handguns/nigh tsights

Question
I live in Alaska and am a wilderness, interpretive guide for NPS, in Denali Nat'l Park, about 6 mos a year.  The rest of the time I'm in Washington State, or  globetrotting.
Looking at buying a pistol for home and personal defense.  Alaska, of course, has a very "liberal" concealed-carry law, or maybe "CONSERVATIVE".  I own a .44 mag pistol, Ruger Super Blackhawk and a Marlin, lever action, Guide  Gun, same caliber, for backcountry tools.
Likely, I will get a Glock 23 and it will be my first semi-auto, protection pistol.
Shops keep pushing, rather expensive, night-sights on me.  I would have to special-order not to get them.  I see, for someone like myself, no use for them.  Why aim at something I can't see?  Why take the chance of hitting something I shouldn't?  If, by some very odd chance,  I get in a gun battle, in the dark, without cover and had to return fire, wouldn't I just point in the "best guess" direction and trust the "force"?  Am I wrong?

Answer
George,

First of all, all of your choices in firearms are excellent ones.

When you get your G23, I recommend that you spend some of your "globe trotting" time at a quality shooting school that specializes in tactics and self-defense (as opposed to target shooting).

For what my opinion is worth, I do not like tritium sights at all.  These sights are glass viles filled with H3, surrounded by a white epoxy buffer set in a black sight.  Looking at things with three colors in the daylight confuses my eyes and slows me down.

Tritium sights are beneficial in the 15 minute window at dusk and again at dawn, when there is enough ambient light to see a target, but too little to see your sights.  Besides that, it's either light enough to see traditional sights (I like the three-dot ones myself), or so dark that you can see your sights but not your target, violating Rule #4 of combat firearms safety ("Be sure of your target and what's beyond and around it").

"Trusting the force" is a bad idea - a lawyer will be attached to every bullet you launch.  In truth, though, most encounters involving handguns are at conservational distances, many of them at contact distance.  And truthfuly, people don't use sights then - they just superimpose the big black square rear of the gun over center mass (if you go to a good school, you'll do some lowlight/no light shooting).

So IMO, tritium sights are not worth the $90-100 that they cost.  I would, however, replace the sights on the Glock - the plastic sights are the weak link on an otherwise very strong chain.

Sights that I would recommend would be either Novak plain white dots (around $50) or Ameriglo plain white dots at around $30 (for whatever reason, Ameriglo just discontinued those sights, but you can stil find them around).

Sights on a handgun are kind of like a reverse gear on an ATV.  You wouldn't think you'd need it, but you'd better have it.

Good luck to you.