Point Shooting and Fighting at Night

[shooter503]

Cacique500,
It is up to the individual to investigate and choose their own sighting aids. I say choose what works for you and then practice hard. However, I do need to comment on your reply.

The only time you'll see a red laser at night is if there are "particulates" in the air - smoke, fog, dust, etc. One of the drawbacks of green lasers is you *can* see the beam on them...but not on the red lasers. The only other time you'll see the laser is if you're looking down the barrel with the laser pointed at you.

I am not saying that an opponent will see the laser beam but they will see the laser emitter if it is pointing anywhere near their position. Even by daylight the laser source can be seen from a position up to 45 degrees off the centreline of the laser beam. The laser source itself then provides a beautiful aiming point since it is most likely that the COM is right behind the source. This is easy to prove for yourself with a quick trial using your own (empty) pistol.

Without getting into too much tactical stuff, if you're worried that the laser is giving your position away then you're most likely LE, Military, or a civilian doing something he shouldn't be doing (like trying to clear your house). There are specific tactics for LE and MIL that I won't get into here that address those concerns.

Not true. You yourself are advocating lasers for general use. It is easy to imagine situations where the average firearms HD or SD owner uses a laser mounted firearm with relatively little training. A home break-in would be a typical event. Improper use of a laser could provide the baddy with just the target he needs. We should all be aware that, like most aids, a laser gives advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Cacique500]

I am not saying that an opponent will see the laser beam but they will see the laser emitter if it is pointing anywhere near their position.

Right. And if they can see it, it's already pointed at them. Keep in mind that with high end lasers like CTC you can momentarily turn the laser on and off by slightly adjusting your grip tension, or by covering the diode with your index finger...it's not necessarily a constant on.

Not true. You yourself are advocating lasers for general use. It is easy to imagine situations where the average firearms HD or SD owner uses a laser mounted firearm with relatively little training. A home break-in would be a typical event. Improper use of a laser could provide the baddy with just the target he needs. We should all be aware that, like most aids, a laser gives advantages and disadvantages.

Actually it is true...people are not generally trained on how to clear a home in the event of a break-in - "going after" the bad guy is the wrong tactical decision for civilians (and I am a civilian so I don't mean anything derrogatory by the use of the term) with little or no training. In this case, they should be barricaded in a "safe room" with a cell phone and the gun pointed at the door. I don't want to get bogged down on "what-if's" and various scenerios - too many variables, which is why I stated I didn't want to get into specific tactics in my original post.

I fully agree that people need to choose their own sighting aids and the point of my response was to correct an "old wives tale" about laser use.

 

[shooter503]

Cacique500,
I agree that we should not get tied up in discussion about subjects with too many variables. Thanks for your valuable comments.

I want to clarify the point I tried to make about seeing the laser emitter because it is tactically important. I am talking about an opponent seeing the laser emitter that is mounted on the firearm, not about seeing the beam or the dot itself.

Right. And if they can see it, it's already pointed at them.

This is not completely correct. If you turn on the laser sight, move fifteen feet in front of it and then walk through the beam at right angles you will see that the laser emitter on the firearm is visible for a considerable distance from either side of the beam centreline. In fact, with the older rail mount unit I tried the emitter is clearly visible for at least ten feet either side of the main beam. It is certainly not correct to say that if your opponent sees the emitter then the dot must be on them. The actual laser beam may not be very wide but the angle from which the emitter can be seen is considerable. I would appreciate if you could try this experiment with more modern units than I tested and let me know the result.

 

[Cacique500]

On the Crimson Trace models, the first 240+ degrees (starting at the muzzle going counter clockwise) are blocked from sight (the diode is on the right side of the firearm). Beyond 240 degrees you may be able to see a little light coming out of the emitter. The CTC diodes are recessed in the housings.

I again stress that in a civilian (which is the vast majority of us gun owners) application this is not relevant - for LE or MIL it may[/] be a tactical consideration (though not with proper training). Remember, it's bad tactics to try and clear your home unless you've had a lot of training.

I would also like to point out again that on the CTC models, the laser DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ACTIVATED until you want it to be...this takes VERY little practice to master. I'm sorry but I just can't envision a practical & realistic (think home invasion) situation where this would be a tactical disadvantage.

 

[karlrehn]

point shooting & night sights

Most of the students I teach are at the "Texas CHL" level - which means they shoot two-handed standing still at one target in good light well enough to get a carry permit. That usually means they are (a) slow and (b) have fair to mediocre trigger control.

