is the value that the red dot brings.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, so all of that context, I suppose, to – I mean, what are we trying to
Riley Bowman: get at here today, Jacob?
Jacob Paulsen: Well, I think the first thing to understand is that despite me saying that,
Jacob Paulsen: there's a large number of people out there who are going to say,
Jacob Paulsen: great, in theory, Jacob's right, but I don't see the benefits outweighing the cons.
Riley Bowman: Right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like Jacob's not wrong in, you know, cause it's just obvious,
Jacob Paulsen: like super obvious in common sense that when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages,
Jacob Paulsen: you adapt and you change.
Riley Bowman: Right.
Jacob Paulsen: So to whatever the thing is. So.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Got it. I mean, are there enough of those?
Riley Bowman: Yeah. To give you an example, like if we were to have this conversation 10 years ago, right.
Riley Bowman: You could probably only list one, maybe two miniaturized red dot sites,
Riley Bowman: as they're sometimes also referred to as being reliable enough for this purpose,
Riley Bowman: this topic that we're discussing today.
Jacob Paulsen: And even that reliability could have been a little debated.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, but really we're talking in that conversation, real short on that list
Riley Bowman: is the Trijicon RMR, which has been kind of the gold standard for quite a long time now.
Jacob Paulsen: Commercially available in the U S yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. That, that was, that was pretty much it. And now today that's,
Riley Bowman: this conversation is, is very different.
Riley Bowman: We have a lot of options that are really solid options that are reliable,
Riley Bowman: that are robust, that are durable, that are, uh, that you can rely upon.
Jacob Paulsen: Well, and in 10 years, we're gonna have more. And cause it's, it's always, uh,
Jacob Paulsen: if something is reliable or robust is an unknown
Jacob Paulsen: quantity when it hits the marketplace right so we have
Jacob Paulsen: optics right now that are in the infant stage
Jacob Paulsen: of data right but we we received an email at the podcast email this last week
Jacob Paulsen: from somebody who was asking about a very specific brand of optic and they said
Jacob Paulsen: hey you know i've heard you guys talk about these i bought such and such a brand
Jacob Paulsen: of optic i haven't heard a lot about
Jacob Paulsen: it what do you think and that was my response It's sort of like, well,
Jacob Paulsen: indicators as of right now are all good, but it's too early to know.
Jacob Paulsen: Because I'm not the guinea pig. I don't have some battle testing protocol that
Jacob Paulsen: I can use to go put a bunch of – I don't have the money either to go beat up a bunch of product.
Jacob Paulsen: So I, like most, am going to quietly observe the community, rely on the heavy
Jacob Paulsen: users like law enforcement and the military to provide the data to say,
Jacob Paulsen: yeah, this is proving to be really good.
Jacob Paulsen: But so that's my point is that today, yeah, you have a lot of products that
Jacob Paulsen: are pretty well tested, battle tested for lack of a better word.
Jacob Paulsen: And then you have a whole bunch more that look pretty good, but the jury is still out a little bit.
Riley Bowman: Absolutely. And that'll always be the case. You know, just ongoing development of product.
Riley Bowman: I'll give you an example. I was actually just doing some research today on this
Riley Bowman: and it was, you know, mentioned that the, I'm not going to mention the specific one right now.
Riley Bowman: Now it's not really relevant to this specific discussion right at this moment,
Riley Bowman: but there was a brand that in a specific optic from that brand that somebody
Riley Bowman: had provided some data on that they had done some testing and three different
Riley Bowman: samples of that very optic.
Riley Bowman: So three different individual units. And it's not this one.
Riley Bowman: I'm just holding one up as an example that they had in all failed in around 500 rounds or so.
Riley Bowman: That's not very uh encouraging for that particular
Riley Bowman: optic you know i mean i suspect that company is going back
Riley Bowman: to the drawing board with something there or at least i would like to think so uh
Riley Bowman: you know so that that's that's just the reality of
Riley Bowman: things somebody comes up with a new product it's going to get tested people are
Riley Bowman: going to you know put it put it to work hopefully and you know
Riley Bowman: pretty soon we'll find out uh well pretty it's usually pretty quick to find
Riley Bowman: out if something's a piece of crap um it's usually a little bit of longer process
Riley Bowman: to get to where it's like this is a proven optic that uh you know that i would
Riley Bowman: recommend for putting on a carry gun for instance yeah i mean
Jacob Paulsen: It's the same with anything else same thing with guns new guns come to the marketplace
Jacob Paulsen: i mean it's interesting like right now it's just now that we're seeing a whole
Jacob Paulsen: bunch of good data and feedback on the p365,
Jacob Paulsen: That gun's been out for, I don't know, what, like five years or six years or something?
Riley Bowman: It's funny that you say that right now because just yesterday I saw a post from
Riley Bowman: a friend saying that they don't think it's that good.
Jacob Paulsen: I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm not weighing in on the quality of the gun.
Jacob Paulsen: I am suggesting that over the last year and a half, I've seen a lot more reports
Jacob Paulsen: coming back on the longevity of a gun that when it was initially,
Jacob Paulsen: launched in the marketplace, it became a top seller almost overnight.
Jacob Paulsen: I carried that gun for some time.
Jacob Paulsen: But now years later, we're getting feedback. I'm just suggesting that more time means more data.
Riley Bowman: You're speaking about a gun that I have personally tens of thousands of rounds through.
Riley Bowman: Through multiple samples of. Anyway, yeah, all right. um
Riley Bowman: So I would like to see more data.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, let's look at the data. Yeah, exactly.
Riley Bowman: That's where the next jumping off point is here.
Riley Bowman: I think that there's still a lot that needs to be studied further because one
Riley Bowman: of the things that's difficult about things in the gun space is getting actual
Riley Bowman: legitimized studies and research done on gun-related things.
Riley Bowman: Because a lot of universities and whatnot, I mean, one, they don't care.
Riley Bowman: And secondly, they might have a bias against such, actually,
Riley Bowman: they likely have a bias against, you know, guns and gun-related products.
Riley Bowman: But there are a few things.
