Viridian Radiance Light Technology: Mounted Weapon Light

When it comes to having a light mounted on your defensive firearm, it's important to remember why it's there. It's there primarily to help you find and identify threats so that you can make an appropriate decision on whether or not you need to shoot. Overwhelmingly, just needing to shoot will be apparent if you can see your threat, and you know exactly where it is. At that point, the light isn't really there to help you just aim. It's there to prior to making the decision to shoot to help you make that decision in a responsible way.

If you imagine yourself positioned inside your home, for example, you're not sure who's coming around the corner. That light that's mounted on your defensive firearm helps you figure out if it's truly an intruder with violent intent, or if it's a family member who's running to you for help. Once you make that determination, then the light may or may not be actually helping you to get your aim. If we take a look at the situation that's set up behind me, there's very clearly a target that's very close. If I were in a situation where I felt potentially threatened, and I were to engage that target verbally and present my firearm up into a ready position, my light with this Viridian instant-on technology, the enhanced combat readiness clearly comes on.

And the advantage that I have here is that because Viridian uses the radiance technology for horizontal light dispersion, even though I'm pointing the light at this threat in front of me, the horizontal dispersion allows me to identify that threat that is off in the distance. So let's say that I were in a situation with a traditional light, that we're only putting light out in one straight direction, I saw this guy, and as he's approaching me, I could stop him, get his attention, orient my firearm towards him, tell him to back up, and maybe be completely unaware that the immediate lethal threat is his partner, someone with a knife or a gun charging at me, or about to shoot at me in the background. With the radiance technology, I become instantly aware of that person. I could shift my attention from this potential threat to the actual threat and engage as appropriate to get the shots I need. In this case, the light also helps me to not only identify the threat, but also get good contrast so that when I come up, I can get a good sight alignment, sight picture, and take the shots at that target that's just beyond where I would normally do my unsighted firing.

Now I'm gonna clear this gun so you can take a little closer look at what's going on. Firearm's clear, I'm gonna put it back into battery, and we're gonna take a close look at what's going on. Now, this is a Viridian product that includes both a laser and a light. I've left the green laser off because although it's a great advantage in a lot of defensive shooting situations, I really wanted to highlight this radiance technology. And if we take a look at the floor, what we're gonna see is that we don't have that normal cone with a white hot spot, and then the corona coming out around it.

What we've got is a really nice horizontal stripe. If we think about where threats are when we point a firearm in a general direction of where we're searching or when we have a known potential threat, the other threats aren't very likely to be down below him or up above him. So in a traditional cone type of light, we have a lot of wasted energy that's really not helping us to find those other threats that may be spread out in the area that we can see but traditionally can't illuminate. The radiance technology allows us to illuminate inside of our entire spectrum of sight when we're looking forward. Now if we're in a situation where we're in enough control to go to a ready position, give a verbal challenge, and be assessing our environment, we should also plan on being able to not only turn our head briefly to see what's going on, but still have a lot of capability to pick up movement and pick up potential threats.

We know that there's a heightened visual acuity in the center of our field of vision when we're in that panic mode, when we're in that fight mode, when we're already being attacked, and we're already defending ourself, but in the moment, where I'm giving the verbal challenge, I'm gonna be in a lot more traditional control, and I'll have a much higher chance of picking up threats this side using the Viridian radiance technology.