Tactical or defensive situations often require very fast target acquisition and firing. As a result of this, it is often impractical for a shooter to raise their firearm sufficiently to utilize gun-mounted alignable sights (e.g., a rib and small sphere on a barrel of a shotgun). Furthermore, tactical and defensive situations often occur in dark or poorly lit environments where the gun-mounted alignable sights may not be adequately visible.
It is well known that a shotgun is a type of firearm that discharges ammunition having multiple projectiles. Tactical (i.e., defensive) shotguns are generally characterized as having a relatively short barrel and a pump or semi-automatic action. Tactical shotguns usually have a “straight barrel”, meaning they do not utilize a choke arrangement to limit the spread of the shot pellets. They are primarily intended for use in close-quarters combat and defense situations. Because these situations usually occur indoors, these types of firearm generally have an effective range of less than 20 m but can be loaded with slug ammunition for increase effectiveness at long range. The preferred ammunition for a tactical shotgun is referred to as ‘00’ Buck (i.e., double aught buck).
Known laser sights provide a shooter of a firearm with relatively fast target acquisition in low light, which is desirable. However, these same known laser sights suffer from one or more shortcomings. One such shortcoming of some known laser sights, particularly in regard to use with a shotgun, is that they project a single dot as an aimpoint. Using a single dot as an aimpoint does not provide the shooter feedback on the impact pattern (due to range) of his projectiles and thus has limited benefit for use with a firearm that discharges ammunition with multiple projectile (e.g., a shotgun). Another such shortcoming of some known laser sights is that, although they output an illuminated sighting ring (i.e. a circular sighting reference) that provides the shooter feedback on the impact pattern, these types of laser sights have the shortcoming in that the size of the illuminated sighting ring is not adjustable on a per-payload basis for different configurations of ammunition used in a shotgun (i.e., size of ring varies only as a function of distance to a target). As such, the intended benefit of the illuminated sighting ring is adversely impacted due to an inability to provide an illuminated sighting ring of a size that is dependent upon the type of payload a particular ammunition has and the distance to the intended target when discharging that particular ammunition.
Therefore, a sighting apparatus that overcomes drawbacks associated with using known types of laser sights on a firearm that discharges ammunition with multiple projectiles would be advantageous, desirable and useful.