Riley Bowman: And I'm going to point you to, first of all, and I've been familiar with this
Riley Bowman: resource for a number of years now,
Riley Bowman: but some of the best information that
Riley Bowman: i've relied upon for years is from aaron
Riley Bowman: cowen at sage dynamics for years
Riley Bowman: now i think he's this is on his he's on his seventh edition and
Riley Bowman: he's probably ready to publish an eighth edition would be my guess because i
Riley Bowman: think he's you know been doing an update about once every year or two and it's
Riley Bowman: been two years since the last edition was released but he has a a white paper
Riley Bowman: on his website sage dynamics.org is where you can find it it's called miniaturized
Riley Bowman: red dot systems for duty handgun use.
Riley Bowman: Now, yes, he is very specifically interested in optics on pistols in a duty context.
Riley Bowman: He's trying to provide information and research and data for law enforcement
Riley Bowman: agencies primarily that are looking at potentially adopting or using or issuing
Riley Bowman: or approving optics on their officer's handguns.
Riley Bowman: And so what's cool about that is, you know, this 70 plus page white paper,
Riley Bowman: he's got quite a few data points in there that I think are interesting to note and be aware of.
Riley Bowman: That's why I start by bringing that up right now is I think that that's a good place to start.
Riley Bowman: I don't know that you've reviewed that at all, Jacob, but I'm happy to go over
Riley Bowman: a couple of key points in that white paper.
Jacob Paulsen: I've seen like a summary only. I've not really gone deep with it.
Jacob Paulsen: And only the most recent one, I haven't been following it either.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'm happy to let you tell them about it.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. So the first thing I would point you to is he actually,
Riley Bowman: and then this is just context for us to think about how an optic is used on a pistol.
Riley Bowman: So this is not data yet, but I'm going to get to that.
Riley Bowman: But just contextually, he talks about a lot of different things,
Riley Bowman: including stress response, you know, that people go through when we're dealing
Riley Bowman: with life or death situations and kind of what that does to the body.
Riley Bowman: And so you're talking about adrenaline and, you know, an SNS response and all of that, right?
Riley Bowman: And one thing that I wanted to start by talking about and hitting on,
Riley Bowman: and people have probably heard things like this before, is where he explains
Riley Bowman: what happens with the muscles, the little muscles in the eye that are responsible
Riley Bowman: for basically focusing.
Riley Bowman: Like what we are able to actually focus on, which is known as accommodation.
Riley Bowman: Those little muscles start to not work as well when we are under significant stress.
Riley Bowman: And and so the the major takeaway from that is
Riley Bowman: that the ability and it's
Riley Bowman: not a guaranteed thing it's going to depend on the type of stress response it's
Riley Bowman: going to depend on how sudden for instance uh something
Riley Bowman: happens like if we are truly shocked or surprised that's
Riley Bowman: one thing compared to a situation that develops
Riley Bowman: a little more gradually you know to where we're able to stay more
Riley Bowman: in like a decision making you know kind of
Riley Bowman: mindset um but but
Riley Bowman: if if you know we have a sudden adrenaline dump or
Riley Bowman: sns system in our body activates then what
Riley Bowman: happens is the ability to or what can happen is
Riley Bowman: the ability to focus at you know objects that are close to us uh it degrades
Riley Bowman: sometimes significantly and so i'm just providing that context because that's
Riley Bowman: interesting to think about because for those people that are like well iron
Riley Bowman: sights are the way for me i've tried red dots. I don't like them.
Riley Bowman: You know, I've been using iron sights for 40 years and, you know,
Riley Bowman: I'm just going to stick with what I know. And it's like, that's cool.
Riley Bowman: You know, more power to you. Although it is possible that in a situation where
Riley Bowman: you need to rely upon iron sights,
Riley Bowman: particularly if you are using them in the traditional sense of front sight focus,
Riley Bowman: you may not actually physically be able to focus on your front sight when you're under stress.
Riley Bowman: And so that just reinforces the idea that target focus, which is what humans
Riley Bowman: have been doing for millennia, is when faced with a threat, our body is wired
Riley Bowman: to want to focus on the threat.
Riley Bowman: Because that is like the thing that is of utmost importance in the moment is
Riley Bowman: what this thing or person or animal or creature or whatever it is, is trying to do to me.
Riley Bowman: And what do I need to do to try to survive? typically in
Riley Bowman: the context of what you know how do i stop this right and so uh target focus
Riley Bowman: is is really the the way and not just because it's superior uh but because that's
Riley Bowman: the way our bodies are actually wired to work so yeah you know
Jacob Paulsen: I'm just thinking that's that's highly relevant right
Jacob Paulsen: like um because we're you were talking here you know do do
Jacob Paulsen: pistol mounted optics bring enough advantages to overcome
Jacob Paulsen: the disadvantages and we've kind of been dancing around them but
Jacob Paulsen: here's one that's very specific like my ability
Jacob Paulsen: to focus especially when under stress or duress is
Jacob Paulsen: challenged uh at at the at the plane that the gun sights would be so being target
Jacob Paulsen: focused is going to be more natural more instinctive and i'm going to be more
Jacob Paulsen: capable of that and so therefore i'll be able to aim more efficiently or effectively
Jacob Paulsen: or at all with the with the optic.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. So now let's go ahead and actually look at some data.
Riley Bowman: And I'm going to jump to, and this has been published elsewhere,
Riley Bowman: but I'm glad Aaron includes this in his white paper.
Riley Bowman: Back in 2011, Norwich University conducted a range study, I'm quoting from the
Riley Bowman: paper right now, comparing the Trijicon RMR to traditional iron sights.
Riley Bowman: Now keep in mind, why specifically that optic?
Riley Bowman: Well, because in 2011, it was pretty much the optic that you could use for this.
Riley Bowman: It wasn't the only, but it was primarily the one that was considered to be,
Riley Bowman: you know, strong and robust enough for, you know, these kinds of purposes.
Riley Bowman: So the goal of the study, it says, was to identify an advantage in accuracy,
Riley Bowman: if any, of the RMR, or we could just replace that with red dots or pistol optic,
Riley Bowman: over traditional iron sights.
Riley Bowman: Okay, so the results from this are actually quite stunning.
Riley Bowman: Um they put these individuals these they
Riley Bowman: were all university students and by the way some of
Riley Bowman: them had prior firearms and or
Riley Bowman: hunting experience and some didn't have much experience if
Riley Bowman: any at all uh and and what's interesting is and i'll come back to that is the
Riley Bowman: results regardless of their level of experience is there's some interesting
Riley Bowman: takeaways from that that's mentioned later in the study but they put them through
Riley Bowman: four different stages of fire let me describe those for you because these address,
Riley Bowman: even though it's, you know, this is a study and they've got to do it in a controlled way.
