Springfield Armory pistols equipped with HEX red-dot optics (Guns & Ammo Magazine photo)
Shooters, as a whole, tend to be a rather conservative bunch. I’m not talking about politics; I’m talking about technology, which is understandable. When your life is on the line, you want to know your equipment works in the real world, not just in a laboratory or workshop. With the unprecedented information exchange allowed by the internet, shooters now have a much faster and more complete picture of what any given technology is actually capable of.
When I started shooting in the 1980s, there were still many shooters with combat experience that believed a semiautomatic pistol would get you killed on the streets. While they were ultimately proved wrong with...