FLASHLIGHTS MOUNTED ON SD GUNS - GOOD OR DANGEROUS?

[WR Moore]

I don't have a light mounted on any handgun. The main reason is different than what anyone here has said so far; method of operation. Most weapon mounted lights (WML) require the trigger finger to operate them. When it comes to guns, I only want my trigger finger to do one thing, operate the trigger.

Many, but not all, lights intended to be mounted on handguns allow you to use a digit from either the support or gun hand. An average of 10 trials each way showed that the trigger finger was about 1/8 of a second slower to first aimed shot than using a digit from the support hand if you aren't a trigger prepper.

There are some light that have a provision for a remote pressure switch, but I'm definitely not a fan of having to vary your grip on the handgun to turn a light on/off.

That said, your premise has some merit, but you might want to check out some different lights.

 

[Univibe]

For what it's worth, HPD has standardized on a required weapon for all new recruits. Glock 17 with red dot and light. They're on the cutting edge with this.

 

[waffles]

For what it's worth, HPD has standardized on a required weapon for all new recruits. Glock 17 with red dot and light. They're on the cutting edge with this.

The dot part is the most interesting to me. I've moved to a dot on my carry gun, but thats pretty cutting edge for a mandatory duty weapon and I'm curious to see how it goes. As for the rest, whatever striker gun (of which the G17 is the leader of the pack) with a light is an absolute no brainer.

 

[cmj8591]

Once the threat is over, if you continue to point your gun at the suspect, you are using excessive force. One of the first rules of gun safety is never point your weapon at anything that you don't want to shoot. If your light is attached to your gun, then it's hard to light stuff up without pointing at it. The department I worked for prohibited weapon mounted lights, lasers, red dots. The only exception was SWAT guys for whom the handgun is usually their secondary weapon. A little bit of research will tell you that a lot of agencies are pulling away from weapon mounted lights. If you look at some of the body cam footage out there, you can see why. I know that some here say you can train your way into it but the average home defense gun owner is not going to train up to the level of muzzle discipline necessary to safely use their gun as their illumination device.

 

[mscampbell2734]

Once the threat is over, if you continue to point your gun at the suspect, you are using excessive force. One of the first rules of gun safety is never point your weapon at anything that you don't want to shoot. If your light is attached to your gun, then it's hard to light stuff up without pointing at it. The department I worked for prohibited weapon mounted lights, lasers, red dots. The only exception was SWAT guys for whom the handgun is usually their secondary weapon. A little bit of research will tell you that a lot of agencies are pulling away from weapon mounted lights. If you look at some of the body cam footage out there, you can see why. I know that some here say you can train your way into it but the average home defense gun owner is not going to train up to the level of muzzle discipline necessary to safely use their gun as their illumination device.

I'm going to take issue with this. I'm not saying it's not happening, I'm saying your seeing the result of poor policy, training and a lack of discipline, combined with a ultra liberal political environment.

Everything you've pointed out CAN be solved and has been solved by agencies that have adopted and enforced policies to prevent misuse and abuse of WML, and been relatively free of political interference.

 

[waffles]

Once the threat is over, if you continue to point your gun at the suspect, you are using excessive force. One of the first rules of gun safety is never point your weapon at anything that you don't want to shoot. If your light is attached to your gun, then it's hard to light stuff up without pointing at it. The department I worked for prohibited weapon mounted lights, lasers, red dots. The only exception was SWAT guys for whom the handgun is usually their secondary weapon. A little bit of research will tell you that a lot of agencies are pulling away from weapon mounted lights. If you look at some of the body cam footage out there, you can see why. I know that some here say you can train your way into it but the average home defense gun owner is not going to train up to the level of muzzle discipline necessary to safely use their gun as their illumination device.

At what point do people understand you can have a second light, or illuminate things without aiming at them? All it does is let you have a light on your weapon. It does not take away your other flashlight, make you use it, or make you point at people.

 

[Doc1500]

I can point my wml down at the ready position and still light up what's in front of me. There is a lot of residual light off the sides of the main beam. Enough light to see what's going on without covering someone with the muzzle.

 

[CQB27]

Man this thread is a doozy, lol.

Com’on man, the only reason not to have a bright white light mounted on your gun in a hostile dark environment is because you are wearing a set of gen 4 NODs on your head and you have an IR light mounted up instead.

Don’t want one, don’t like it, want to hold it in your support hand? Fine. That’s the beauty of America, do what you want. But the belief that in a dark hostile environment a weapon mounted light somehow puts you at a disadvantage goes beyond “likes and wants” and is diametrically opposed to the reality of sound night fighting tactics proven time and time again in the 21st century.

