Night sights on a handgun are different. seeing as how there's nothing to keep the back aligned with the front(in relation to your eye and the target) except the rear sight and hopefully a solid form, its necessary to have an illuminated rear to properly align both front and rear of the pistol with your target. With the pistol pressed out in front of you the distance between your eyes and the tritium vials is similar to the distance of the front sight on a rifle. The result is a near zero negative effect on your natural night vision.
With a rifle, your mounting of the rifle should be consistent enough to align your eye with the rear aperture without a visual check. The rear sight should be a blur at the best of times and tritium only makes the whole sight picture a blur. Try looking at your pistol night sights while holding the rear sight the same distance from your eye as the rear sight on your rifle, the problem becomes very visible.
Having said all that, a set of tritium buis isn't going to net you any stellar scores. Aside from dusk/twilight the rear aperture is non existent so your accuracy or rather your consistency is reduced to whatever the rifle will print while keeping the illuminated front post somewhere inside the rear aperture. Naturally as distance increases the margin of error follows. tritium irons are a short range tool. The large aperture on your irons is for close range and low light. If you're consistent and canm run your tritium irons with the small aperture you'll score more hits. Being able to mount the rifle quickly in the dark and align the small aperture(0.090" I believe) with your front post on demand is something that will take a lot of practice.
Tdc
