Rear sight shift
 

Does anyone ever have their (factory standard) rear sight accidentally/unknowingly shifted for whatever reason?
Can this happen under normal operating condition ie. pistol not used as bludgeoning object, not bumped around, just strictly range gun???

Shot a match. During practice, got ~4 seconds for plates at 11 yards. Then during match, the time went south to 10 seconds+ with 2 plates left!!! Also shots beyond 15 yards went bananas. Noticed consistent left pattern despite perfect shot-calls. Immediately blamed self for limp wristing and learnt that 1000 dry fire cannot replace 100 live fire (wrist not used to recoil even though highly conditioned by exercise). Then the practice range RO noticed the rear sight is off, as in obviously way off to the side. Took few trips to armory to get it hit dead center again. The armory folks said recoil can shift the rear sight (huh??!?!). Pistol is G34. I thought this brand should be near indestructible :(

I saw a person knock his rear sight out of alignment on a port from an akward position in a match. He didn't realize it until the next stage when all of his shots were off.

Normally the rule is not to put the gun through a port, and I suppose that is just one of the reasons why.

I'm not a Glock shooter, but don't most competition shooters change their Glock sights right away? Aren't they plastic?

I'm not familiar with a Glock 34 doing that. We've run many 10's of thousands of rounds through 17's with factory sights without that problem. Some of our older range guns have 200,000+ rounds and I haven't see that yet.

Haven't seen it on high mileage 10mm, 357Sig, 40, 45 either, yet I guess anything can happen.

Did see someone launch the whole top section of a Kimber off the receiver next to me 4 years ago at the DPS range north of Austin. That was interesting....:p

You are correct. Most, if not all the competitors, had custom sights on. I also noticed scuffs/tiny dents on the rear sight from the sight-adjuster tool the armorer used, so yep, they're plastic.

Well, I guess I learnt it the hard way since I did not bother checking the equipment until the end of the match.
Folks, if you shoot nice 3" group at 25 yards, have a perfect shot-call, then the shot went somewhere else more than once, check the equipment!

thanks for letting me know this doesn't happen often (or not supposed to happen), dr. mabuse