Details Of Typical Pistol Sight Picture

[abrogard]

I do not own a pistol and I'm currently living far from my rifles and firearm owning friends.

I'm discussing recent police shootings here in Australia with gun-ignorant friends.

My memories of a friend's 44 S&W I once used at home are that the iron foresight would completely obscure a target the size of a person at, say, 20 yards, or near enough to it.

The point being that accurate aimed shooting at any part of that target was therefore practically impossible.

Lacking guns and such I can't prove this so I'm hoping someone here can provide me with authoritative information to either substantiate my claim or make nonsense of it.

Failing that I guess I'll have to do some geometry on subtended angles assuming a fore sight of about, say, 1mm thick ?

regards,

ab

p.s.

Well, hmm, I'm a silly bugger aren't I? I just did a rough test. Held two car keys flat sides together and viewed edge on - would be much thicker than a foresight - and sighted on a column of our carport which wouldn't be as thick as man side to side but would be about as thick as the trunk of a man and thicker than the width of the head of a man.

AND - it wasn't obscured at 20 yards and obviously less obscured at 10 yards.

So I am wrong.

But why do I feel like this? Why do I have this memory?

Because, I think, I'm right inasmuch as you can't AIM.

So perhaps I need to rephrase my question to the members to something like :

What is the exact sight picture and - the hub of it all - what effective aiming do you have from that sight picture when all things are considered ( i.e. holding that weight of iron at arms length, the lack of cross hairs, any precision aiming point.. and whatever else ) ?

Myself I'm accustomed to shooting full bore over iron sights, lying prone, taking all the time in the world, breathing carefully, centering the target in my sight circle, etc., etc...

Or using my telescopic hunting sight.......

The hunk of iron at arms length with this gross piece of iron sight......