Sub 100

Tam brings up a good point:

I think a red dot is darn near mandatory for sub-hundred yard work on fast moving targets that don't want to git shot. Slinging up and playing DCM marksman is a necessary skill, and great on stationary targets. But suppose the zombies are the fast kind?

Sub 100 yard zombie shots. What do I have for that? A pistol isn't for that kind of work. The shotgun is a perhaps good enough, though, but... A full size rifle like the M1A will do the job well if you have quick acquistion holographic sights like the mentioned red dot. You better have batteries, too. I demoted the Camp Carbine .45 on my list, but it'd be a gun I'd immediately fit a red-dot type scope to, if I got one. Maybe I need to promote something like a Mini-14 on the list and get it the EOTech specialL:

For those that don't know (and I didn't, 10 years ago, maybe less.) a red dot sighting system Give you a little window to look through, in lieu of iron sights. When on a little glowing crosshair or dot is visible to you. When zeroed, that dot is where the bullets will hit. At 100 yards that dot seems kind of big, compared to the target, but it's small enough to get the job done on center mass shots. Remember the movies in the 80s and 90s when someone had a laser mounted on their gun? It looked cool and the laser got smaller and smaller over time from the one on the Terminator's .45 long slide as BIG as the slide, to pen-cap size today. Well, the military doesn't use visible lights like that, but the red-dot LOOKS like that little red laser dot from the movies to just the shooter looking through the window. If the red-dot optic is turned off, it's just a little window, and often the idea is you can see and use your iron sights if you have to with the scope mounted. There are other scope types out that illuminate the reticle or cross hairs as well. Ain't technology grand? Our grandfathers in WWII, sniping with long and narrow telescopes with 6x power would either laugh at us or say "gee whiz! lookit that!" Probably both.

The sub-100 yard role is well addressed by Kim Du Toit's preparations for Grab N Go SHTF situations. He is an even MORE a crotchety conservative than me, and it looks like he is sticking to iron sights. Come to think of it, I've never seen Kim talk about these new fangled sights at all. And I know Jeff Cooper jokingly talked about needing battery bearers as much as ammo bearers and water bearers in today's modern operationgs.

But... I'm a gonna have to lean toward's Tam's way of thinking. Tam is no slouch when it comes to conservative firearm preferences and philosophies, but the advantages the red-dot stuff offers is not something to ignore. (I've shot MBtGE rifles with those scope types. And, you should all know, I play a lot of video games and that is exactly same thing as real world practice. What? What?)

There are some options if you are worried you are gonna run out of battery juice. Take the sight off when it is dead, and use iron sights instead, duh. There are some scopes like Trijicon ACOG that let in ambient light through fiber optic receivers and perhaps on board Tritium (gonna have to confirm how that to works... ) to light the reticle, or the Leupold CQ/T scope has a reticle you can see when no power is on. But those scopes offer magnification to go with their little light. And magnification can slow down acquisition, even with a long eye-relief Scout rig. And those scopes, while intriguing for me, cost only a bit shy $1000. The Red-Dot style from EOTech is $400 or so. Here is an ACOG:

And for comparison, the Leupold CQ/T:

And since some of the Red-Dot scopes have a 10,000+ hour battery life, I don't know what I am worrying about considering the above 2. I'm fine for 2+ years if I have a spare set of batteries. I don't think I have 2 years worth of ammo yet, and 2 years worth of ammo is much heavier than 2 years worth of red-dot batteries.

So where does this leave me? Nowhere. Maybe I need to rethink carbine priority again, but I haven't changed my mind that way yet. Too poor to go off all willy nilly. More considering to do. I know its going to cost me money when all is said and done. Snap shots with iron sights or the Garand and it's Scout scope, for me, now.

Ooo, I forgot anothe style of red-dot scope. EOTech is sort of the ultimate for 'little window' style 0x magnification red-dot optics, but there big competing style is Aimpoint, which look like 'shot tube' 0x magnification (generally) red-dot optics:

My only experience with ACOG stuff is those video games. And they are/were HATED, pretty much, by me and my buddies. Perhaps because there are gimped so as not TOO powerful in game. Goodness knows, I want to base all my major real world purchases by what I experienced in a video game 2 years ago...

What I need is input. Who has tried them all? And what did you think of each? (after that I need to try them all my own dang self.)