Riley Bowman: Exactly. Right. So we've got to control some variables.
Riley Bowman: But I think they did a pretty good job of accommodating for
Riley Bowman: Maybe, you know, further away, more accuracy-based shooting to closer up,
Riley Bowman: you know, in your face, fast engagements to things that are in between that.
Riley Bowman: And so let me explain what these four shooting stages were that these students fired.
Riley Bowman: So the first one was that they just had to shoot 15 yards, slow fire, 10 rounds, untimed.
Riley Bowman: So no pressure, no stress. I mean, reasonably so.
Riley Bowman: So just 15 yards, take as much time as you need to get 10 rounds on target.
Riley Bowman: That was the stage, stage one stage two now
Riley Bowman: it's five yards that's relatively close so we could say
Riley Bowman: that five yards is a very reasonable self-defense type distance
Riley Bowman: i mean that's that's about the the length of a typical you know room in a house
Riley Bowman: right sure so five yard rapid engagement starting from center chest retention
Riley Bowman: hold position it says and upon a signal from a pro timer or a shot timer engage
Riley Bowman: the target and fire two shots.
Riley Bowman: The times were recorded for each shot. And this was a repeated nine more times.
Riley Bowman: So, and they did a total of 20 shots. So they did this 10 times of where they
Riley Bowman: basically at five yards, just from a, like a, like a high ready type position
Riley Bowman: or close retention position, just present out and fire two shots. Okay. Stage three.
Riley Bowman: 10-yard rapid engagements. Now, again, a little bit more further,
Riley Bowman: more of an intermediate distance.
Riley Bowman: And stage three is the same as stage two, except the distance was just further.
Riley Bowman: Okay. So, and they repeated it half as many times. So they only did five times
Riley Bowman: of that for a total of 10 shots.
Riley Bowman: But it was the same idea. On the beep of the timer, present out,
Riley Bowman: fire two rounds to the 10-yard target.
Riley Bowman: And then stage four was a 10-yard rapid engagement with multiple targets now. rapid fire.
Riley Bowman: Okay. And these were also at 10 yards. They had to shoot two different targets
Riley Bowman: that were spaced about six feet apart.
Riley Bowman: They did it for a total of six times, two shots each time.
Riley Bowman: So I think it was one shot on one target, one shot on the other target for a
Riley Bowman: total of 12 shots. So that's your four stages. Okay.
Riley Bowman: So we do have further away accuracy based slow fire.
Riley Bowman: We've got up close rapid fire. We've got stuff that's in between,
Riley Bowman: including also transitions now between targets. So that's the four stages.
Riley Bowman: They used Glock 19 handguns, and they used an IDPA target for scoring.
Riley Bowman: So they're looking how many hits are in the down zero, how many are in the down
Riley Bowman: one, which is kind of like the Charlie zone for those that are familiar with USPSA targets.
Riley Bowman: And then there's the down three zone, which they considered,
Riley Bowman: they called it zone three.
Riley Bowman: So zone one is where you wanted to be in the down zero.
Riley Bowman: Then zone two is like the Charlie, and zone three was essentially like the Delta zone.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: All right. So they did this. And if you look at the actual, there's charts that are attached to this.
Riley Bowman: I'm going to start just by describing these. I don't know if you had a chance
Riley Bowman: to at least look at the charts, Jacob.
Jacob Paulsen: Nope.
Riley Bowman: I didn't. In our outline, you can scroll down and see images of these charts, these data points.
Riley Bowman: But the first thing was just looking at all four stages and hit percentages. All right.
Riley Bowman: So stage one, again, it was a slow fire on far target. and hit percentage.
Riley Bowman: And to be clear, when they say hit, it's anywhere on the target.
Riley Bowman: Okay. So this is not counting. It's in the down zero or the zone one,
Riley Bowman: for instance, this is just, they got a hit on the target. Okay.
Riley Bowman: Hit percentage, uh, for that first stage was nearly a hundred percent.
Riley Bowman: It's like 90 something percent, 97 percent thereabouts for those using the red dot.
Riley Bowman: For iron sights, hit percentage was down to 70-something percent.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, 78 maybe.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I have the specific numbers somewhere I can pull them up.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, just for sake of time, I'm just going to give you the rough,
Riley Bowman: you know, whereabouts they were.
Riley Bowman: For the second stage, that's the close-up five rounds rapid fire.
Riley Bowman: Hit percentage with the red dot was like 100%.
Riley Bowman: And hit rate for iron sights only was also pretty good. It was like 90-something percent.
Riley Bowman: But it's still less than with the red dot.
Riley Bowman: Then the zone 3, which is the 10-yard rapid fire, hit percentage for red dots
Riley Bowman: was like 95%. And for iron sights was more like low 80%.
Riley Bowman: And then for the fourth stage, which is the two targets you had to transition
Riley Bowman: between, again, hit percentage is very similar for the red dot shooters to the stage three.
Riley Bowman: So like mid to high 90s and hit percentage for iron sights was low 80 percent range.
Riley Bowman: Okay so it's like okay all right so that
Riley Bowman: just tells us that across all the four stages
Riley Bowman: across you know between both sighting systems iron sights
Riley Bowman: only versus red dot only uh the hit
Riley Bowman: percentage all across the board was always better with an
Riley Bowman: optic on the gun okay in some cases it wasn't that
Riley Bowman: big of a difference like the biggest or the smallest amount of
Riley Bowman: difference between sighting systems was obviously on the
Riley Bowman: close distance five yard rapid fire shots now maybe
Riley Bowman: a huge surprise there and so some people i know would use a data point
Riley Bowman: like that jacob but this comes up quite often in debates is well self-defense
Riley Bowman: you know shootings are always are close distance and so therefore it doesn't
Riley Bowman: really matter if i have an optic on there or not right so yeah uh but even in
Riley Bowman: this date you know with this data we have here hit percentages were still better
Riley Bowman: even with a red dot on the gun even on those those gap
Jacob Paulsen: Might have been tighter but it was still improved.
