Red dots on handguns are about as standard as Picatinny rails on handguns. Maybe even more standard these days since even micro-sized guns are now optics-ready. If you release a handgun that isn’t optics-ready, then the entire industry will question you. Since red dots are everywhere and offer you so many benefits, are long-slide handguns relevant anymore? Let’s dig into the benefits of a long-slide handgun and discuss their usefulness in 2024.
The Basic Benefits of a Long Slide Handgun
Long-slide handguns have been popular with shooters looking to improve their overall accuracy. They’ve been immensely popular with competition shooters and somewhat popular with police users. The longer slide offers a long sight radius.
A sight radius won’t make a gun more accurate, but it will make it easier to shoot accurately. Long-slide handguns and their extended sight radius make shooting easier with greater precision and at greater ranges.
Longer slides also tend to make it easier to track the sights. If you can track your sights, you can shoot faster and straighter.
Long-slide handguns contribute to less recoil purely by adding more weight to the gun. Larger guns tend to be easier to control, and long-slide handguns tend to reduce recoil slightly. We also get a little velocity boost. It’s not necessarily a groundbreaking amount of velocity, but it’s worth mentioning.
The Red Dot Revolution
How do red dots fall into this conversation? Red dots do a lot of great things for handguns. One of the biggest benefits of running a red dot is that the sight radius no longer matters. You only have one focal plane with a red dot, so the distance between sights doesn’t even enter the conversation.
Additionally, the red glowing reticle can easily be tracked throughout the entire recoil impulse. You can watch it move as a small blur that follows your recoil pattern. It’s easy to track, and once you get used to it, you’ll only see that blur because you’ll shoot so fast that it stays a blur.
Red dots can’t do anything to reduce recoil or increase velocity, but they do remove the two biggest advantages of long-slide handguns.
The Last Benefit Standing
What about lower recoil? That’s beneficial, but it’s not that big of a deal. A good grip and stance can also reduce recoil significantly. Is the minimal recoil reduction felt by long-slide pistols worth the additional cost? Is it potentially worth a slower draw, less concealability, and a generally front-heavy pistol when red dots remove the two major performance advantages?
What about velocity? For self-defense purposes, we need enough velocity to ensure the projectile penetrates deep enough, allowing a jacketed hollow point to expand. The velocity benefit will be largely caliber-dependent.
We know that with common calibers like 9mm, it works pretty well with barrel lengths between 3 and 4 inches. 10mm tends to be a little better from longer barrels if you want actual 10mm performance. Calibers like 5.7x28mm needs a five-inch barrel to be worth a spit.
For most users, compact 9mm handguns with a red dot sight are pretty solid. Anything larger has the benefit of greater capacity and a little less recoil, but it’s also just big and inconvenient to carry. Long-slide handguns can still be relevant if you’re stuck with iron sights, but if you have red dots at your disposal, they don’t offer a lot of juice for the squeeze.
