I don't know about "hoards", but that's what I do. I have a dedicated nightstand gun with a mounted light. I shoot it just often enough to make sure it's in good operational condition and that's it. No light on my carry gun.Originally Posted by Mark D
Stating the obvious. I don’t think Mass is advocating never using a weapon light, but not searching with one.
I’ve never drawn a gun in over a decade of carry. I figure if you’re searching after hearing gun fire or seeing a gun/knife you’re good to draw.
That doesn’t change when you carry a light. As long as you just keep that mindset I think a weapon light is fine. Just don’t consider using that WML unless it’d also be appropriate to have the gun out.
Maybe and I mean like .01% of times where if it was life and death, take the pistol out, slide the light off and reholster the gun. That’s also why I use the -A Surefire model it’s quick attach/detach.
Otherwise you’re searching with your cell phone light like the rest of the dorks who don’t carry a dedicated flashlight.
ETA: I think a weapon light also gives you an advantage of seeing more about someone you’re pointing a gun at in a defensive situation and can give a bit more advantage of you can see them and their vision is impaired. I’d rather know a person is acting crazy in my house/car/wherever with a cell phone in their hand or know it’s a gun.
But I’m no expert.
ETA 2:
I had some additional thoughts. I think of this as a strong parallel to an LPVO that are now universally accepted on AR rifles. It gives you an increased ability to positively identified something. But, looking at someone down your scope is a terrible idea. However, if you’re looking for threats, and you’re prepared to shoot. It’s nice to have that additional information to use as an advantage.
Last edited by BWT; 09-21-2022 at 11:28 AM.
God Bless,
Brandon
The only pistol I have that has a flashlight attached to it is my Sig P220 10 mm that pretty much only gets used for when I go out in the woods for defense against four-legged critters. Even though I do keep it loaded with self-defense hollow points when it’s at home and not getting used but it’s really not even on my list of go-to guns for home defense either. Well, it would probably have priority over my little 22 magnum revolver but that’s it…lol.
For home defense, the only light my designated home gun has is an automated green laser that turns on as soon as you grip the handgun that’s kept in a little personal safe that’s bolted to the top of my nightstand and right beside it is the rechargeable MagTac Maglite flashlight for when things go bump in the night. Also on that handgun I have glow in the dark iron night sights for if I don’t want the laser to come on.
My two carry guns- a Springfield XDE 45 for all-year pocket carry and a compact Beretta PX4 Storm 9mm for winter time carry, have automated laser sights attached to them as well but no WML.
I guess I’ve just heard too much bad shit about having a flashlight attached to your handgun when it involves dealing with two-legged critters which is why I don’t do it. I just feel like there’s much better options to shine light on things without one, having your flashlight in a place that could be used as a target with you behind it and two, having to point the muzzle of your handgun wherever you want to look.
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Last edited by corneileous; 09-22-2022 at 03:00 PM.
Most light bearing holsters will not properly retain the weapon without the WML attached.
The correct answer is to have both, if must choose between one or the other, hand held is the way to go.
And with all due respect to Mike Glover, 500 lumens ain't shit. I not only want the ability to PID a potential threat (or non-threat) but be also to defeat that threats photonic barriers from his little 500 lumen light being thrown at me.
LET'S GO BRANDON!
What I picture in the situation requiring me to unholster a gun, pull the light off to search is like one of my small kids (1 and 3) falling into water at night and being fully submerged.
Like literal life and death.
That being said. I have a Pro-Tac light that can take either CR123 or AA. I think I’ll keep it in my front pocket.
Mike did say as a side note that the best option is both. I think I’m unique in that I can comfortably carry a Glock 34 with an x300U and ACRO P2. I’ve carried it basically all vacation this week except when at the beach or when going to the literal beach, pool, or a pirate ship ride where they promised you’d get soaked (I pocket carried a Ruger LCP). I helped my sister-in-law move concealed carrying including moving and picking up a piano, etc. carrying a 34 with x300.
God Bless,
Brandon
So that video brings up a few things that highlight some of the problems in having these discussions.
I don't do what Mike Glover used to do. He's way higher speed than I'll ever be.
That out of the way, there's things that his prior career conditioned him to do which are a spectacularly bad idea in the world most police officers and normal joes deal with.
The idea of having the gun tracking to your eyes is a terrible idea for police and citizens. If one is inside a structure that is believed to be full of highly dangerous terrorists or elite enemy forces, you may well need to get around that structure with an immediate "shooting solution" ready to go...meaning you keep the gun oriented where you are looking, usually with the muzzle up just as he models in the video.
That's a catastrophically bad idea for a patrolman doing a building search. It's not as bad as saying that red dots on handguns reduce mistake of fact shootings, but it's kind of in the same vein. If the gun is pointing at what you're looking at, the gun is pointing at somebody you don't have legal justification to shoot yet. I'm sure you can go through police body cam footage and maybe find an instance or two where an officer got shot because they didn't have an immediate shooting solution, but you're going to find a whole lot more instances of mistake of fact shootings where someone who hadn't yet earned a bullet caught one because the officer had too immediate of a shooting solution.