Riley Bowman: So here's what i'm going to do next is i'm going to mostly just focus on i mean
Riley Bowman: we have data points for all the different stages which are all very interesting
Riley Bowman: to see but i want to actually focus more on the
Riley Bowman: The second stage yes the second stage here it is because this i think is is
Riley Bowman: really interesting and quite telling so if you look at the second stage results
Riley Bowman: now it gives us hits by zone okay so now Now we're talking about that down zero,
Riley Bowman: which is like high center chest where you want them to be in that central thoracic
Riley Bowman: cavity where your pump house and your aorta and all that are at.
Riley Bowman: That's where we want them to be, right?
Riley Bowman: Hit percentage in that zone one for iron sites only was under 60%,
Riley Bowman: whereas hit percentage with the red dot was over, it was like closer to 75%.
Riley Bowman: Now, I would have liked to have seen maybe even a higher percentage than that,
Riley Bowman: just my own personal bias, but we are talking about a close distance rapid fire engagement,
Riley Bowman: and there is a 15 plus percent difference in how many hits are in the critical
Riley Bowman: area versus not for the iron sights compared to red dot.
Riley Bowman: Yeah and so that kind of just prepares you then that what we see in the rest
Riley Bowman: of those those three other stages is that the hit percentages get worse and
Riley Bowman: like the difference between red dot and iron sights gets greater and greater
Riley Bowman: and greater uh the more challenging the shooting becomes and
Jacob Paulsen: These were pretty like good size sample groups and both groups had comparable
Jacob Paulsen: number of people who's had past experience with firearms those who had no experience
Jacob Paulsen: with firearms and you know like
Jacob Paulsen: it it the study looks pretty well done i guess is what i'm trying to say.
Riley Bowman: And i said i was gonna come back to that actually sorry uh what it states this
Riley Bowman: in the study it says the data showed no difference between those who shot with
Riley Bowman: iron sights and those who used the iron the the red dot as far as looking at
Riley Bowman: whether they had experience or not Essentially,
Riley Bowman: the data across the board was if the shooter had experience,
Riley Bowman: then they performed better with a red dot than they did with iron sights.
Riley Bowman: If they didn't have experience, they performed better with a red dot than they
Riley Bowman: did with iron sights. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: It makes so much sense to me. Like in hindsight, it does.
Jacob Paulsen: Like if I, if I circle back to when I was considering the optic,
Jacob Paulsen: when I first put the optic in my gun on my gun, um,
Jacob Paulsen: I don't, you know, then it's like, then I would have, I would have been like,
Jacob Paulsen: wow, that sounds freaking crazy. Like that's, that's interesting.
Jacob Paulsen: But now in hindsight, it's like, well, duh, you know, like it's so much easier to perform.
Jacob Paulsen: It really is. I'm going back to my car thing again, but it really is the equivalent
Jacob Paulsen: of driving the automatic transmission versus a stick shift. It is that much easier.
Jacob Paulsen: In fact, it's even a bigger gap than that. When we kicked off the recording
Jacob Paulsen: of this podcast, we had this little 30-second little clip that shows you and
Jacob Paulsen: me shooting some guns in a little video.
Jacob Paulsen: In that clip, I can see me shooting with irons and I can see me shooting with the dot.
Jacob Paulsen: And it was, you know, I'd never really noticed that before. We've been using
Jacob Paulsen: that video for, I don't know, a year or more, but you see it and it's like, geez, like, okay.
Jacob Paulsen: Like I can tell the difference in my own performance pretty readily.
Jacob Paulsen: So anyway, for, you know, I guess that's pretty anecdotal to go with the data,
Jacob Paulsen: But to me, whether you're a brand new shooter or you're a very experienced shooter,
Jacob Paulsen: the dot makes a pretty sizable impact.
Riley Bowman: I mean, anecdotally, that's what I would say about myself as well.
Riley Bowman: Now, before we get too much further along here, I do have a couple more data
Riley Bowman: points I think would be worth sharing for the podcast here today.
Riley Bowman: But maybe now would be a good time to at least, at the very least,
Riley Bowman: tease our secondary sponsor of the episode.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, good idea. So this week, we are kind of doing this big special emphasis
Jacob Paulsen: on carry optics, pistol optics, red dots, whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: Because we are getting ready to release and launch a brand new training program
Jacob Paulsen: called Carry Optics Mastery.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, we're recording this episode on Thursday, November 6th.
Jacob Paulsen: So if you're watching this live or you're catching this later today and you
Jacob Paulsen: try and go and find it, it won't be there.
Jacob Paulsen: Because tomorrow, November 7th, is the official open launch day of this new training program.
Jacob Paulsen: Most of you will hear this when we publish it to the audio feed.
Jacob Paulsen: And by then, the course will be available for purchase. But it's worth noting
Jacob Paulsen: that we have some special launch bonuses and things like that that are available
Jacob Paulsen: only for the first week that this course is for sale.
Jacob Paulsen: So you probably want to move quickly to take advantage of those things.
Jacob Paulsen: And, yeah, it's the top three most lengthy courses we've ever done.
Jacob Paulsen: It's over eight hours long.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's a pretty significant amount of content. Riley is the only instructor on this one.
Jacob Paulsen: I did not co-instruct or no one else participated in that respect.
Jacob Paulsen: Since this falls directly, I hate to give Riley too much credit when he's listening
Jacob Paulsen: because I don't want you to get too much ego.
Jacob Paulsen: But this course falls like directly in line with Riley's core,
Jacob Paulsen: like specialized competency as a firearm instructor.
Jacob Paulsen: So anyway, Riley's the instructor on the course. It's over eight hours long.
Jacob Paulsen: It's all about carry optics. And it's significant in its nature of its comprehensiveness.
Jacob Paulsen: So it starts out very basic. What is a red dot? It goes into maintenance.
Jacob Paulsen: How do we maintain the red dot? It talks about features and attributes of different
Jacob Paulsen: dots, brightness adjustments and batteries.
Jacob Paulsen: And it talks about pros and cons and considerable things that you need to be
Jacob Paulsen: aware of that are not maybe ideal with the optics.
Jacob Paulsen: And then it gets into the actual performance aspects.
Jacob Paulsen: How do we leverage this tool to improve our shooting? How do we take advantage
Jacob Paulsen: of it in a way that we maximize its value?
Jacob Paulsen: And what are even drills and exercises you can perform,
Jacob Paulsen: that help you build the skill of working in that new paradigm and optimizing
Jacob Paulsen: the value of the, of the tool and putting it to use and, and, and much more.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's, it's, it's a fabulous course. It's all video.
