Flashlight Techniques

[TCinVA]

The important bit with light techniques is to understand them and to have enough familiarity with them to know whether or not X or Y technique works for you. I can use the Rogers technique fairly well because my hands are sufficiently large to let me operate the light and still get a meaningful grip on the weapon with the remaining fingers of my left hand. From a pure shooting perspective, I've found that I don't suffer much of a penalty in my ability to put rounds on target on command over using a standard two handed hold.

But that's the thing that Nyeti and others are hitting against: Rarely is use of the light something you're doing in a pure shooting situation. It typically involves searching and if you are a right handed shooter and you encounter a corner that opens to your right, you now have to move the light to the other side of the gun if you want to do anything but illuminate the wall in front of you. When you actually start searching through real structures (because crackheads do not hide in shoothouses or at eye level) you start to find out that there's no single technique that is going to get it done in all circumstances. The Rogers technique is something I would likely employ for a bump-in-the-night scenario where I'm a static defender of home and family. In that situation I'm not terribly worried about pointing my gun at a potential intruder and I really would like to be able to shoot as fast and accurately as possible. I've also spent a considerable amount of time practicing with the Rogers technique so that I can use it without much fuss. That being said, I keep an X200 on the pistol when it is doing night stand duty 90+% of the time so it's a moot point.

If I'm not playing static defense and instead I'm forced to go looking for a potential problem in my house, I'm likely to use a more "free" technique if I feel the need to have a gun in my hand...something like the Harries or jaw index.

I like the Rogers technique more than any other in terms of putting bullets on a target on demand...but if I'm not on a square range or a situation which gives free license to have a gun in my hand and not care too much about who it gets pointed at, I'm probably going to be using something else.

EDIT - Since Harries was mentioned specifically, I find that when properly applied with the isometric tension it helps with my ability to place an accurate shot. It's not as good as a two handed hold or the Rogers technique, but I find that the stabilization of forcing the back of my hands together helps compensate a bit for a sub-optimal trigger pull a bit.

[cclaxton]

Let me ask a fundamental question here: How important is lighting your gun sights?

It seems to me that the Rodgers and Harries might be faster, but wont light the sights, will they be accurate enough?

I am not LE and shoot IDPA, so that is my orientation. My carry gun has Tritium, and my competition has fiberoptic if that matters.

Thanks,
CC

[TCinVA]

Let me ask a fundamental question here: How important is lighting your gun sights?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If by "lighting the sights" you mean illuminating the sights themselves, it's a terrible idea because if the light is on your sights it's not actually illuminating the threat/target downrange and you won't hit beans or see what's happening downrange.

If by "lighting the sights" you mean lighting up the threat/target downrange sufficiently so that you can see the shilouette of your sights against it, that's pretty darn important if you intend to hit anything. Especially if your sights do not glow or if you don't have a laser. Tritium/a laser helps immensely in that it allows you to process a "good enough" sight picture faster when stuff glows in a dark environment vice trying to judge "good enough" with plain black sights.

It seems to me that the Rodgers and Harries might be faster, but wont light the sights, will they be accurate enough?

Assuming you mean the second definition of "lighting the sights" either technique will accomplish that. Light isn't a static thing. What you actually need from a purely shooting perspective is enough light to see what you need to see to make the shot. With proper practice of either technique you get to the point where you orient the hotspot of the light in more or less the place where your sights are aimed so that when you present on a target the hottest part of the light is available to give you the best contrast for your sights.

[Dropkick]

I've attended a low-light live fire practice session, a FOF structure w/ low-light components class, and occasionally break out a training pistol to practice low-light. I don't have years of flight time in any operational environment. So if anything sounds wrong or stupid, please point it out so I can learn something...

From the different techniques I've tried, I put them into two categories, "hands together" or "hands apart."

Hands Together: I originally started out trying these. I thought they'd be the best of both worlds. I thought I'd be able to get a two hand grip on the pistol, and operate the flashlight. Not one of the techniques I tried was very good at either. The grip or the operation of the light always seemed like a compromise. I felt like I was always juggling both the light and pistol and never really had a good grip on either. I can't juggle tennis balls, so the thought of juggling the pistol and light in the dark was a scary one. I also came to realize that not everything that needs to be lit up needs to have a muzzle pointed at it, and Hands Together doesn't do that. (I liked the comment about the 99.8% searching, and .2% shooting. I'd say even smaller numbers for us guys who don't do that for our living.)

I don't have any experience with WMLs, but in my mind I toss them in with the Hands Together techniques for what are obvious reasons.

