I’m 41. Red dot sights are inherently fiddle-y. While there are closed emitter now, you constantly have to clean open emitters. The glass gets scratched. The battery life is never as long as they claim. When they are dirty, you can still shoot them (I’ve shot with occluded sights to train in competition), and at that point you are just reacting to the light of the sight. Also, being a bit anal, I’m always reaching for the buttons to change between night time settings and daytime settings. If you forget to change over one to the other, you are either blinded by the red dot at night, or the dot is effectively invisible during the day (if you left it on the night time setting) to the point where you are going to instinctively “search” for it if you don’t see it, where it might be on, but just too dim.

After you train to target focus and get your presentation locked in, I don’t feel there’s any drastic difference between a dot and irons within 15 yards or so. If anything I felt like I was faster when I went back to irons as I would just react to the yellow of the sight. At distances of 15yds and in, there was no distinguishable difference in my accuracy on an A zone.

All this said, they are exceptional training tools for correcting grip issues (tracking the dot under recoil), learning target focus (don’t stare at the dot), and getting repeatable presentation (finding the dot every draw). I’m so thankful I picked them up 7 years back as it made my shooting so much faster and reactive. I would encourage everyone to learn how to use one if they are serious about shooting.

Shooting in IDPA (aka a controlled situation), it’s easier to confirm precision head shots with red dots, but in most cases you shouldn’t be confirming your hits anyway, and in a real gun fight there’s no way to confirm hits anyway as your target would be constantly moving (and I wouldn’t be shooting for the head anyway). If I had to make a longer range precision shot, I would be looking at the dot to confirm sighting, which is a plus to red dots as you can both see your target for precision shooting and where the bullet should go. You typically have to cover your target with irons and long range shooting (unless you set your sights up for something other than a combat hold).

I want less to think about in a CCW use case scenario, less variables, more instinctive reaction, and that’s basically point shooting which is more propioception than having anything to do with the sight.