Jacob Paulsen: You, once you have it, you have it so you can watch it, rewind it,
Jacob Paulsen: jump around, watch it with friends, you know, all, all the things.
Jacob Paulsen: So yeah, that's the, I guess, elevator pitch for carry optics mastery.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Worked really hard on this over. I mean,
Riley Bowman: it's actually, we filmed a lot of this this summer yeah and uh since then you
Riley Bowman: know been working on it getting it edited getting it produced getting you know
Riley Bowman: everything in in in order to uh get it ready for for launch and release super
Riley Bowman: excited to see it come to fruition uh i do think it's probably the most comprehensive
Riley Bowman: pistol optics, carry optics oriented video course that you can find online.
Riley Bowman: There are a couple others out there that I'm familiar with and I've viewed several of them.
Riley Bowman: And this, I think, I mean, we really do a deep dive on a lot of things.
Riley Bowman: And it's, I think what's kind of unique about it is we give you all the things,
Riley Bowman: all the information, all the education on, you know, what these little things,
Riley Bowman: these optics are, how they work, how they operate, their features,
Riley Bowman: all of that, but then also teach you how to use them, how to shoot with them,
Riley Bowman: how to, you know, what are the fundamentals involved in doing that?
Riley Bowman: And the drills, like you mentioned, the drills, I think are super,
Riley Bowman: super helpful for people to start really learning how to use them the most effective way they can.
Riley Bowman: If they'll apply themselves and put everything to practice and both in dry fire,
Riley Bowman: as well as in live fire in the range,
Riley Bowman: I think you'll see significant improvements in your shooting
Riley Bowman: with a carry optics equipped
Riley Bowman: gun so uh where you can learn more
Riley Bowman: okay uh and as jake mentioned not gonna
Riley Bowman: probably you know it's not the product is not yet available till
Riley Bowman: tomorrow and that's the cool thing about you catching this on
Riley Bowman: the podcast here today is this you are you guys are the first to
Riley Bowman: hear about this officially the rest of the folks are
Riley Bowman: going to hear about it tomorrow when the emails and all that go out uh go
Riley Bowman: to concealed carry.com forward slash com that's for
Riley Bowman: carry optics mastery is what that stands for concealed
Riley Bowman: carry.com forward slash com it's going
Riley Bowman: to look like concealed carry.com slash com uh so
Riley Bowman: that's the link and uh it'll be live tomorrow to to sign up and order your own
Riley Bowman: copy of the concealed or the carry optics mastery course a couple of bonuses
Riley Bowman: are going to come along with that that are i think are really important that
Riley Bowman: you're going to know about one you're going to get,
Riley Bowman: uh, actually one is pretty big deal.
Riley Bowman: Uh, you're going to get a $50 off coupon.
Riley Bowman: From any optic that we sell on concealed carry.com. Uh, we already list things
Riley Bowman: pretty much at the minimum advertised price. It's allowed.
Riley Bowman: Uh, so what that means is that's your opportunity to get your hands on your
Riley Bowman: next optic for below, uh, the allowed price essentially.
Riley Bowman: Uh, so kind of a big deal. Okay. You save some, some, some dough on your,
Riley Bowman: on your next optic by doing that.
Riley Bowman: Uh, so you can subtract that right away off the cost of the, of the course itself.
Riley Bowman: And I think that It becomes a pretty big selling point. But we've also worked
Riley Bowman: really hard to put together a pistol optics guide, which you can go to concealedcarry.com
Riley Bowman: forward slash P-O-G to get our,
Riley Bowman: you know, get access to that resource, that online resource that breaks down
Riley Bowman: things as far as footprints and dot sizes and types of, you know,
Riley Bowman: emitter designs and so on and so forth.
Riley Bowman: Breaks that all down in a real simple format for
Riley Bowman: people to be able to understand so you can understand optics and
Riley Bowman: guns and how they're going to fit on there and all that and you
Riley Bowman: know how to choose the right optic for you that's all
Riley Bowman: available at that pistol optics guide and also we got we designed a custom zeroing
Riley Bowman: target to help you with zeroing an optic on your pistol to make that just this
Riley Bowman: brain list like use your brain yes but it just makes it really easy so that's also part of this
Riley Bowman: whole thing that we've been working on and putting together for you so anything
Riley Bowman: else I failed to mention Jacob?
Jacob Paulsen: There's also a couple downloadable resources that are included with the course
Jacob Paulsen: you're going to get an ebook which is kind of meant to be a companion guide
Jacob Paulsen: or an alternative way to consume the material and the content there's also a installation,
Jacob Paulsen: downloadable manual manual for, you know, for pistol optics that we think is really valuable.
Jacob Paulsen: So those are things that are included, you know, as kind of bonuses when you buy the course.
Riley Bowman: Super excited about that e-book as well. So that's another thing that doesn't really exist.
Riley Bowman: From the other courses I've seen online, I don't think any of them come with a companion e-book.
Riley Bowman: So super really excited about all this.
Riley Bowman: So guys, again, concealedcarry.com forward slash COM to get your copy of,
Riley Bowman: to get access, complete access to all those things, including the bonuses and
Riley Bowman: the $50 coupon, all that of the Carry Optics Mastery course.
Riley Bowman: All right. A couple more things here. while we still have a little bit of time.
Riley Bowman: So I wanted to share with you, Jacob, that one other thing that Aaron Cowan
Riley Bowman: at Sage Dynamics did is in 2014, he decided to do his own force-on-force study.
Riley Bowman: So he involved 12 students and put them through a number of different force-on-force scenarios.
Riley Bowman: They were using some munitions glocks.
Riley Bowman: One was converted to have just an optic on it and the other was iron sight only.
Riley Bowman: So they could compare, you know, side by side and just, you know,
Riley Bowman: I'll break this down really simply and give you, you know, the,
Riley Bowman: I'll just give you the answers right now.
Riley Bowman: This is the cheat sheet, if you will.
Riley Bowman: After comparing everything between iron sights and optics in these force on force scenarios.
Riley Bowman: What was interesting is that the total rounds fired is not that different,
Riley Bowman: although on the iron sight only side, so get the gun with only iron sights,
Riley Bowman: students did end up firing about 10% more rounds overall.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Which I, you know, hard to know all the reasons exactly why,
Riley Bowman: but I suspect that could be related to some rounds missing.