Nobody who trips regularly into harms way, and I really mean nobody, chooses to do so without a weapon mounted light. Not your worry you say? Not in harms way? Well nobody is, until you are my friends.

I must admit I have had fun reading this thread. It’s made me chuckle a few times. One of the things I really like about this forum, we can be in disagreement, even crotchety unrealistic disagreements, but nobody gets too far out line. Everyone a gentleman….most of the time anyway, lol.

Keep’em coming! What’s up next? Power steering makes it easier to run over the neighbors kids? Kydex holsters squeak and give you away? Plastic guns melt in the sun but excel in the dark? I really look forward to it, seriously.

 

[Screwball]

At what point do people understand you can have a second light, or illuminate things without aiming at them? All it does is let you have a light on your weapon. It does not take away your other flashlight, make you use it, or make you point at people.

We are dealing with this at work… weapon lights are cleared per the agency, but management must sign off on it. And they won’t.

So, the big thing they say… people will be using the light to check trunks. Policy requires a person with a weapon light to also have a handheld light on them while on duty, so not really following that logic. But the biggest issue with the argument is that the same people saying that are pushing officers to wear tasers. Most of them have a light, and I don’t see officers pulling them out to check trunks. So, just because it is on a gun means people are going to be stupid with it? Why not just take the guns away, then?

Really, it comes down to people wanting to argue weapon lights are bad… yet they really don’t have a legitimate argument against them, so they use what they can make it look terrible with. Funny…sounds similar to anti-gun arguments.

 

[seldon14]

Having a gun-mounted light and a handheld means you have a backup and can use either according to the circumstances.

I recall walking down a dark trail one night in scary woods, and I was able to flash light two directions at once. You may not do this much of course!

Having options is the best. If I could only have for all scenarios I'd take the handheld light, but having both available is the best.

 

[CQB27]

We are dealing with this at work… weapon lights are cleared per the agency, but management must sign off on it. And they won’t.

So, the big thing they say… people will be using the light to check trunks. Policy requires a person with a weapon light to also have a handheld light on them while on duty, so not really following that logic. But the biggest issue with the argument is that the same people saying that are pushing officers to wear tasers. Most of them have a light, and I don’t see officers pulling them out to check trunks. So, just because it is on a gun means people are going to be stupid with it? Why not just take the guns away, then?

Really, it comes down to people wanting to argue weapon lights are bad… yet they really don’t have a legitimate argument against them, so they use what they can make it look terrible with. Funny…sounds similar to anti-gun arguments.

They may have a point…do they have to remind the officers not to use their ASP to push the buttons in the courthouse elevator and not to jump start cars with their taser? I sometimes wonder why the command staff doesn’t say things out loud to themselves before they crack wise to the rank and file. You would think that they were made to keep a cork stuck on the end of their pocket knife when they worked in the patrol division, lol.

 

[tg4360]

I personally would love to know what the seasoned Leo's have to say.
They are the ones that do this all the time.

30+ years.

No mounted light unless you can train with it almost daily.

Very few have or need this skill.

It's much safer for most persons to have a separate light.

Sent from my SM-A115M using Tapatalk

 

[waffles]

I get some of those concerns. We see too many instances of police mistaking handguns for tasers and that kind of thing, and I'm absolutely sure eventually you're going to see a negligent shooting blamed on someone using their WML to illuminate something they don't wanna blast.

The problem is that it's absolutely outweighed by the benefits. Do you want to make a cop slower and less accurate if they need to shoot by making them futz around with a handheld light and their pistol? Would you prefer they continue misidentifying random objects for handguns in someone's hand in the dark? If not, give them a weapon light.

 

[waffles]

30+ years.

No mounted light unless you can train with it almost daily.

Very few have or need this skill.

It's much safer for most persons to have a separate light.

Sent from my SM-A115M using Tapatalk

What is less safe about having a weapon mounted light? You've also got a handheld light. Does the WML mean the handheld magically no longer works?

 

[Doug M.]

The poorly trained do stupid stuff. When they get stoopid enough, they get promoted and make really bad decisions like "Screwball" described.

We have enough idiots who hate us (cops and armed citizens) in the political world making decisions without even the slightest basis for their position. I'm sure everyone remembers the idiot who suggested some kind of dumb stunt with a SxS shotgun as a good home defense tactic. WML and RDS with appropriate training improve both judgment and performance when the excrement hits the rotating device.

 

[Rodan]

The poorly trained do stupid stuff. When they get stoopid enough, they get promoted and make really bad decisions like "Screwball" described.

