Integrating a Flashlight While Shooting

Here is another important video from the Personal Defense Network. It's important to talk about integrating the flashlight with the gun itself. This solution is something that we see in a lot of the magazine, we see on TV, we see in the hands of military and law enforcement professionals quite frequently. The fact is that there's almost nothing more convenient than having the flashlight on the firearm, particularly long guns when we already have both hands busy, but also on the pistols so that we can be in a situation where we can activate that light either momentarily or in the constant on mode, be searching, moving, engaging threats coming back into a ready position doing all the things we need to do with this light on. But when you're in a home defense situation, when you're trying to keep yourself hidden from the bad guy, when you're trying to keep your family safe and more specifically, if your family members are moving around that house, or if you're not sure who's in the house with you and whether or not they represent a threat, you probably don't want to have your only lighting option be an option that immediately points a gun at someone if you use the brightest spot on that white light to identify them.

Turning your flashlight into a gun or turning your gun into a flashlight is not your best defense when it comes to moving through the home and understanding what it is you need to do with these two tools separately. So I prefer to look at a situation where the flashlight is separate from the firearm as a primary light, but you still may wanna invest in a less expensive LED type in this situation light which you can attach to the rails of your firearm if you have them or you can get a rail attachment that will apply to most any type of firearm. And now you have a backup light source built into your firearm. If this light were to be lost, if this light were to break, if I have to drop it in order to secure a family member, push them behind me, I now can come back to this light source as my new primary. It's a backup light.

It may not be as powerful. It may not be as rugged as the more expensive military law enforcement type lights but this does give me a backup option that is still secured to the firearm, will always be with the firearm when it's in the safe or when it's in a storage area where I keep it handy for home defense. But it doesn't mean that I'm relying on turning my firearm into a flashlight when I'm using my primary light searching intermittently and indirectly. Now there is other specialty light situations that are also available we should take a look at. This particular light is made by a company called First Light just like our Tomahawk L-shape.

This light is designed for hands-free use. All of the buttons I need to utilize the light, are set up on top of this bar. I can adjust this handle so that it fits the back of my hand. And now I can keep two hands on my firearm, I can push somebody out of the way, I can even carry a child and still get to manipulate this light in the directions that it will help me to find my way to find that identify threats to do whatever else it is I may need to do with this hand other than just work the flashlight. Maybe something as simple as opening a door, maybe be on the phone with 911 explaining what's going on, but having the option of quickly transitioning to the use of this flashlight whenever I need to.

So this light is an interesting option, of course designed primarily for law enforcement and military. But this is one of the tools that, that industry uses that still may be of great value to you in a home defense or personal defense situation. Now we know that we wanna use intermittent and indirect light when we're searching and trying to find a threat. It's best to do that with a handheld flashlight, preferably one with a lanyard or one that secures itself to your hand in some other way. This is gonna allow you to get the freedom of use of this hand if you need it, to open a door, pick up a child, maybe fight with someone or even go to a two-handed shooting position if you have that much need for precision and deviation control during your critical incident.

You'll be able to get the flashlight back in your hand quickly with a lanyard. So that's my preference when it comes to tube lights. Now, if you keep the flashlight in close proximity to where you sleep or the area that you spend a lot of time in the house, it's gonna be easier for you to get to that flashlight when you might need it, particularly at night. If you have a large home, or if you have a basement area or maybe an attic workspace or some other area of your house it doesn't get light during the day from natural sources outside, windows or skylights, you might also find yourself in dark conditions during the day. I meet a lot of people who say they always carry a flashlight at night, but during the day when they're moving around even when they might find themselves inside of large buildings, office structures, malls, theaters, places which obviously can be dark, they don't think they have the light with them.

Keeping a light with you is something it's easy to do especially if you're already taking the time, effort, energy to carry a firearm with you. Have the light handy whether it's in your home or outside of the home. And we've talked a lot about the intermittent and indirect searching concept. When we use that concept, we're going to be able to find and identify threats without necessarily letting them know where we are. Now, in this case, I'm obviously pretty well lit.

We wouldn't consider this a low light situation. You can see me, the camera's picking me up just fine. I'm illuminated, even though I'm in the dark. This isn't brightly lit daytime. We don't know exactly what's down there.

Now, you can probably tell if there's a target there. It's probably not surprising. We're here on the flat range of 360 tactical training at Memorial Shooting Center. And there's always gonna be targets down range and we're gonna be standing up range. So we know that that targets there.

It's a little contrived for me to say, well now I'm searching because we have enough light for the cameras to pick me up. We have a gray target on a white background in a relatively bright room. So obviously finding and searching for that target is not something that we really can simulate, but let's think about what we have if there is less light. The camera probably doesn't see me as well from this angle. There's certainly not a lot of light coming from this side.

I've got darkness over here in this part of the room. What if there was someone wearing dark clothing? Maybe a very dark complexion there in the dark, there's less light. There's no reflected light in that area of the house. Now I really do need my artificial light source to be able to find through intermittent and indirect searching that target.

When I find that target, I can use my flashlight to illuminate directly so that I can identify the threat. And then of course, I could go into a shooting position one handed or two handed and shoot that target. Now there is enough light for me to still see that threat even though I may not have been able to identify it without directly illuminating. As I go into my shooting position, I can rotate the light out of the way, pointed down at the ground and use reflected light to still see that threat and shoot. I don't need to try to line the flashlight up with my gun.

If I do that, it's gonna take more time, effort and energy. Now, there may be a time, there may be a place where we do wanna do that. If you find yourself in a situation where you need two hands on the gun, there are different techniques. There's the cigar technique where we put the flashlight between our first two fingers. We're gonna use the palm of our hand to depress that button and illuminate the flashlight.

We're gonna place that hand up against the gun just like we normally would with the flashlight pressed back against our fingers or against our palm. We can leave our hand here, pressed in against the gun to add a little extra stability or we can wrap around the front and push back against our fingers on our strong hand side to illuminate this way. Now again, we don't recommend these techniques as your primary way of engaging in a dark setting. If you just simply use the flashlight to find and identify your threats and then use the firearm to engage that threat, you're probably gonna shoot much better and shoot more efficiently. These contrived techniques of getting two hands on the gun, whether you use the cigar technique or any other technique, don't really help you shoot faster.

And if you don't need the light to shoot the target, don't use the light to shoot the target. Don't become dependent on these things that may work really well for a few minutes at a time inside of a shoot house, inside of a scenario area, or certainly during a competition when the targets are just like this and you probably can see them anyway much less during the qualification course which is supposed to be low light when the fact is, this is darker than almost every low-light shoot I've ever done for qualification. And I can see that target just fine. I don't need this flashlight. And in fact, you see some of the smarter guys on the shooting line who need to get a better score not really worrying about as much about the flashlight when you can see the target.

And you're really just out there going through a training mission. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.