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Thread: Drills with WML?

  1. #11
    Site Supporter 41magfan's Avatar
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    Mar 2011
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    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    Bill Rogers says the night shoot on Thursday at the Rogers School is often the first time some of his students really see their sights.
    That is indeed the truth! A disproportionate number of LE officers shoot better (groups) at night than they do with better lighting conditions and this phenomenon got a HUGE boost some 30 years ago when luminous sights became standard equipment. For some it was a matter of sight discipline and for others it was simply a matter of managing their distractions.
    The path of least resistance will seldom get you where you need to be.

  2. #12
    Modding this sack of shit BehindBlueI's's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SoCalDep View Post
    I very much disagree with turning the light off immediately after firing. A pistol used for self defense is a threat management tool and by turning off the light habitually immediately after firing we take away the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of force.... is the suspect down? Are they still armed? Where are their hands? Where did they go?
    Strongly agree. If you needed the light to make the decision to shoot you need the light to make the decision to continue to shoot or stop shooting. The last thing I want to do is to have to look for the threat again to gather information as basic as location and current status.

    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    I am curious as to what the professionals, like those working nights think, but this is how I break this down my thinking from simplest to most advanced.

    Phase 1 — get an appropriate light on your firearm, learn how to turn it on and off without pressing the trigger when you mean to just operate the light, and learn how to shoot with the light. Carry a hand held light, too.

    Phase 2 — use the light as Gunsite teaches, which is to turn it on and leave it on, so as to turn darkness into light, so the bad guy or bad animal doesn’t use darkness against you, and to allow you to identify who is good and who is bad.

    Phase 3 — use light and darkness as a tactical advantage, by only engaging the light selectively.

    Phase 4 — use NVG technology so that you can operate in darkness.
    My shift has almost always had a "day" and "night" component. I worked 5:00P to 1:30A for a long time. I think there's more than one way to skin the cat, but largely agree with it as you've presented it. NVGs aren't a realistic option for most people in most scenarios, of course, so while phase 4 is great I'll leave it off.

    Phase 1's point of a second light is sometimes lost in the message. I have searched with a handheld, I've searched with a WML, and currently I actually do both. It depends on the context. I will switch back and forth during a search as there are times I don't want to point a gun just yet and "splashing" light isn't an option. Other times I want the gun up and ready as soon as I can make an identification. Learning to use the halo or "splash" of the light can let you use the WML to illuminate without muzzling. Especially today with very powerful lights in very small packages. I carry a Maglight mostly because "that's the way I've always done it" and because of the utility as a striking weapon. From a purely light-generating-device standpoint it's outclassed by any number of smaller modern lights.

    Phase 2 is going to be context dependent. I'm approaching this from the standpoint of LE, of course. I've done some large scale scenarios in completely dark areas, both outside and inside. One was set up right after the Pulse nightclub shooting and was a two story nightclub, loud music playing, rooms were either completely black, full of strobe lights, or in the largest room strobe lights and fucking smoke machine going full tilt. A metric shit ton of role players, simulated casualties, etc. It became something you just had to play by ear. A bright light in smoke was basically like high beams in the fog. Maybe you want to be "stealthy" in the stairwell, but you probably don't want to trip and fall over the "corpse" on the stairwell either and with no light how do you know?

    I can see the utility of a bright line rule if you aren't acclimated. With training and experience, phase 3 becomes the way to go. As the above scenario shows, it's very tough to paint out bright line rules on when the advantage of the light will outweigh the disadvantages, so it becomes a play-it-by-ear sort of thing.
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