Riley Bowman: Okay. But about 10% more rounds fired.
Riley Bowman: But what's really surprising is when you look at the hit percentages,
Riley Bowman: okay, and then beyond that, don't just look at hit percentages like anywhere
Riley Bowman: on the body, but look at how many hits were critical or what were considered to be in critical zones.
Riley Bowman: So, you know, areas that are likely to result in a stoppage.
Riley Bowman: That's where the data is really telling, that really separates optics from iron
Riley Bowman: sights on guns in these force-on-force scenarios.
Riley Bowman: So the total, just giving you an example, in the total rounds fired with optics,
Riley Bowman: about half of those rounds, almost exactly half of those rounds hit in critical areas.
Riley Bowman: Most of the rounds hit, period, but about half of them hit in critical areas,
Riley Bowman: so like high thoracic chest cavity or head or thereabouts.
Riley Bowman: 70 rounds out of the 262 rounds total fired were considered misses,
Riley Bowman: probably more than I'd like to see, but hey, half of the rounds fired, hit in critical areas.
Riley Bowman: Critical areas are going to result potentially in a relatively fast stop,
Riley Bowman: right? Here's the big difference here.
Riley Bowman: Ironsight-equipped guns, or the shooters that are using Ironsight guns,
Riley Bowman: out of all the rounds they fired,
Riley Bowman: yes, about half or maybe a little more than half rounds hit,
Riley Bowman: but a very small percentage, like 20% of those hits, or of total rounds fired,
Riley Bowman: only 20% actually hit in critical areas.
Riley Bowman: And then there's, you could think of this as a, he calls it a hit map.
Riley Bowman: You could almost describe it as a heat map.
Riley Bowman: Where are the rounds concentrated at? And this is where it's really telling.
Riley Bowman: Did you look at this, Jacob?
Riley Bowman: I did. The iron sight hit map, for those using the iron sighted gun,
Riley Bowman: simunition gun, the rounds are, the hits are kind of all over the place.
Riley Bowman: They're not super well focused.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, we would call this the degree of variance.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, right, exactly. But then you look at the hit map for the students using
Riley Bowman: the optic-equipped pistol, and you see a pretty good concentration of hits in
Riley Bowman: the chest, some in the head.
Riley Bowman: And those that are elsewhere, there's really not a high percentage of them.
Riley Bowman: Like, it's really quite telling.
Riley Bowman: So what were your thoughts on that when you saw that?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I mean, the visual aspect of it is pretty compelling. So most of your
Jacob Paulsen: nature of a podcast is that you guys aren't going to see that as part of this, but.
Jacob Paulsen: I think the takeaway here, I guess I'll start specific and then I'll go more
Jacob Paulsen: broad. But yeah, specific to this study. There you go, Riley's sharing the screen.
Jacob Paulsen: So those of you who are watching the video, maybe you will see this.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I'm trying here.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll try it again. But the takeaway is the consistency of hits is better.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's one thing to look at the data and say, well, a hit's a hit's a hit.
Jacob Paulsen: Red dots get more hits. It's another thing to look at the data and say,
Jacob Paulsen: yeah, but what about good hits versus less good hits? and red dots get way more
Jacob Paulsen: good hits than the irons do based on this data.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's true of both the first study that Riley referenced and the second study as well.
Jacob Paulsen: I think we've really been focused here on this performance aspect,
Jacob Paulsen: right? Like will a dot make me a better shooter?
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that so far every research study that's been done and all the data
Jacob Paulsen: that we have and something that Riley's probably not going to present here today,
Jacob Paulsen: but competitive shooters look at this data all the time, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Because like you were just at a match, you're wearing a shirt right now from
Jacob Paulsen: some match you competed in.
Jacob Paulsen: And in that match, you're going to have different divisions are going to run
Jacob Paulsen: through the same stages.
Jacob Paulsen: So at the match, they set up the stages and some people are going to,
Jacob Paulsen: oh, there we go. Here's that heat map for those who are going to look at it.
Jacob Paulsen: So there's the iron sights. You can see it very dispersed across the target area.
Jacob Paulsen: And then compare that with this.
Jacob Paulsen: Here's the hit map for those with the dot. And you can see it way more concentrated
Jacob Paulsen: than the critical target area.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, a lot more consistent.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, so all the data supports that. What I was going to say about competitive
Jacob Paulsen: shooting is like at a match where – and I'm not much of a competitor myself,
Jacob Paulsen: but Riley, you were just at a match.
Jacob Paulsen: And at a match, a bunch of stages are set up.
Jacob Paulsen: And then they have multiple divisions of shooters. You have a division of shooters
Jacob Paulsen: that are running an optic on their gun. and you're going to have some divisions
Jacob Paulsen: of shooters that don't run an optic on their gun, but they're all going to run
Jacob Paulsen: through the same stages.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, at the end of the match, when the scoring is done, they're going to say,
Jacob Paulsen: well, people in this division, here's
Jacob Paulsen: how you placed, and people in that division, this is how you placed.
Jacob Paulsen: But all the data is available, so savvy shooters will go look at that and say,
Jacob Paulsen: well, on average, do the top shooters that have an optic on their gun outperform
Jacob Paulsen: the shooters that don't have an optic on their gun?
Jacob Paulsen: And that's also very consistent, and that's a massive load of data.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not you know 12 shooters who you know
Jacob Paulsen: participated in a study one day that's like thousands
Jacob Paulsen: and thousands and i mean it's hundreds of thousands of rounds
Jacob Paulsen: fired that that data is and so to me that's highly compelling it's like yeah
Jacob Paulsen: best if we look at the best shooters in the world we put them in the categories
Jacob Paulsen: of those who are not running a dot and those who are and we send them to the
Jacob Paulsen: same match where they run the exact same shooting problems shooting solution
Jacob Paulsen: than the ones who have the dot have higher scores.
Jacob Paulsen: They get more points per second. It's not complicated.
Riley Bowman: I was going to actually at least try to fit that in and bring that up.
Riley Bowman: The best example, the best way of comparing red dot to iron sight performance
Riley Bowman: in the match setting is to look at steel challenge data.
Riley Bowman: Because the stages are relatively simple. They're quick.
