[PH/CIB]

I was trained to never ever give your position away…I hate white light, the illumination rounds or parachute rounds while illuminating everything also illuminated you and hopefully no one but the enemy set off the trip flares. Smoking at night was not allowed, the red glowing coal of a cigarette butt could get your head blown off, and yes the red dot of a laser on the target and on your gun gives your position away and invites incoming rounds.

I have three Crimson Trace Laser grips on a Glock 34 and a Sig 239 and a Smith and Wesson 638 Bodyguard, the Glock has no on/off switch just a pressure button on the back of the grip to activate it, the Sig and the Smith grips have an on/off switch and a pressure button on the front of the grip to activate the laser. As I have over twenty handguns you can see I have not ran out and bought seventeen more laser grips for my other handguns and I do not have laser grips on my carry gun, although I have thought about putting them on my carry gun. In a combat situation and self defense is a combat situation, you are probably going to be gripping the pistol tightly which means the laser is on and projected. In room clearing or whatever, if I were to see a red dot on a door jam or projected on a wall or ceiling or floor or anything before you entered the room, you can bet a magazine of rounds will be coming through the wall where I think you are standing.

Take a pair of laser grips into a dark room with an unloaded gun, you can see the red dot on the target and also on the handgun grip, DO NOT look directly into the laser as it could damage your eyes. The projected red dot does illuminate the target area somewhat but not enough for identification purposes, and since we don’t live in a “free fire zone” and most of us don’t own nightvision, you will then have to illuminate your target with white light for proper target identification before firing. Try this in a dark room with your laser grips and an unloaded pistol and your tactical flashlight, try illuminating the target and putting the red dot of the laser on the target, and then try illuminating the target and putting the iron sights on the target, is there to you that much difference in speed because the white light illuminating your target will also have enough spillover light to allow the use of your iron sights. The flashlight or white light is a bullet magnet, my future investment will probably be in nightvision.

We tried some combat drills one night at an outdoor range shooting around barricades at close targets, blinking our flashlights on and off quickly while firing, and while doing very fast double taps, flashlight on, fire, flashlight off, the illumination from the round going off with that particular ammo was enough to illuminate the target and the sights to further index the sights on that very fast second shot of the double tap.

The poster pointing out about bifocals is well taken, although I can still shoot irons, laser sights and rifle and pistol scopes and red dots are what I am migrating to.

The poster pointing out setting the laser sight red dot just above the front sight on your handgun, makes sense to me, even though you can shoot a red dot laser on target from anywhere your handgun is positioned, practicing using your iron sights with the laser dot, means if something were to go wrong with the laser dot, you are already on target with your iron sights.

When I see most of the military and law enforcement using them, I will put them on all my handguns.