Safety with Weapon Mounted Lights
Rob PincusDescription
For light use inside the home, Rob Pincus advocates using a light that is separate from your gun. If you’re using a handgun, it’s relatively simple. But when employing a long gun, things become more complicated as, for example, both your hands will be on the gun. Many People use weapon mounted lights as their primary light sources. But how do you use it safely? Rob demonstrates how to move through a dark house, illuminate it as you go, and not point a long gun at a family member.
When it comes to light use inside of your home, I think it's much better to use one that is separate from your firearm. Now, when you use a handgun that's relatively easy to see. You're gonna carry the handgun in the high compressed ready. You're gonna have your flashlight in a separate hand, probably on a lanyard. You'll be able to drop that and go to your handgun with two hands if you need it.
The fact is, inside of the home, you're probably gonna be barricaded, and you're probably going to have the bad guy coming to you. And again, if there is enough light for the bad guy to attack you, there's probably enough light for you to see the bad guy and defend yourself. When we move to a long gun, it gets a little more complicated. Because the long gun is meant to be used with two hands, of course, a lot of times people will go ahead and use that weapon-mounted light as a primary light source. And that's understandable, but we need to think about how we're gonna use it, and how we're gonna be safe.
If I've had some advanced training, if I do have my firearm in my hand, if I am moving through a dark house to make sure that a family member is safe, not to find a bad guy, because certainly it's not something we wanna be doing is wandering around a dark house looking for a bad guy. If we're looking for family members and trying to ensure that they're safe, we wanna make sure that we're not pointing the gun at them, and also pointing our flashlight at them. So as we're moving through the house in our long gun high compressed ready, we can use our light source bouncing off the floor and bouncing off of walls to illuminate the area ahead of us and to identify potential family members or potential threats. If we walk around the house pointing the gun and the flashlight, we might incidentally end up pointing the gun at a family member. And of course we don't wanna do that.
All the trigger finger discipline in the world doesn't make up for pointing a gun at a family member, especially, in a high-stress situation. Right now, there's someone off to my left. If I turn around and point this gun and flashlight at them, of course I can identify them as either a family member or a threat, or someone who's in my home and doesn't belong there, but doesn't need to be shot because they have no overt threat. Of course, I don't wanna point my firearm at a family member. Well, what you're gonna see here is that I can also point this gun down at the ground and use the bounced light to identify that this person's hands are empty, maybe to recognize who this person is.
Certainly if it's a child that edge of this flashlight, even though this isn't a particularly powerful one is going to illuminate my child there. I'm gonna know this is not a threat. Similarly, if that person did have a weapon in their hand and they were coming through the house, I were to come around in exactly the same position, bouncing the light off the ground, now I can see that threat and I can bring my gun up if I need to shoot. The idea of being safe, if you do choose to use a weapon-mounted light, maybe not even as your primary, maybe it's a secondary, but you've got into a position where you do have two hands on the firearm. Now I turn around, I identify the threat, even with a partially hidden knife, there it is.
I can come up, take the shot that I need to take. Anytime that you're thinking about using a firearm inside of your home, if you have anyone else in the home that's a friendly or family member, you need to really think about safety and making sure that you know where your firearm is pointing at all times. And particularly not at them. Think about that even when using a weapon-mounted light.
Great points made by instructor. But I have not seen any videos pertaining to muzzle flash and how it affects the home owner defending his/her home. Can the flash from firing a firearm blind you and give the advantage to the home invader? How should we handle muzzle flash at night in a dark room? Thank you, Jon
When it comes to any essential tool, my late father always taught me that two is one and one is none. I personally consider having a white light mounted to a defensive firearm to be an essential tool. I've had to clear many buildings in the last 22 years as a LEO and haven't yet seen one where I didn't need the use of my off hand to open doors, etc. and have found it extremely impractical to put my flashlight under an arm, under my chin, etc. while doing so. For that reason, I keep a light mounted on my duty pistol and check my batteries daily (I keep plenty of spares on hand). In that role I AM looking for hidden criminals unlike when I am at home, or off duty. I also carry a light on my person both on and off duty.
That's the reason I use a handgun if I have to to move around my house. I think some training with the long gun and light might be in order.
You saved me big cash on a pistol mounted light and possibly an accident.
Excellent points on safety.