Riley Bowman: Everybody shoots the exact same thing.
Riley Bowman: And round count or round capacity in the guns is not really a relevant factor.
Riley Bowman: Because in some divisions in some of the shooting sports
Riley Bowman: you might have an iron sight division that doesn't
Riley Bowman: compare very well to an optic division because maybe in
Riley Bowman: the iron sight division you're limited to you know
Riley Bowman: so many rounds you know like give you an example in IPSC for instance you're
Riley Bowman: limited to 30 or 15 rounds in a magazine uh whereas you know in uh uh uh limited
Riley Bowman: division I should say carry optics in IPSC is 15 rounds,
Riley Bowman: but let's say limited division is, you know, you could have 20,
Riley Bowman: 22, 23 rounds sometimes.
Riley Bowman: And so sometimes you get some of those like discrepancies. Steel challenge reduces
Riley Bowman: the number of variables.
Riley Bowman: Because to shoot each time, you only have to have five rounds in the gun basically, right?
Riley Bowman: And so when we look at the data for steel challenge performance consistently,
Riley Bowman: this is true across the rifle divisions,
Riley Bowman: rimfire, PCC, optics or iron sight,
Riley Bowman: all the pistol divisions, iron sight only and optics divisions on the pistol side,
Riley Bowman: rimfire or center fire consistently across the board at every match,
Riley Bowman: at all the national championships, at the area championships,
Riley Bowman: consistently the optics, equipped divisions are the ones that come out on top,
Riley Bowman: and so that's very telling about the performance advantage
Riley Bowman: That of an optic equipped pistol. I did want to share one more thing.
Riley Bowman: We're basically about out of time here, but, and, and all these links,
Riley Bowman: I'll try to make sure are in the show notes, but recently, like back in January,
Riley Bowman: I think it was, there was a report released from National Law Enforcement Firearms
Riley Bowman: Instructors Association.
Riley Bowman: This is called the National Survey Officer Involved Shootings with Pistol Red Dot Sights or RDS.
Riley Bowman: Okay. They conducted this over the years 2019 to 2024.
Riley Bowman: They basically, they determined that they were going to, they were going to
Riley Bowman: run this for a longer period of time. Like they were going to keep data coming in.
Riley Bowman: But part of this was to determine when duty pistols had been widely accepted
Riley Bowman: in the law enforcement community.
Riley Bowman: And they'd already decided that it's, they've been, they are now becoming widely
Riley Bowman: accepted in the law enforcement community.
Riley Bowman: And so they were like, the purpose of us continuing to run this survey is no longer required.
Riley Bowman: But what they did is they collected some data over those five years from officer-involved
Riley Bowman: shootings where the officers were using optics on their guns.
Riley Bowman: And there's a lot of data there you can go look at, and I think it's very interesting.
Riley Bowman: But what I really wanted to share, Jacob, was these are firsthand accounts from
Riley Bowman: respondents of the survey.
Riley Bowman: So those involved in the actual shooting.
Riley Bowman: And I just wanted to share a few, take, like these are they were asked to said
Riley Bowman: here anything notable about this incident that relates to the use of your pistol
Riley Bowman: rds okay so they were that's the question they're asking these officers and
Riley Bowman: i just wanted to share a couple of these now these are anecdotal but i think these are very telling
Riley Bowman: from the perspective of somebody that's actually been faced with a life or death
Riley Bowman: situation that required them to use their gun so here's a couple of things
Riley Bowman: An officer, he vividly remembered seeing the red dot on target for each round
Riley Bowman: fired. Okay, there's one.
Riley Bowman: Target acquisition was fantastic, fast and accurate. That's another officer's report.
Riley Bowman: Aided in quick acquisition of sight slash dot and subsequent rounds on target.
Riley Bowman: Easier identification of suspect.
Riley Bowman: He said, I barely had to look at my weapon before firing. I just kept my eyes
Riley Bowman: on the subject and fired when I could see the dot.
Riley Bowman: This one i really like by utilizing
Riley Bowman: the optic on my handgun i was enabled a larger picture of
Riley Bowman: the suspect's actions as well as a sighting system that had a much smaller minute
Riley Bowman: of angle of traditional handgun iron sights this is very specific the window
Riley Bowman: of the optic flowed as seamless as possible in an incident that less than 1.5
Riley Bowman: seconds would afford for all my rounds fired down range that's really interesting this
Jacob Paulsen: Guy's a geek i like him.
Riley Bowman: I was able to easily locate the dot during the incident the subject was lying
Riley Bowman: prone as i was standing near him holding him at gunpoint until i shot him only
Riley Bowman: one shot was necessary to subdue the threat after the shot was fired i was again
Riley Bowman: easily able to locate the dot in case a secondary shot was necessary
Riley Bowman: And then finally, this is very brief, but it says foot pursuit and distance of 40.66 yards.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I think. Sorry, go ahead.
Riley Bowman: Just meaning like this guy had to take a long shot. And I took that to mean
Riley Bowman: that this was a good thing that I had the RDS because it was a long shot.
Jacob Paulsen: I think the nature of this study ending is really telling.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's like in 2019, probably the study was the idea for it was born in 2017.
Jacob Paulsen: Probably got the funding in 2018. I'm making that up, but it's not far-fetched.
Jacob Paulsen: So they kick off the study in 2019, and they're like, hey, we're getting questions
Jacob Paulsen: from agencies that are part of our association of law enforcement agencies about
Jacob Paulsen: red dots, whether or not they're viable for law enforcement use.
Jacob Paulsen: So we're going to go do some studies, some research, some data.
Jacob Paulsen: And only five years go by, right?
Jacob Paulsen: In 2014, they're looking at the marketplace. They're like, this was a waste
Jacob Paulsen: of time and money. Because now that we have gathered enough data to put out
Jacob Paulsen: the results, the marketplace has left us behind. Everyone already has dots.
Jacob Paulsen: No one waited for us to be able to answer the question.
Jacob Paulsen: They all just moved forward because the data that was out there was so compelling
Jacob Paulsen: as to the advantages of the dot.
Jacob Paulsen: So I guess we'll end the study and we'll put that info out there that supports
Jacob Paulsen: what everybody's already done without our data anyway.
