CHAPTER XII
SIGHTS
I put this chapter after the preliminary one on learning to shoot as, although sights are vital for good, quick, accurate shooting, the beginner is too occupied with other matters to pay much attention to what the sights are like.
Now that the learner can load, fire, put his pistol to half-cock, etc., with safety to himself and others, he can begin to learn a little about sights.
The sights are to enable him to align the barrel of his pistol accurately.
By constant practice a man can learn to point with enough accuracy to hit an object of fair size at close quarters without sights, by sense of direction.
When it gets up to ranges of twenty-five or more yards, or to hitting a smaller object at closer range, his sense of direction must be aided by aim.
Almost all makers of pistols make the sights of their pistols wrong; the only proper sights are those on French duelling pistols (see Plates [2] and [10]).
The reason is obvious; for duelling a man has to snap shoot. All other pistol shooting, with very few exceptions, is very artificial and has been done in deliberate shooting at small black bull’s-eyes just as rifle shooting was spoilt.
I used to struggle with these minute sights at moving objects and rapid fire, and I am sure my record scores would have been much better if I had in those days known of the French duelling pistol sights and if, which is very doubtful, these sights had been passed as “military sights” which was an arbitrary term in England, changing from year to year.