Hands Apart: Thanks to some really great instructors I was "illuminated" to a couple different techniques. I was first introduced to Neck Index, which showed me I needed to work on my SHO. (...and learning to shoot SHO better isn't a bad thing!) After neck index I was shown FBI. Other's experiences showed that people shot at lights, so if the light isn't near your head or body, hopefully there is a lower chance of getting shot from incoming fire. The FBI is by no means an easy technique for me to learn, but after seeing it used in a FOF class, I was very impressed with it.

My experiences are my own, so these are just my observations. However, some other things to think about are flashlight selection (I've got a small investment in various lights) and movement. I feel like some techniques were better for "stand and deliver" shooting and others were better for "shooting while scooting" so there's that to possibly discussed too.

[Lomshek]

Beautifully put.

What a polite way of saying, "If you haven't got the T-shirt, you really don't know what you're talking about."

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I'll dispute this. It seems like a lot of the arguments that way revolve around conducting the normal duties of a cop outside of gunfighting. The problem is I'm not a cop and have no desire to play one.

Those of us who are not LEO (or .mil) will never carry a light heavy enough to use as a bludgeon, and probably won't be tasked with searching fields, warehouses or approaching a vehicle we pulled over at night.

My mindset as a civilian 24/7 CCW is that if I am using my handheld light in a threat environment the chances of it being a shooting situation are pretty high. If the lights simply went out and I just need to find an exit then my 6P/G2/E1E will work fine without my gun and I can still draw and fire my gun SHO if I needed to.

The one in a billion active shooter in a movie theater (or Mumbai type power out in the mall) I just happen to be in the middle of scenario comes to mind. Personally there won't be any situations where I insert myself into a situation that is not a deadly threat I am forced into. I won't try to settle fights or calm drunks down and definitely won't be "investigating" suspicious characters ala George Zimmerman.

Home defense is (for me) a separate situation since I'll have a full size gun and WML.

All that is a long way of explaining why the light/gun technique I chose is one that focuses on best shooting performance for me (Graham) not on searching or managing those around me. I practice other techiniques for familiarity just in case but I have my default technique.

[phil_in_cs]

My two cents, based on SouthNarc’s AMIS, additional low light FOF and instruction from a friend with a lot of time searching dark houses in Afghanistan:

Your concepts need to drive your techniques, not the other way around. Our concepts:
1) It is dark, and we need to see.
2) Light draws fire.
3) We don’t want to point a weapon at someone we don’t want to shoot.

Completely ignoring how you hold the light, you must be able to accomplish these tasks. If your only light is mounted on your weapon, you are unable to do the third. A weapon mounted light makes shooting much easier.

Our OODA loop is Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. If you add a light into that mix you get:
LIGHT ON – Observe – LIGHT OFF - MOVE! – Orient, Decide, Act. Act may require additional light.

If you can get these concept implemented and make accurate hits, it really doesn’t matter which of the specific techniques you use. I use a mix of neck index and FBI/"Waving the light around" depending on how tight the space is, and shoot one handed.

[David Armstrong]

Having been around when many of these were developed, and having tried pretty much everything under the sun, I ended up with the Harries as my basic default choice followed by the neck-index. If those don't cover it I just use the old FBI "hold the light up and way" method.

[David Armstrong]

Dude. I never mentioned IDPA (which I haven't shot in four years) nor would most IDPA folks opt for neck/temple index.

My question was sincere and still stands: what does Harries (and reverse Harries, which I'd still like to hear about or at least see a photo of) do, in your opinion/experience, that one-handed shooting doesn't?

Don't know how to post photos, but here is a link to another forum that has pics of the various methods:
http://www.ar15armory.com/forums/SHO...GHT-t8367.html

[ford.304]

Those of us who are not LEO (or .mil) will never carry a light heavy enough to use as a bludgeon,

That actually seems to be a fair amount of the difference. Rogers seems to require a flashlight that is too small to do the various other things a LEO uses his flashlight for.

[Lomshek]

Your concepts need to drive your techniques, not the other way around. Our concepts:
1) It is dark, and we need to see.
2) Light draws fire.
3) We don’t want to point a weapon at someone we don’t want to shoot.

Completely ignoring how you hold the light, you must be able to accomplish these tasks. If your only light is mounted on your weapon, you are unable to do the third. A weapon mounted light makes shooting much easier.

I would guess most reading this don't turn their light on constant and wander around investigating sounds so I question the concept of use a handheld to ID a threat then engage with a WML.

We acknowledge that a WML is the best but must use a handheld to find a threat and only then point the gun at said threat, activate WML and fire SHO thus taking longer and reducing our accuracy vs. using two hands on the gun. How much longer does that give the threat to shoot us while we are transitioning lights and engaging from a weakened position?

Is that the TTP for SWAT type teams clearing rooms as well? They don't dare point a gun at someone they are not going to shoot so they use a handheld light and keep the gun at some safe ready position until the decision to fire has been made. I'm just some guy but that seems to conflict with the realities of dangerous encounters.