Weapon lights are the rage and very justifiable. Having a light to illuminate targets in low and no-light situations is exceptionally useful. If you have any suspicion, even as a sport shooter, that you could be attempting to illuminate a darkened area, weapon lights are mandatory.
Yes, there are techniques that
allow you to use a hand-held tactical light and fire your rifle, but these
procedures come with complications. How
do you reload while holding a tactical light?
How do you hold several people at gunpoint in the dark while calling the
police or guiding them to your location using a handheld light? It is these situations that make mounted weapon
lights so powerful.
Let me remind everyone that gun
fighting is dangerous. The repercussions
go far beyond the event. You can lose
your life, your freedom and your family.
We only do this as the alternative to dying or seeing someone we love
die. Knowing you could have prevented this
is a burden you can never put down.
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| Just past dusk, you can see people/targets but can you see what they hold? Answer: Weapon lights |
Lights have been promoted by various units of energy and output. The current unit in vogue is the lumen. Let me define it.
A lumen (symbol: lm) is the unit
of light output. It is the measure of
the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source per unit of time. The key is visible light and per unit of
time. Heat or IR illumination and UV
light do not qualify under this definition.
It is the total amount of light as measured in an instant in time.
This isn’t the amount that falls
on your objective, but all the visible light produced.
In total darkness you will be
surprised at how little light is actually needed to illuminate a person and
determine if a weapon is present. I
found the original 60 lumen tactical lights perform adequately out to 30 yards
in total darkness.
As ambient light levels increase,
the eye changes how it processes the incoming light. If the target is in a shaded area and you are
in a brighter area, you need more illumination even at shorter ranges. This is true at dusk or high noon and all
times between.
Very distant targets, say 150
yards, needs significantly more illumination at any time. It may not be possible with current
technology to have a portable illumination system that lets you identify a
target deep in an interior shaded structure, like a barn, at 150 yards during
daylight.
The reflex dot technology is
changing how we sight weapons. From a
tactical perspective you want a bright dot as it is easier to find in high
light environment. As it become darker,
the dot will blind the shooting eye and blank out the target as seen through
the device. You can turn the dot
intensity down, but at some point, the dot will be too bright and blind you to
your surroundings. I find when it is too
dark to read a book, it’s too dark to use a dot by itself. Manual sights have the same problem: at some
point it becomes too dark to see them.
The solution is the gun
light. But in close quarters, the
reflected light from the weapon light will appear to wash your low intensity dot
out.
If you suspect you will be
entering a darkened area, turn your dot up before entering. The battery savings between bright and low
illumination of a dot is insignificant.
Current propellent technology is
called ‘smokeless’ but it still produces a significant level of tiny
particles. Firing multiple rounds while
illuminating your target causes a shield effect. The particles scatter your light back at
you. The science of light scattering is
complex, but simply increasing lumens only cause more light to be reflected
back to you. The same applies to return
fire. His or her return fire creates a
light scattering affecting them and yourself.
Frankly, it’s not a cloak of
invisibility, but if you need to identify shooters from non-shooter, it’s a
problem. The solution seems to be
twofold: wait for the particles to thin out or move to a different position
where the haze is less.
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| The muzzle blast creates a cloud of particles reflecting light back at you |
I like to run the last set of
drills by road flares. The brilliant
flickering light is a distraction and changes the complexity of the
activity. I want to simulate confusion
and adverse situations. Could you have
flashing lights about you? Could there
be a fire, your house, a neighbor’s outbuilding, a burning car?
The complication of smoke has been
discussed. The shadows cast by the
bright flames can mask or partially obscure targets. A weapon could be completely hidden in the
shadows and a non-shooter could be confused as a target. This could be a case where additional lumens are
to your advantage.
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| The flare illuminates some targets and cast others into shadows. Can you see if the blackened target has a gun or a no-shoot sign? |
Lastly, we train with stationary targets. A truly sophisticated range would have RC targets that could move silently in the darkness to new locations. When your light goes off, people have the opportunity to move to a new location, to produce weapons not previously seen. Turning off your light to move in what appears to be impenetrable darkness also allows your opponent to move and act.
However, you train, if you are
serious about it, consider how you would counter your techniques if the tables
were reversed. Then, make your techniques evolve.
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