[mack69]

Hi all, a friend of mine gave me a laser site for my Beretta 92FS. It's one of those trigger guard mount types. I installed it on my gun and was just curious as to how to adjust the sighting of it. It came with no paperwork, not even sure what brand it may be though he never used it. Should the beam be adjusted to match the front sight? Above it, below it...thanks....mack

[Bruce Layne]

I have a similar targeting issue with a low cost (but fairly nice) laser sight I bought on eBay this week for my shotgun.

You can't shine the laser through the barrel, it will need to be offset from that. That leaves you with two choices.

1) Point the laser so it's parallel with the bore. Assume it's below the barrel. It'll always be a fixed distance below the point of aim. You'll need to point the laser a bit lower than the desired impact point for close shots. For long distance shots, the external ballistics cause the bullet to drop along the projectile's path, so at some point the laser aimed parallel to the bore will actually indicate the impact point. Which brings us to....

2) Aim the laser at the impact point at the distance you plan to shoot. For close range typical of pistols, that means the laser will be pointing up a bit. At closer than your sighted distance, the impact point will be above the laser dot. Farther than the sighted distance, the impact point will be below the laser dot. This aiming error between the laser angle and the bore angle is called parallax error. It's the same reason that a speedometer needle looks like it's in a different place when viewed from the passenger seat, as opposed to the driver's seat.

Either method requires you to do a bit of mental targetting compensation, at least in theory. In practice, the laser is used for close up defensive shooting at night and a couple of inches isn't going to matter much. I think most people choose option #2. I did with my shotgun. Option #1 obscures the laser dot with the barrel if you ever tried to aim the gun in the way you do using conventional sights. The laser allows you to aim without needing an eye alignment across the top of the barrel. I think it's an either/or sort of thing. Daytime precision shooting, use the conventional sights. Night time "close enough" shooting, hold the weapon a bit lower and just watch the red dot.

Maybe I'll invent a laser sight that also works as a laser range finder. It not only shows you the targetted point, it also sees the reflected light, calculates distance, and adjusts the laser up or down so it always shows you the exact point of impact. Auto adjusting laser sights!

I'm thinking about getting the LaserMax laser sight for my Glock model 20, just as soon as I can scrape together 27,000 pennies. It replaces the recoil spring. Nothing outside the gun, which is nice, and it's a lot closer to the barrel so there's less parallax error.

[wally]

In my experience the ones that clamp onto the trigger guard are junk and won't hold zero. For shotguns they work OK cause you are clamping round tube to round tube and have a lot of area to work with.

The recoil spring guide replacing ones (Lasermax?) look good, but I've not tried them because of the expense and potential problems with setting and maintaining zero.

I do very much like the CTC Lasergrips on my S&W SC360 Scandium .357 and Kimber Ultra Carry .45ACP. Hold zero very well (11.5 oz SC360 with 158 gr Hydrashoks is a rather severe test!) and are easy to adjust for parallel or POA==POI at your prefered distance.

--wally.

[clange]

I had a laserlyte (?) dual lense sight on my beretta. It held zero pretty well. I set it to aim where poi was, but as was mentioned, you can be quite a bit off at other distances. I figured set it two inches low and it would always be two inches low (until ridiculous distances).

Got rid of it because the batteries died too fast (even when off i think). Bought a surefire.