About

THE AIM STORY

The AIM was invented out of necessity. One day my grandmother called me and told me she had purchased a firearm and wanted me to show her how to use it. I came over and began showing her the cycle of operations and handed it back to her so she could run through what I had shown her only to discover that she couldn’t rack the slide back due to the severe arthritis she had in her hands.

I had just purchased a brand new P365XL from Sig a week before and thought that the red dot sight that rode on top of the slide may provide the right mechanical advantage to aid her in racking the slide back with her medical condition. I was correct. She racked the slide with ease. It was then that I made the worst trade in my personal firearms history… my Sig P365XL for her Kimber 380 Micro Carry.

Over a year later, she had to brandish her firearm 3 times working on the north side of town as a traveling nurse in and out of a lower income, higher crime area. I know she carried her gun because she was comfortable enough with it, being able to go through the entire cycle of operations unimpeded by arthritis. I’m incredibly thankful now that I made that “poor trade” with grandma, but it got my brain asking “what else is out there that can help people like her in that way”… not much. What does exist is gimmicky and poorly executed and looks awkward and strange.

Fast forward another year and Taylor and I were discussing products to manufacture with our company Seeds of Freedom and the idea to address this problem came up in conversation. I wanted to make something that addressed that problem (partly so I could get my sig back from Grandma).

I truly believe what happened next was a divinely inspired conversation where the Idea of the AIM began to quickly flesh out in my mind for the first time. I drew the concept down on a sticky note and sent a picture of that to Taylor. Taylor looked at it and had jokingly mentioned that the picture I made looked like a mailbox and began to work his engineering magic over the next few weeks to enhance the shape and get to the final form of the product not only aesthetically pleasing but functionally perfect for what we wanted it to do. Early revision looked even stranger, mildly resembling Pac-Man and it took many design iterations to achieve what I now call “The Sacred Geometry.”

We both realized what we truly had when we put the first prototype on a pistol that was equipped with a Dawson Precision .300″ height fiber optic front post… the first true lightbulb moment in its development was that this could become what we called an “Analog Red Dot Sight” that had the same feel as a red dot when presenting and shooting, without the points of failure that are inherent with Electronic Red Dot Sights. This includes failure points such as batteries that can die, glass that can break and smudge, and screws that can back out and compromise the zero or the mounting to the weapon.

After further revisions and testing, we agreed that we had something truly extraordinary. “The Iron-Sight. Perfected.”

– Chris Schrader, Owner/Co-Founder of SOF Industries