Practicing Low-Light Techniques
Don EdwardsDescription
How do you practice low-light techniques if you don’t have access to a range that allows you to shoot after dark or your indoor range doesn’t let you turn off the lights? Fortunately you don’t need to be in the dark to practice some of the most common low-light techniques, such as handheld flashlight techniques. They can be practiced during the daytime.
Low-Light Specialist
As a retired 20+ year veteran of U.S. Special Operations, Don Edwards speaks with authority on the subject of low-light shooting, as he participated in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently Don is the Director of LE/Mil Sales and Training at Tactical Night Vision Company. He is also the owner/operator of Greenline Tactical LLC, which offers tactical and defensive training to citizens, law enforcement officers, and Conventional and Special Operations military units around the country.
Handheld Flashlight
Whatever handheld flashlight technique you want to use, you can use it during daylight handgun training and practice and see if it works for you and if you can actually hit the target. The mechanics of how you hold the handheld light and the handgun are the same in daylight and low light. You can also practice magazine changes while holding a flashlight in your support hand.
One of Don’s preferred handheld flashlight techniques is to hold the pistol in the high compressed ready position and use the support hand to hold the flashlight and shine it wherever he wants. This is more flexible and arguably safer than waving around a handgun with a weapon-mounted light on it. When he is ready to shoot, he locks in the flashlight at his jawline and drives the gun out one-handed.
One-Handed Shooting
Taking this one step further, you can just practice one-handed shooting without a flashlight in the other hand. And you can do it in any lighting conditions. You may want to become proficient at one-handed shooting and then start practicing with a flashlight in the support hand and become accustomed to identifying targets with the flashlight before engaging with the handgun.
Searching Techniques
The other side of this is that as part of your home defense tactics, you can practice searching techniques with the handheld light without a gun in your hand, or with an unloaded gun, a blue gun, a squirt gun, or a finger gun.
Conclusion
If you are not able to conduct live-fire shooting in low or no light, practice one-handed shooting at a range during the day and practice searching in the dark with a handheld light but without a loaded firearm. Combine these two pieces and you’ve got a good substitute for low-light live-fire practice.
Hey, everybody. This is Don Edwards here from Greenline Tactical. And you may or may not know, but some of the things that I've been associated with, and it's kinda become my forte is, is night fighting and fighting at night and shooting and using night vision goggles, and stuff like that. But the core of what I do is, all about the nighttime stuff. So it's not just night vision. A lot of times, we have flashlights at our hands. So we use the white lights, we use the IR lights, we use everything at our disposal. Not everybody has or utilizes night vision. You may not have your night vision goggles and your laser-equipped rifle sitting next to your bed. You may, but you may not. You may have a pistol and a flashlight that you intend to use for home defense. So you might be wondering, how do I practice low light if I don't have access to a range that allows me to shoot after dark or my indoor range doesn't let me turn off the lights so that I can shoot, because everybody else is trying to shoot during the daytime. Here's what I have to say about that. A lot of techniques, especially the one-hand shooting, the handheld flashlight techniques can be done during the daytime. You don't need to be in the dark to practice shooting with this light in your hand if that's how you intend to shoot. You can hold it in your hand, you can practice your magazine changes, you can practice shooting with it like this. Whatever technique you think that you wanna use, you can see if it works for you, and if you could actually hit your target. Right? One of the ways that I like a lot is, we keep our pistol at the high compressed ready when we're searching, right? We wanna keep it in nice and close. But I've got a live hand here. I'm not attaching my handheld SureFire to my pistol. I have it live so I can shine it wherever I want. When I choose to shoot, I lock it in at my jawline and I drive the gun out one-handed and shoot. You can just practice shooting one-handed without even this in your hand, if that's the skill that you're looking for. So really, what you're doing, is practicing your one-handed shooting techniques, which you can do with or without a light in your hand. You can just shoot one-handed and practice that. Which brings us to another point. When you wanna practice your searching techniques with a flashlight, you don't even really need a gun. You can do that at home. You can do it with an unloaded, cleared gun, a red gun, a squirt gun, your finger gun, whatever. That's where you're practicing other techniques that are not related to shooting. But if you need to go and practice actually live fire, you can do that during the day just about as effectively as you can during the night. It's not a complete substitute for actually getting out and shooting in the darkness but, it's better than nothing.
It's a good video but I have to disagree on the way the light is presented. I was taught to hold the flashlight slightly forward and away from my body as the light is a typical target for the bad guy. This video shows the flashlight held in close, a particularly dangerous location if the bad guy elects to shoot or attempts to knock the flashlight away.