Irons were used by sharpshooters and just plain riflemen for centuries and worked just fine. It just took practice and training. Even the excerpt you quoted makes me suspicious that optics are, or can be, an excuse for minimal training. I won't argue that optics are nice to have, essential at night, and might even be quicker to deploy than iron sights to get good hits, but when they go down they are just dead weight on the rifle, and you have to go back to irons. I disagree strongly with the excerpt that there are no liabilities than additional weight: I think they promote complacency. One gets used to the optic and its relative ease and quickness of use and it promotes sloppiness in acquiring a proper stance and sight picture. The short version is that optics are so easy to use the shooter eventually gets sloppy.
Just my opinion. Not trying to dictate doctrine or anything. I just know from my own experiences that (myself included) people use optics to the extent that they stop practicing with irons, then the first time the optic goes down in a stress situation, they sit there and struggle with irons. Only people who maintain their practice with irons don't struggle with them when forced to ditch an optic.
Geez--maybe I just made a good argument for always having a co-witness.
But I still prefer a folding rear sight.
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