My experience is that people that are decent slow fire shooters can be exposed to point shooting and get good results with it, because all that's really happening is that they are learning that they can see less and operate the trigger more quickly for close/big targets. Once they learn that then they can and should learn the whole spectrum of the relationship between sight picture quality and target size and speed. Enos covers it really well in his book. Seeing what you need to see works great provided you have the trigger control skills to back it up. The biggest risk in teaching point shooting is making sure that students understand that just because it's fun to go fast and hit big close targets (and it builds speed that they need to acquire) doesn't mean that they can abandon their study of traditional trigger control and sight alignment. A CHL holder in Tyler, TX died in a gunfight last year against a body-armor-wearing, rifle-armed attacker. Point shooting would not have helped him hit a 6" target at 15+ yards. It's good to train for the most likely situation but even better to be good at everything because you can't predict what skill you'll need.

When I do my low light classes I throw in a variety of drills: no light point shooting with the rear sight taped over/blocked and all lights and lasers off, to shooting 10" plates at 10-15 yards using "whatever you have and any technique you want to try" so that students learn by doing and begin to figure out what they can and cannot do. Then I have a separate low light FoF class to fill in the things you can't learn from live fire. (I'll be running low light scenario FoF at the 2008 Polite Society conference in Memphis next Feb.)

The Polite Society event includes a low light shooting match on surprise stages with 3D realistic reactive targets. IMHO the way they run those stages is an excellent example of how good low light live fire training should be done. Since around half of the people who attend every year are trainers they must be doing something right.

Unlike IDPA and IPSC lasers and lights are allowed but they have to be mounted to the gun and carried realistically - so a lot of people shoot with night sights and a flashlight in the hand. I came in 3rd this past year there shooting a Bomar rear and fiberoptic front sight (no night sights) with a handheld flashlight. I shot most of the stages without the flashlight using available light based on what I learned there previous years. However: on some of the stages that required more precise hits I would have been faster and shot better w/ night sights, so I'm once again experimenting with sight configurations to find something I like. Presently playing with TruGlo TFO sights that are combo fiber optic and tritium. They have the same problem most 3 dot systems do: you can either line up the shapes of the sights or the dots but whichever one you choose the other is misaligned. With the Truglo it's the worst I've encountered: to get the 3 dots horizontally lined up the front sight is 1/2 way down in the notch. Plan E is to put a black adjustable rear and leave the TruGlo front since it is the brightest night sight I've ever seen and it provides a bright dot in the daytime too.

Karl

 

[Sweatnbullets]

Hello Karl, thanks for chiming in.....your reputation preceeds you. One of these days I am going to have to make it to one of your FOF courses.

The biggest risk in teaching point shooting is making sure that students understand that just because it's fun to go fast and hit big close targets (and it builds speed that they need to acquire) doesn't mean that they can abandon their study of traditional trigger control and sight alignment. A CHL holder in Tyler, TX died in a gunfight last year against a body-armor-wearing, rifle-armed attacker. Point shooting would not have helped him hit a 6" target at 15+ yards. It's good to train for the most likely situation but even better to be good at everything because you can't predict what skill you'll need.

I absolutely agree with this!

My course teach students to seamlessly integrate sighted and unsighted fire into one "simply shooting" concept. The course is all about finding the personal limitations of each skillset to the point that the student knows exactly what he needs to see or do to make the hits. The goal of the course is to establish the seamless integration so that it is accomplished at the subconscious level while under a decent amount of stress (as much as is possible for a live fire course.) The course includes precision marksmanship all the way down to shooting from the hip and everything in between.

I consider myself a very "inclusive" instructor. Excluding important and viable skillset is not something that I do.....but time constraints are the dictating factor.

Plan E is to put a black adjustable rear and leave the TruGlo front since it is the brightest night sight I've ever seen and it provides a bright dot in the daytime too.

The "front sight only" techniqe is a solid skill inside of seven yards, with both sight focus and threat focus.

Good to hear from you on this subject.

 

[karlrehn]

>One of these days I am going to have to make it to one of your FOF courses.
Probably the best way is to come to Polite Society next year. It just keeps getting better every year as more trainers get involved - and now that it's being held at the Memphis PD academy the facilities allow even more activities. If you wanted to present a talk I know that Tom is always interested in new speakers.