When it comes to rifle sights, two is one and one is none, so here we look at Mission First Tactical’s BUIS.
You’ve heard the phrase, “Two is one, one is none.” But, do you really know what it means?
If you have just one tool, and it breaks, you are out of luck. If you have two of them, and one breaks, you can still get the job done. Some tools never break … and some situations cannot abide the risk of the only one breaking.
That’s why it’s prudent to have backup sights. Yes, you have a high-performance optic on your rifle, and it does everything but look around corners (give the optical engineers time). But one hard whack or errant bit of flying whatever and your optic is a mess of aluminum and glass.
Enter BUIS (back-up iron sights), and I prefer that my backup be as solid as I can make them. So, despite the popularity of a certain brand of polymer folding sights, I prefer metal. Aluminum will do, but steel is better. (The pre-dawn mechanical engineering materials courses inform that mindset.)
So, Mission First Tactical got the nod on the latest build. Their folding BUIS is all-steel and tough enough to take whatever happens. In fact, they can probably withstand more abuse than you, or the rest of your rifle, can.
These are the EXD front and rear and clamp onto the top rail of your rifle. They both fold down flat enough that they will not be in your field of view in your red-dot or magnifying optic.
The front post is threaded so you can zero your irons (always a good idea, because if you’re at the point of needing them, you are likely deep in the weeds and need all the help you can get). The rear is windage adjustable, so once you have done your proper range work and zeroing, you won’t have to have a taped set of offsets for your Kentucky windage.
They’re as lie-flat and slim as they can be, so they will be as much out of the way until you need them as possible. The folding is spring-loaded, so once you get them started up (and it takes a bit of work—they won’t be popping up on you when you don’t need them), they are spring-loaded up.
They don’t lock in the upright position, which some OCD types insist on. The springs are strong, and the sights don’t stop at some middle position.
The two sights are black with a nitride finish. If you want to have the BUIS on your rifle matching your tacti-cool camo paint job, you’ll have to take care of that yourself. That’s a small price to pay for durability.
What isn’t a small price is the cash cost. I’ll admit that durability is good, but be ready for the bill, because the front is listed at $99.99 and the rear at $124.99. But, as with so many things, the “pay once, cry once” law of economics applies here as well.
Short of being attacked with a ball-peen hammer, I don’t see these sights quitting on you. And they come with a lifetime warranty, so if they do break, MFT will take care of you.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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