Sight Alignment Sight Picture

Sight alignment and sight picture are two things that you hear in the firearms community all the time. If you aren’t paying enough attention to these fundamentals? there’s an easy way to improve your shooting quickly.

Hitting your target seems like an easy concept. Just line up your sights and pull the trigger and, instant success. Right?

If you’ve spent even five minutes shooting a firearm, you know it is not that easy. 

While proper sight alignment and sight picture are relatively simple concepts, things rarely work that simply in practice. If it did, we’d all be sharpshooters. 

Let’s take a closer look at these basics of marksmanship, and how we can properly use these concepts to improve our shooting.

Sight Picture and Sight Alignment – What’s the Difference?

If you’ve spent any time lurking around a gun range or scrolling through online shooting forums, you’ve probably heard the terms “sight alignment” and “sight picture.” These two terms get tossed around a bunch in shooting circles, and unless you had a really good teacher, you’ve probably heard them used in ways that led you to believe they are the exact same thing. 

Although they are related, sight alignment and sight picture are not the same thing. These two concepts are actually quite different.

What’s the difference? Keep reading to find out.

What is Sight Alignment?

Sight alignment is the way you line up your front and rear sights on your firearm. Lining them up properly is crucial to actually hitting your target. Do it wrong, and you’ll be throwing shots in any number of directions. 

How to Achieve Proper Sight Alignment

To accurately hit where you’re aiming, your sights need to be aligned for both vertical and horizontal equilibrium. 

Before red dots and lasers were really a thing (back when I was marching to and from school uphill both ways), shooters could rely on good old-fashioned iron sights. Even if you like shooting with a red dot, you should still know how to use your iron sights. It’s just a good skill to have. Technology is prone to fail, and iron sights (paired with good shooting fundamentals) are much more reliable. 

While sight styles differ from handgun to handgun, the general design and function is the same across the board. You have some sort of post mounted over the muzzle and a rear aperture near the opposite end. 

That rear aperture may look like a football goal post or a tiny letter V. No matter what it looks like, the idea is to line up your front post evenly in the notch of your rear sight. This is your horizontal alignment and ensures you won’t miss right or left. 

The top of the front sight should also be even with the top of each post. This is your vertical alignment and ensures your muzzle is pointing straight ahead.  If the top of your sights don’t line up, your point of impact will miss your mark high or low. 

Proper sight alignment is the same whether or not you have an object in your sights. 

What is Sight Picture?

Sight alignment (while super important) is only half the equation. The other half is sight picture. 

The sight picture is what your eye sees when you have your sights aligned and aimed at your intended target. 

For a shot to impact exactly where you want it to, you need to both align the sights properly, AND aim them in such a way (using your sight picture) that you hit the target where you intended. The goal is to marry your point of aim (where you want the bullet to hit the target) with your point of impact (where your bullet actually hits the target).