Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. We've looked at a lot of ways that a laser, as a tertiary aiming device, on your defensive firearm can be helpful. One of the best ways to use a laser, in the case of a small gun, a gun with relatively small cites, a gun that's relatively hard to be extremely precise with is when you're forced to shoot at distance or be extremely precise, or, in this case, to be at this 15 foot, very typical kind of defensive distance, the length of a car, the length across the bedroom and now I combine that with the need to be very precise. If we think about it, when we draw our firearm and extend, we should be naturally aligned with our target. Then if we need to use our sights, of course, we close one eye, focus on the front sight and try to align that with the rear sight, and then align it with our target itself. But, when you have a small gun like this Ruger LCP it has very small sites. Even in a high contrast situation it can be very hard to get precise sight alignment and sight picture on the target. Now, if I look at the head area or the body area on this target, or even most of the colored numbers, I have relatively high contrast, but if I look down at the black area, let's say above the B or above the A, it is very hard for me to tell that I have precise alignment. And this is in a well lit day with very different reflective surfaces between that paper target and this metal slide of the firearm. If we go to darkness, if we go to a dynamic environment it could be almost impossible for me to actually see my sight alignment and sight picture against the dark surface. But, because we're on daylight situation, here, if we look back up at the head, if I turn that laser on and I actually see the laser dot this is much easier for me to pick up. I can see that I have a laser dot and I can fire this shot into the head of the target without much trouble. If we look at the two, I can drive out, pick up the laser dot, fire my shot. And that's gonna be much easier for me to do with this small pocket gun, this little .380 self-defense gun, that honestly, is gonna be just fine up close, here, where I can kinesthetically align, drive out, get the shots on the chest. If I need to transition to a more precise shot I'm gonna be glad that I have that laser device and I'm gonna be able to use it. So I'm in this situation, here, I drive out take my shot. Now, I see a secondary threat somewhere. I see another problem maybe it's further away, maybe there's a bystander, maybe there's some other need for precision. I turn on my laser, get my dot on my spot take the shot, get the hit. Learning to use a laser to increase precision especially when you have low contrast between your sights and the actual target that you're looking at, maybe in a low light situation, is another great way for you to prepare to defend yourself in a worst case scenario. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips, just like that one.
Valuable - but I would like to have seen a close up of how the laser was mounted on the gun.