Originally Posted by
That Guy
Not necessarily. I find a syringe hold to work very well for me, with minimal disruption of grip. Of course the light needs to be held in the syringe grip to begin with, so in the real world this does limit the usefulness of the technique - if you are holding your light in an ice pick grip and things start happening, you probably won't be twirling the light in your hand into a syringe grip. But in an IDPA stage, a very effective technique. Empty chamber reloads can be done holding the flashlight in the hand. Loaded chamber reloads get a bit interesting as you probably don't really have the space in your hand for two magazines and the flashlight, so it's stove the old magazine first, then get the new one. But at least in the matches I go to, I'm usually the only dork who ever tries to do one of those. Most everyone else sprints to the next shooting position, shoots off the few remaining rounds in the gun and then does an empty chamber reload standing still.
Right handed shooters shooting pistols with push button magazine releases may run into issues. Being left handed, I don't really know how much of that is a training issue. Most right handed shooters I know locally tend to prefer some sort of a bastardized Harries stance - but most shooters I know of train very little low light shooting, so hard to say if that's just something that seems easier with minimal training or what.
Some of the key elements of the light for this technique are the width of the light body; the standard 1" tube is much too wide for me for this application. The light should not be very heavy up front since you are only holding onto the rear bit; but then again narrow lights usually aren't. The switch has to be compatible with this technique; the only way to know is pretty much test it and see. And the light needs to have a sort of a ledge for your fingers to hold onto. But if the light doesn't have one, I simply wrap a rubber band around it and then it does.