If you are faced with a threat, be it a bad guy wanting to kill you or a brown bear wanting to eat you, you will look at it. Your eyes will focus on that threat and if you want to shoot at it, you will struggle to switch your focus to the front sight.
We train to shoot defensive handguns by learning to focus on the front sight because that gives us our best chance for accurate hits. However, as shooters progress in skill they begin to shoot with more of a target focus when the range is close. This might sound like a bad thing but in reality its not. Its faster than focusing on the front sight and as your skill improves its just as effective inside spitting distance.
I call this target focus shooting and detail it in my book, Handgun Training for Personal Protection. Target focus shooting is not something you can master on day one. You have to build your skills the old fashion way and then it begins to come naturally. Once you realize you are gravitating to that type of shooting at close distance you can work to improve it but you need the right sight to do that.
In reality, you’re still looking at your front sight when you shoot with a target focus, you’re just not focusing on it. This is one of the reasons I like the 24/7 Express Sights from XS Sights. It’s why they are on my Nighthawk 1911, my Ruger Single Seven, and almost every other serious handgun I own. They are large and easy to see, even when you are not looking directly at them. In other words, you can still align the sights for an accurate hit, while remaining focused on the threat.
Again, the distance has to be close. For me it’s inside five yards. For others it might be inside three. For good competition shooters it might extend as far away as 10. Does it work? With practice, very well. I’m just as accurate but faster inside five yards if I focused on the target and have superimposed that large XS Big Dot right on its center.
Target focus shooting also comes into play when you’re using a laser sight. I’ve discussed before how to properly zero your laser sight. When zeroed properly a laser supports the target focus technique. If you present your handgun to the threat with your eyes focused on the target and do not see the laser, you should see your front sight right where you expected the laser to be. If your front sight is the large and prominent XS Big Dot, you wont have to focus on it to get a good hit, fast.
Don’t confuse this technique with point shooting. They are not the same thing. Target focus shooting is simply the employment of a highly visible front sight that allows you to maintain your natural tendency to focus on the threat, while still being able to keep your handgun aligned to deliver accurate hits.
The key to target focus shooting is using a laser sight like Crimson Trace Laser Guard or Laser Grips or a sight – like the XS BIG DOT – you can always see in any light, even if you are not focused on it. (Ideally you would use both for redundancy.) You’ll find this technique extremely difficult to employ with standard three dot notch and post sights but maybe a bit easier with a fiber optic front when paired with a very wide rear notch.
You could say target focus shooting comes naturally and in truth it does. Focusing on the target is what your brain naturally wants to do. However, to do that and get hits, you must have a front sight you can easily see, even when you are not looking at it. And, as natural as it might seem, you have to learn how to shoot before you can make it work.