Context is king and unfortunately there's a lot of stuff out there that's being taken from a context where it makes sense to a context where it doesn't.
Specifically on light use he expresses repeated concern about giving away your position. That's a concern for a Ranger doing Ranger things. That's a concern for a SWAT team approaching a building for a hostage rescue attempt or warrant service in the dark.
That's really not much of a concern for a citizen in a home defense scenario. For the citizen home defender the primary concerns are positive identification that whomever you're about to point this gun at isn't someone who is supposed to be in the house and having sufficient information to articulate an immediate threat to life when you go to the police station with your lawyer to give the statement you're going to have to give in an affirmative defense. For the typical citizen defender ideally it's going to be like that cheesy Trace Adkins song:
Same goes for how much light is desirable. Rhodopsin does what it does and you certainly can kill your night vision with too-bright of a light and be literally blinded for a few seconds once photons have completely saturated your onboard supply of it. I figured that out in shoot houses.
What I've noticed is that very few structures in the real world are set up like shoothouses. I've been in far more circumstances where I turn on a light and think "WTF is that?" because of shadows and the like than I've been getting my NV completely zapped in a completely dark environment and left blinded for a couple of seconds. A compelling reason to have a light with a lot of horsepower is the ability to use the light indirectly. With the 500 lumen light on my shotgun I can hit the ceiling, completely eliminate shadows in a dark room and see pretty much everything I need to see to understand if there's a reason to zoom in on a particular area with direct light and direct muzzle. When I use indirect light, I'm not getting all my rhodopsin saturated by the light. If dude is there, well dude needs all my attention at this moment where I'm making the decision about whether or not I have to shoot him.
I can expect other dudes if he is the bad guy and I can go back to indirect light to see enough of what's going on to figure out if I need to shoot them, too.
Or...and I know this is radical...I can turn the fucking lights on in the house. Because once it reaches the point where I have gun on dude, it's highly likely everybody is going to know where I'm at because I'm either shooting or giving very loud and direct commands to get the fuck out of my house.
A guy doing Ranger things or some SWAT things has different requirements, priorities, legal cover, and levels of accountability to a regular joe or normal patrolman doing normal patrolman things. It's a rare fellow who comes from one arena and is able to really understand how differently things need to be looked at in another.
3/15/2016
Excellent post. I gave this an empirical test (being a guy with PhD emphasizing vision, just for context). I woke up in the middle of a dark night to go to the john. There was enough residual street light to navigate to the can which has a door to the walk in closet. So I thought that since I was pretty well dark adapted and up, I might experiment. I took my old Surefire 9P which was the bed table light in those days and went into the walk in closet. I waited a few minutes to get down to full dark adaptation.Same goes for how much light is desirable. Rhodopsin does what it does and you certainly can kill your night vision with too-bright of a light and be literally blinded for a few seconds once photons have completely saturated your onboard supply of it. I figured that out in shoot houses.
I brought the light up and aimed it down the length of the closet. Wham, my eyes slammed shut reflexively and I winced. With my eyes closed there was a vivid positive afterimage of shirts, pants and closet crap. When I opened them there was a large central negative afterimage that obscured my vision. Couldn't see worth a damn. Losing central vision is unpleasant if you wanted to identify something or use sights. You are certainly handicapped for quite a few seconds.
BTW, folks talk about clearing the house, etc. TCinVA mentions challenging from a good position. Karl Rehn taught this. One thing we did is have an extra alarm panel in the bedroom. It would sound the obnoxious alarm and call the cops signifying a serious incident. Folks don't mention that but it is an easy thing to do. Yes, the police are 30 minutes away for some but better starting them out ASAP.
Rule #1 pretty much ‘covers’ the topic.
AKA. Never point your weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy!
I agree with you 100% that a WML for the average CCW holder is completely superfluous. In fact, I personally think that this is a modern fad in my generation because of the influence of call of duty, where you "need" to put a bunch of accessories on your weapon. Because of that, people think that using a "bare gun" is inadequate, and thus "need" accessories like WMLs, red dot optics, threaded barrel, etc.
As you said, not only are there legal ramifications for using your WML to "search and identify/destroy", but making your handgun look like an offensive, and not defensive, weapon makes it harder to defend in court that you used your weapon defensively.
Where I disagree with you is use of WML in a home. You may need it for long guns, which require two hands, but if your night stand gun is a handgun, then even here you don't need a WML. You also don't even need a separate flashlight. The reason is because modern smartphones have powerful flashlights and can sufficiently illuminate a very dark room or hallway. Also, as you are searching your home for the source of the suspicious noise, you can hold the pistol in one hand, smart phone with flashlight in the other hand, and simply turn on the light switches to illuminate the whole house.
The primary application of a WML is clearing a dark house room by room that you don't know anything about what is inside.
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