Having trouble choosing a pistol optic? Not sure how you should mount it? Let's talk about it.

When deciding to outfit a pistol with an optic there are a couple of important considerations to make. First, I think it's most important to consider what the purpose of the pistol is. This will help you decide how you should mount the optic and which optic features are best for you. Direct milling and proven optics are your friend here. I wouldn't be grabbing an Amazon special, no-name brand optic and mounting it to a dovetail mounted plate system. While we do make an MOS+ plate to increase the viability of the MOS footprint, for optics that use screws for mounting there is a disadvantage due to the limitation of the depth of the plate itself. For this reason, we will always maintain that direct mounting is superior.

The second consideration should be optic or optic footprint choice.Trijicon, Aimpoint, Leupold, and Holosun are largely going to be the most proven optics if you're doing some simple Google searching but there are a lot of other options these days. Every single optic has failed someone, but the larger companies have way more optics out in the world being used by LE, Military, and Civilians alike. So it's easy to get caught up in "the cheaper stuff is just as good"... often this is not the case. I would consider a manufacturers warranty, customer service, and if you're willing to save a couple bucks by going with overseas products. We try to stick to American manufacturers, but there are some options out there worth exploring if you're on a tight budget. Many of these companies are using somewhat standard "footprints" to mount there optics. Not all of them are perfectly compatible with our optic cuts so be sure to reach out if you're unsure if it is supported at JagerWerks, but many of optics from the big name manufacturers are.

Many firearms these days are coming optic ready, and this seems to be a great value at first but not all optic ready/modular systems from the manufacturer are ideal. Depending on aftermarket support you could be making huge compromises just to have some modularity. Even the Glock MOS, which is possibly the most supported modular system from a manufacturer, isn't perfect. We actually have modified it slightly and we call it the MOS+ which can be added to most factory MOS slides and can be milled by us on Non-MOS slides to accomodate MOS accessories.

The major benefit to our MOS+ system is that we take advantage of the left side of the slide having more material and no extractor rod and we drill a third plate mounting hole and use two 8mm screws on the left side of the slide and one factory length (~5mm) screw on the right side. This drastically improves plate stability. Additionally, we manufacture 4140 Chromoly Steel plates right in our shop here in Kalamazoo, MI. They are 4140 Chromoly steel that is pre-hardened, then it gets milled and black nitride coated. Fitment is snug and the material can't bend and snap. 

At the end of the day it's up to you to decide what you need for your firearm, but you can always reach out to JagerWerks for help, insight, and some milling. 

Happy shooting.