Red dots, laser grips and how to improve your shooting skills!
I won’t talk to you like your an amateur and need to have trigger control explained to you but there are many people stopping into our store that have lasers on their guns but still don’t understand how to use them in a defensive manor. All firearms and accessories are tools that you deploy that can improve your ability or impeed on it. There are plenty of things you can attach to a firearm that you think might make your more accurate but many of these devices can slow you down if you don’t train to use them. We have several Navy Seals stopping in our store with their Glock 17 handguns and use Viridian laser light combos and they speak highly of using the green lasers. One of the main things they talk about is identifying targets in low light. For instance, 6 guys break into a house to clear it and lasers come in handy as pointing devices. Instead of hand gestures or spoken words, a tap of a laser on a wall means “shoot here” or “move here”.
You do have to be very careful about attaching lasers, lights and laser light combos on your gun because I’m a big believer in having holsters for every handgun that you use defensively. I have sold many of the Desantis Rail Dyers to guys that has the Crimson Trace Laser grips on their firearms because in the event they had to use their Glock 17, Beretta 92FS or Sig 226 late at night, being able to easily re-holster your gun gets easier if you use a holster device like this. Lasers should be used as on/off tools just like white lights, they can give you away in some situations and make you a target, or they can be tremendous assets to help you win a fight.
I remember when they first started showing up in law enforcement circles and then there were the debates about how cops were getting show because they were not using instinctive shooting skills and worry about trying to get the dot on target and ended up getting killed. I can’t name a story to back that up, but with my experience in shooting and training on the firing line, I believe that it is true. I jumped back into the laser grip world with my Smith & Wesson Model 637. There is a place for laser sights, but it really seems to have caught on with smaller pocket guns than duty guns.
There has been much talk over the last 2 decades about lasers and flashlights being a liability to an operator more so than an asset. In about 45 seconds of teaching closer quarters combat and inside the home self defense, a laser is an obvious outing of a users location. I understand that if you are trying to sneak around your house and take out a threat, a laser that is turned on will tell the threat you are near. Flashlights run the same risks if they are used incorrectly, but try and tell a SWAT Team to enter a dark room and determine where a threat may be hiding and whether or not an innocent bystander is hiding in the dark.
Man in the training in the self defense school will argue about the use of lasers on firearms. Lasers are used for as many diverse reasons as any tool. You can use a laser to direct someone to a target, highlight a threat, targetting a threat and using the laser dot to give you an approximate point of impact. When lasers first came out, there was evidence that operators were using them to aim and for close quarters fighting, sometimes aiming is not necessary and will slow you down in getting the first hits in. Hits count and the first hits usually go to the winner.