Riley Bowman: A recent article on Police One talked about this, referenced this as well,
Riley Bowman: and basically said, you know, it's clear that law enforcement agencies,
Riley Bowman: not all of them yet, but many of them are adopting this, that,
Riley Bowman: you know, red dots are here to stay.
Riley Bowman: The key now is, is our law enforcement officers,
Riley Bowman: and I'm saying this more broadly, are all of us self-defense minded folks that
Riley Bowman: carry a gun for whatever purpose, using them effectively and to their max potential.
Riley Bowman: And the answer to that is, is no.
Riley Bowman: We can always do better. And that's partly why we've released this Carry Optics
Riley Bowman: Mastery course, is we want to help you, our audience, our listeners,
Riley Bowman: our followers at concealedcarry.com to be able to use an optic equipped pistol more effectively.
Riley Bowman: And if you haven't adopted it yet, and we're not here to force you to do that,
Riley Bowman: but hopefully we've provided some information today that makes you go,
Riley Bowman: hmm, maybe there's something worth at least looking into here.
Riley Bowman: Maybe that's all it is, and that's fine. But if you are also just thinking or
Riley Bowman: you're on the fence about getting into optics on a pistol,
Riley Bowman: you know, I'd like to think that we could provide something for you to help
Riley Bowman: you in that transition and being able to learn it and using it to its max potential.
Riley Bowman: And that's why the Carry Optics Mastery course exists.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. I mean, maybe someone here is listening to this and saying,
Jacob Paulsen: I'm just, you know, I'm an old dog who doesn't learn new tricks and,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, leave me alone. Let me do my thing.
Jacob Paulsen: But if you plan on owning and carrying guns, you know, two years from now,
Jacob Paulsen: three years from now, five years from now, then it is an inevitability that
Jacob Paulsen: you're going to put an optic on that gun.
Jacob Paulsen: And the next gun you buy five years from now, six years from now,
Jacob Paulsen: seven years from now, it's going to come probably with an optic already on the gun.
Jacob Paulsen: You're going to have a hard time. A certain number of years from now,
Jacob Paulsen: and it's not 10, it's probably less than 10 years, you're going to have a hard
Jacob Paulsen: time buying a gun that doesn't come with an optic.
Jacob Paulsen: So it is an inevitability. The question is, are you going to embrace that now
Jacob Paulsen: or are you going to hold out longer for whatever arbitrary reason? Now, there are reasons.
Jacob Paulsen: We did a couple of videos this week. They're on concealedcarry.com. You can go find them.
Jacob Paulsen: Kind of in anticipation of this product launch. And one of them,
Jacob Paulsen: we talked about cons of red dots. Like, what are the downsides?
Jacob Paulsen: And for me, the biggest downside by far is cost. You know, you're going to spend money.
Jacob Paulsen: So I think that, you know, that's a reality that some people are facing right
Jacob Paulsen: now. Oh, I keep hearing I need to switch to the dot.
Jacob Paulsen: But, you know, me and my trustee...
Riley Bowman: I don't know if Jacob's the only one that's frozen or if it's me,
Riley Bowman: but Jacob's frozen for me.
Riley Bowman: So we are at the point where we got to wrap up the podcast, unfortunately,
Riley Bowman: because I've got a hard stop.
Riley Bowman: So with that, I don't know what happened there. I'm sorry, Jacob.
Riley Bowman: But, hey, one more call to action here. Carry Optics Mastery Training Program,
Riley Bowman: concealedcarry.com forward slash com is the link where you can get it.
Riley Bowman: Hope that you will at least take
Riley Bowman: a look and consider whether it's a good training program for you or not.
Riley Bowman: Remember all the awesome bonuses that are available, including the $50 coupon
Riley Bowman: off of your next optic purchase at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: And also the complimentary e-book that goes along with that and everything else.
Riley Bowman: Also a reminder, you can check out the Pistol IQ Target.
Riley Bowman: If you don't have one of those yet or you haven't tried them yet and you'd like
Riley Bowman: to try them, You can get a free sample target at concealedcarry.com forward slash PIQ sample.
Riley Bowman: So that'd be the other thing to remind you of with respect to our episode sponsors here today.
Riley Bowman: So folks, thank you so much for being with us for this episode of the Concealed Carry podcast.
Riley Bowman: Appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you talking about,
Riley Bowman: you know, red dots on carry guns and whether they're worth it or not. We think they are.
Riley Bowman: Now it's up to you to decide whether you think so or not as well.
Riley Bowman: Hey, look, Jacob is hopefully back. We'll try to bring him back in here.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, you totally froze on us. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: That was super frustrating. I don't even know what I was saying now,
Jacob Paulsen: now that I've been yelling at my computer for the last 60 seconds.
Riley Bowman: Well, I was just wrapping it up and giving, you know, one last shout out to
Riley Bowman: our sponsor, you know, at Lynx today.
Riley Bowman: Jacob, any final words before we say goodbye?
Jacob Paulsen: Embrace the dot. Do it now. If you're concerned about money,
Jacob Paulsen: then, you know, look for the cost-efficient ways to do it.
Jacob Paulsen: Send us an email if we can be helpful. If you're trying to figure out what you're
Jacob Paulsen: doing, what gun, what optic, things like that, email us.
Jacob Paulsen: We're happy to help. Podcast at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: Yep. Our support team is awesome. Jason and the guys are great.
Riley Bowman: And if they don't know something, they forward it to me or Jacob,
Riley Bowman: and we'll definitely help address.
Riley Bowman: Well, folks, until next time, a reminder to train right, train often,
Riley Bowman: and train safe so you can fight hard, fight fast, and fight true. Take care.
Riley Bowman: A reminder that laws vary from place to place, and we encourage listeners to
Riley Bowman: seek local legal advice to understand applicable laws.
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, Inc., its brands and properties, and the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: is not a legal service, nor are we attorneys at law.
Riley Bowman: We make our best faith effort to share Concealed Carry-related insights and
Riley Bowman: information about firearm-related incidents and the laws pertaining,
Riley Bowman: based on our own understanding and experience.
Riley Bowman: But things can be different where you live, or laws may have changed by the
Riley Bowman: time you listen to this. We cannot be held liable for your actions based on
Riley Bowman: the information shared in this podcast.
Riley Bowman: Please exercise care with all things pertaining to firearm use,
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, and always practice following basic firearm safety rules.
Riley Bowman: More information about safety can be found at concealedcarry.com forward slash safety.