Here, here. A couple of years ago, we had the funding available, but our administration passed on purchasing throw-over rifle plate carriers for every patrol officer because they thought they looked 'too tactical' and were worried that someone would wear one on a call that 'didn't justify' it.

Same old mentality... hollow points are bad (1970s), semi-autos are bad (1980s), rifles are too dangerous (1990s). You get the idea. Usually coming from someone that hasn't spent a full shift in harm's way in at least a decade.

Sorry, rant off... this just pokes one of my hot buttons.

 

[WR Moore]

I want to raise a point here about training. Several posters have emphasized training, but there are various types. We had a mandate to include force on force training and also had graded fof exercises.

2 points here: first, you learn a lot more in force on force than you do in typical square range training. Second, you learn a whole lot more acting as the aggressor/bad person/label of choice. This last is particularly true if you're considering indoor problems, where reflected light can make you a target regardless of what technique you use.

 

[cmj8591]

I'm going to take issue with this. I'm not saying it's not happening, I'm saying your seeing the result of poor policy, training and a lack of discipline, combined with a ultra liberal political environment.

Everything you've pointed out CAN be solved and has been solved by agencies that have adopted and enforced policies to prevent misuse and abuse of WML, and been relatively free of political interference.

It's easy to say that you can fix a deficiency in an agency by policies or training or better policy enforcement but in the real world, it's hard to make the leap from idea to reality. The reality in this case, and what is happening on the street, is that weapon lights cause more problems than they solve. First, at some point, under the stress of an encounter, someone is going to point their gun at something they shouldn't because they need to illuminate it. You might get away with that for a while but eventually, like every other lapse in safety, it's going to catch up with you and the gun is going to go off when it's pointed where it shouldn't be. Someone is going to pull the trigger instead of turning on the light or turn on the light instead of pulling the trigger and get shot themselves. Secondly, it's another piece of equipment that has to be maintained and it is connected to the piece of equipment that you are betting your life on. I was in charge of doing some training for several smaller agencies around where I worked. Some of them had lights on their duty weapons. About half of them worked when they got to the range. Most of the ones that didn't work had bad batteries. Some were just broken. A couple actually came off the gun while the officers were training. I sent a letter to every agency that sent officers to my ranges telling them that I recommend that they get rid of them and would no longer train officers with weapon mounted lights. It's easy to say train more but in the real world, there is only so much time for training and there is a lot of stuff competing for it. Simplification and training to the lowest common denominator is what works. It's not hard to use a gun and a flashlight at the same time and training for it is relatively natural. I'm not telling anyone what to do. You want a light, laser, red dot, rocket launcher attached to your gun then go for it. But this is my take on it and it's based on a lot of actual hands on training and real observations under a lot of different conditions.

 

[cmj8591]

What is less safe about having a weapon mounted light? You've also got a handheld light. Does the WML mean the handheld magically no longer works?

So you want to carry two lights and a gun? If you have ever spent any amount of time in a duty belt, you would do everything you can to lessen the load and keep the amount of equipment to a minimum.

 

[SchemaEnigma]

CAVEAT: I'm no trainer. So, this is JMO. Just some guy with an opinion.

There's been a lot of discussion about training in this thread, with most of it (seemingly, didn't actually count or anything) by those who are against WMLs.

Let's take your basic home-defender civilian. He's not ever going to be highly trained, no matter what he should do. He just won't.

If he believes someone is in the house who should not be there at night, what does he need to do? He needs to identify the source of his concern and determine if it is a threat.

From a safe gun handling perspective, what are the most important things he can learn with his minimal training?

IDK how they would rank, but in some order, these would have to be on the list:

1. Muzzle discipline - don't point at what you don't intend to shoot
2. Trigger discipline - keep your trigger finger outside the trigger guard until you have the target identified
3. Proper and firm grip of the handgun to control not only the first shot, but any others that may be necessary
4. Reacting the same way every time so you don't have to think too much

Which of those is most compromised by having a separate flashlight? #3 & #4.

Which of those is most compromised by having a WML? None. Remember, the spill light will identify any target with a down-ready position. So, if your "same way every time" is to be down ready before point, the the WML compromises nothing.

So, why is it, then, that the marginally trained gun owner is better served with a separate flashlight?

It is my opinion that most near-novice gun owners need to learn one way and one way only to handle, aim, and fire their weapon. Having to sometimes use a separate flashlight means they have to learn two ways. Maybe three, including one-hand shooting.

To me, then, the extra training mantra needs to go with the separate flashlight, not the WML.

It seems to me that it is easier to learn to visually take in the room with the gun down / light on than it is to learn 2 more ways to handle the gun and shoot.

Just another guy with an opinion...