Quoted:
The two vendors I found with heavy-barrelled Buckmarks were asking $349 for them, with one magazine. Does that sound about right?

In my search for good aftermarket tritium sights for my Glock 19, I have had a couple of folks tell me that there is nothing better than XS big dots. Is this true and, if so, will a heater so equipped still fit in a standard kydex holster?

Quoted:


Can't speak with any authority on the Buckmark, but as for the big dots...

How good are you with a pistol?

I ask this because it makes a difference in the benefit you'll get out of Big Dots. In my personal experience big dots are most useful using a "threat focused" sight picture at close ranges...meaning that your focus is on the target and the sights are slightly fuzzy. Obviously if your sights appear to be fuzzy then having a gigantic lollipop for the front sight will help you get some aiming reference to figure out where the pistol is pointed. The threat focused sighting method is perfectly valid and useful in certain circumstances...like shooting at a fairly large target at fairly close range at speed. Outside of those circumstances most shooters with decent handgun skills find that the XS sights offer rapidly diminishing returns. Guys that suck don't find a drop-off because they suck.

If you need a hard front sight focus to make a precision shot at close range or as the distance you are shooting at gets longer it becomes difficult to judge your sight picture because the rear sight is essentially non-existent. When your standard of accuracy is an 8" circle at 5 years that doesn't matter...but if you are trying to hit a 3" circle at 15 yards you are probably going to have a much harder time using the XS sight system than a more traditional notch-and-post system.

It's worth noting that no top level competition shooter uses big dot sights. No Tier 1 military unit uses big dot sights. None of the top law enforcement shooters that I know of (fed, state, local...SWAT, HRT, etc) use big dots. They aren't found on the guns of many top level trainers. The one trainer I know of who pimps them pretty hard took them to Rogers shooting school and failed to make an advanced rating that others in his class managed to make. I would point to all of those as clues about the actual utility of the sighting system.

The reason many people like the XS sights is because many people don't really know how to manage their sights and as a result find that there's an improvement because the big dots offer a "better" reference when they are doing everything wrong. (Like not looking at their sights at all.)

Since you've been an armed professional most of your adult life I'm going to assume you're fairly efficient with a handgun and have a good grasp on trigger control and sight management. At that level I don't believe you are going to find that the XS sights offer you much. You may find that they work OK at close range on big targets, but if you move back to 15 yards and try to hit the 10 ring of a bullseye target you are likely to start stringing swear words together in strings so elegant Sgt. Hartman would turn green with envy. You would probably find that installing good sights with a nice wide rear notch (like Warren's sights) and painting the fairly narrow front sight a loud color (yellow, orange, white, etc) will give you all the speed you could hope for up close even with a threat-focused sighting technique while allowing you to make X ring hits at 25 yards if you should need to do so. I've been using Warrens for a couple of years now and I'm a big fan.

Lots of people profess faith in XS sights, but you have to ask yourself what skill level they are at giving that advice and what level of experience they have with the sights and with other sighting systems to be able to offer that advice. Routinely I hear people say that XS sights are "gunfighting" sights as a means of explaining why people often suck when put on a timer on the square range. Their rationale is that their true benefits are only seen in a real gunfight and not necessarily on the training range. Personally I think that's bullshit, as whether you are in combat or competition, seeing what you need to see to make the hit is seeing what you need to see to make the hit. If I can't get XS sights to do that better for me under the low risk conditions on the range I'm not going to take it on faith that they are suddenly going to come into their own when the fire is going both ways.

My 2 cents.

Quoted:






Can't speak with any authority on the Buckmark, but as for the big dots...



How good are you with a pistol?



I ask this because it makes a difference in the benefit you'll get out of Big Dots. In my personal experience big dots are most useful using a "threat focused" sight picture at close ranges...meaning that your focus is on the target and the sights are slightly fuzzy. Obviously if your sights appear to be fuzzy then having a gigantic lollipop for the front sight will help you get some aiming reference to figure out where the pistol is pointed. The threat focused sighting method is perfectly valid and useful in certain circumstances...like shooting at a fairly large target at fairly close range at speed. Outside of those circumstances most shooters with decent handgun skills find that the XS sights offer rapidly diminishing returns. Guys that suck don't find a drop-off because they suck.



If you need a hard front sight focus to make a precision shot at close range or as the distance you are shooting at gets longer it becomes difficult to judge your sight picture because the rear sight is essentially non-existent. When your standard of accuracy is an 8" circle at 5 years that doesn't matter...but if you are trying to hit a 3" circle at 15 yards you are probably going to have a much harder time using the XS sight system than a more traditional notch-and-post system.



It's worth noting that no top level competition shooter uses big dot sights. No Tier 1 military unit uses big dot sights. None of the top law enforcement shooters that I know of (fed, state, local...SWAT, HRT, etc) use big dots. They aren't found on the guns of many top level trainers. The one trainer I know of who pimps them pretty hard took them to Rogers shooting school and failed to make an advanced rating that others in his class managed to make. I would point to all of those as clues about the actual utility of the sighting system.



The reason many people like the XS sights is because many people don't really know how to manage their sights and as a result find that there's an improvement because the big dots offer a "better" reference when they are doing everything wrong. (Like not looking at their sights at all.)



Since you've been an armed professional most of your adult life I'm going to assume you're fairly efficient with a handgun and have a good grasp on trigger control and sight management. At that level I don't believe you are going to find that the XS sights offer you much. You may find that they work OK at close range on big targets, but if you move back to 15 yards and try to hit the 10 ring of a bullseye target you are likely to start stringing swear words together in strings so elegant Sgt. Hartman would turn green with envy. You would probably find that installing good sights with a nice wide rear notch (like Warren's sights) and painting the fairly narrow front sight a loud color (yellow, orange, white, etc) will give you all the speed you could hope for up close even with a threat-focused sighting technique while allowing you to make X ring hits at 25 yards if you should need to do so. I've been using Warrens for a couple of years now and I'm a big fan.



Lots of people profess faith in XS sights, but you have to ask yourself what skill level they are at giving that advice and what level of experience they have with the sights and with other sighting systems to be able to offer that advice. Routinely I hear people say that XS sights are "gunfighting" sights as a means of explaining why people often suck when put on a timer on the square range. Their rationale is that their true benefits are only seen in a real gunfight and not necessarily on the training range. Personally I think that's bullshit, as whether you are in combat or competition, seeing what you need to see to make the hit is seeing what you need to see to make the hit. If I can't get XS sights to do that better for me under the low risk conditions on the range I'm not going to take it on faith that they are suddenly going to come into their own when the fire is going both ways.



My 2 cents.