I bought a gun to carry in my pocket and I found that this one is just a little too big. I carry my Bodyguard 2.0 in my pocket and that carries easily.

Since my Hellcat won’t be pocketed I’m going to slap a red dot on it. Red dots are electronic sights that project a red dot onto a glass window. They’re quicker to acquire for the trained shooter. Especially at distance.

Additionally they work better for aging eyes. With a normal set of sights you shoot front sight focused and you have to shift your vision from site to target, with a red dot, you shoot target focused.

For older eyes, a red dot doesn’t require shifting focus, and even though my eyes are still pretty damn good I do need glasses now for driving. I anticipate vision will only worsen as I age.

My main reason for getting a red dot is because my pistol is a defensive tool. I want a big fat red dot that I can visually register as being on target if I ever have to use my weapon defensively. In a defensive shooting, you want to put as many hits on target as quickly as possible, and you hope one of those hits stops the attack.

I’ve studied this not because of a macabre fascination with homicide but because as a defender, I am both a strategist and technician operating a firearm.

Adding a red dot is strategy, using a red dot is technical. The strategic reason is it’s faster, more accurate, and makes the gun more useful at greater distances. The technical reason is that it allows me to consistently acquire and align a single focal plane aiming reference under stress, in varied lighting and body positions, while maintaining target focus instead of shifting my vision between rear sight, front sight, and threat.

The best data we have on defensive firearm uses is that millions of crimes are prevented every year just from the presence of a firearm. Many of these are never reported to law enforcement because nothing happened. The crime was prevented. The vast majority of criminals will simply pick a different victim, they’re opportunists, not mad men.

However when a firearm is actually produced and fired there is good evidence that 69% of the time, being shot with any caliber of handgun, even a .22, a very weak caliber that is typically not immediately lethal, though it can be, the attacker will stop. The failure to stop rate for .22 is 31%.

What this means is that about 69% of shootings, the attacker is not determined. They are either enraged, bluffing, etc and not expecting any armed resistance. As soon as armed resistance begins the attack stops.

The remainder, the 31%, the attacker is psychologically prepared for resistance and overcomes being shot to continue their attack. They may be insane, high, or just extremely violent. For the remainder who does not hit a psychological barrier, they will either need to be stopped from blood loss, or from a hit to the central nervous system which incapacitates them.

If neither of those two happen, they will not stop until they have exhausted their capacity for violence, potentially after the victim is dead or mortally wounded or permanently and severely injured.

When carrying a handgun, you hope that you never need to use it but if you do that the assailant is deterred at the mere presence of it. If the person is not deterred by the presence of it, you hope that upon using it the person immediately ceases the attack.

The attack will unfold quickly, and it will be the most unprecedented violence the victim has ever experienced in their life. The victim, when defending will not have the opportunity to ask the attacker after they’ve been shot one time if they would like to stop the attack, and the amount of time the defender has to decide to continue applying force is quite a narrow window.

This is why speed of deployment matters. Of all the stops that can be reached, psychological is probably the quickest, although a CNS hit is also quite fast. Blood loss is the slowest and an attacker can remain lethal, even if they are mortally wounded, much longer than it takes to empty a handgun.

This means that if the attacker is armed with a gun, they will be able to return fire and will potentially be able to mortally wound the defender as well.

The red dot I’ve chosen is a Vortex Defender CCW enclosed.

Red dots can be enclosed or open. Enclosed emitters have a fully enclosed housing that is airtight and water sealed. This means that debris cannot enter the housing and block the emitter, which would disable the red dot. Open emitters are wide open, meaning dust, sweat, condensation, etc can all enter the red dot’s housing and block the emitter.

For a gun used for competitions or range use an open emitter is totally fine. Plenty of dudes carry an open emitter dot on their edc gun, but since I actually do carry every day, I have seen how quickly gunk and grime can enter the gun and optic system, and I value function over form. That being said I’d rather have a bulkier enclosed optic that eliminates common failure conditions by enclosing the optic completely.