The elusive "flash sight picture"

"As you raise your pistol, you shift your focus back to pick up the front sight..."

Many have tried this and pronounced it useless foolishness, but there is a detail they miss. "As you raise your pistol" is an important part of the instructions. Before the gun makes it up to eye level, the front sight is visible above the rear sight. If you pick it up then, you have no trouble finding it, and no trouble keeping track of it as the gun rises.

You lock your gaze onto the front sight while there is no interference from the rear sight to doing so.

I have on another page suggested "shark sights" for fast shooting at short range. That is much the same idea, but when using that method you intentionally hold the gun slightly low so the front sight is always clearly visible, standing proud of the rear notch. The sight picture resembles an inverted letter "T."

In the flash sight picture technique, that inverted "T" is what you see for a moment as you raise the pistol. It is then quite natural to continue to raise the pistol in such a way that the sights end up in coarse alignment with the target. The people who cannot do the flash sight picture are not pulling their focus back early enough to catch the front blade on the rise. It is counterintuitive to take your focus away from the target to look at the end of your gun, but you need to do it sooner rather than later.

People who learn flash sight alignment with no difficulty are doing this without analyzing what they are doing. If you are one of the people to whom the thing does not come naturally, work on pulling your focus inward sooner, so that you see the front sight in clear focus earlier.