While I think that a pistol with a red dot is a good tactical upgrade, I disagree with the primary premise of the article. Red Dot sights (and optics in general) should be added into the mix after you have reasonable proficiency with iron sights. Decades ago Red Dot optics became widely available and affordable for long guns and we have a lot of data about how new shooters learn marksmanship skills with and without modern optics. Right now we are just at the beginning of the trend with handguns and I think now is the time to reflect back on what we learned about this subject with long guns. Yes red dots makes you faster on target, more accurate in general and more capable in low light conditions. But new shooters that learn with a fancy optic from day one never learn some of the fundamentals properly. They develop bad habits that need to be un-learned latter. In general they are inferior shooters to people who start with bare iron sights and then upgrade. If you give crutches to a baby when they are first learning to walk they will rely on the crutches and actual walking skills will be delayed or even never learned. Giving treking poles to mountain climber will help them but only because they are a proficient at walking already. giving crutches to a baby may indeed make them mobile and effective at locomotion quicker, but you are causing problems in the long run. Under normal situations new shooters should NOT put a red dot on their handgun. New shooters should put in some range practice and only once they have put in at least 3-5 range sessions and at least 1000 practice rounds down range should they consider adding a Red Dot optic. Now the current situation is hardly a normal situation. During this pandemic a new shooter may have no access to a range and may have zero capability to practice. This may be the one situation where starting with a red dot may be a good idea... but the article does not discuss this at all. The article indicates that a red dot would always be a good idea for a new shooter and this is just not the case. You are in the middle of a catastrophe, you have never used a handgun and somehow manage to get your hands on a handgun, ammo AND a red dot? Yeah use that red dot. You are finally waking up and deciding that maybe a handgun is a good idea? Buy a hand gun, go to the range, put 1000 rounds through it, THEN add a red dot and put another 500 rounds down range.