People will often bench rest a firearm in order to get a view of it’s inherent mechanical accuracy or to regulate the sights in order to establish a zero for the pistol.
It is important to understand the implications of this on a handgun.
In a long gun, the relationship between the eye and the rear sight does not significantly change regardless of position. This allows the eye to have a consistent image of the rear sight regardless of shooting position.
In the case of a handgun, the relationship between the rear sight and the eye tends to vary. A benched or prone position tends to bring the rear sight closer to the eye than a standing offhand shooting position.
As the sight gets closer to the eye, it gets blurred more and precise alignment between the front sight and the rear sight becomes more difficult. Given the difficulty of resolving the edges of the rear sight in order to get a precise alignment, we tend to align using the darker center of the blurred rear sight.
This naturally leads to the front sight being lower in the notch and the shots going low.
Another factor is the impact of the support on the mechanical functioning of the semi-automatic pistol. Supporting the pistol is going to have an impact on the dwell time and lock values, which will also lead to the shots going low on the target. Similar variation can be seen with the level of grip resistance applied to the pistol.
The above applies to precision shooting at greater distances. Any differences at shorter ranges are probably within the natural accuracy potential of the gun and may not matter from a practical perspective.
All of the above holds true with a rock solid shooting support. If the support is not solid, it can introduce additional variations and vibrations, which will have a detrimental effect on accuracy.
I’d like to thank Bruce Gray for taking the time to explain this to me.
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