Low light shooting and movement

[bdcochran]

Many years ago, I read piece about a USMC unit attempting to duplicate combat readiness by wearing dark welders glasses in training while the instructors had unobstructed vision. So I came up with a simple drill that person could practice with live ammunition in an indoor range or simply practice anywhere without a firearm.

So, here is the drill. Hopefully, you will shake some preconceived notions or disregard prior and poor instruction.

1. you need a pair of welder's googles that will accept progressively darker lenses.

If you ever have shoot while walking or running, you must probably will have one foot on the ground. I will come back to that later.

A. turn off the light on your lane in the indoor range. there will be some ambient light from other lanes, fire exits or whatever. You are now into low light.

B. Push your target frame/target out so far down your lane that you can barely distinguish it from the ambient light. The target on the frame is what you will be shooting.

C. Point the muzzle in the ambient light on one side or the other of the dark target. Then swing the muzzle onto the target and fire repeatedly.

E. Now bring the target in. If all your rounds were about in the same place on the target, you failed.

F. If there are two holes in the chest and one in the head, you failed.

G. If you used a flashlight, you failed.

H. If you used a laser light, you failed.

I. If you used a beam of light on the gun, you failed.

J. If the pattern started in the chest area and went progressively down to the ground, you passed.

When you use a projected beam, a laser, a flashlight, you have told the opposition exactly where you are.
If there is a nice pattern on the target, you do not understand that when a person is shot, he does not stand waiting for more shots. He falls, he moves. It doesn't matter whether the shooting takes place in pitch black, or bright mid day.

I said I would come back to standing on one foot.

The lane is flooded with light.
I want you to take your favorite shooting position. I don't care whether it is FBI Squat, isosceles, one handed, bullseye or whatever. Now do the position while standing on one foot. If you can't do that position while standing on one foot, you cannot shoot while walking or running.

Now let's assume that somehow, you can stand and one foot, but you keep falling over. Then you are not ergonomically correctly framed towards the target. I don't who can teach you. I have seen a 5 foot two inch woman shoot a 454 Causelll (spelling) do it. I have seen a 17 year old who wears size 15 shoes understand and walk in from 25 yards shooting a pump 870 with slugs on vertical poles supporting a wire target frame, alternating on which pole to hit. He had never shot a shotgun before. Never had any previous shooting instruction.

[Bmyers]

I have participated in several nights shoots and it is always interesting watching myself and others perform.

Some of the observations:
-Cheapest equipment isn't always the best; I watched WML come flying apart after just a few rounds
-Expensive WML are no good if you don't mount them properly
-Expensive or cheap WML are no good if you don't have working batteries in it
-Laser look cool, but wasn't that effective, much better use for them is to entertain the cat
-Super bright WML are great if you are shooting at 100 yard range, you can light up the whole area; they really suck if you are shooting at 15 yards in a house mock up where you totally blind yourself when you turn on the light
-Bad shooting technique will be magnified in the dark; good shooting technique will help you get hits on the target even in low light

[David]

-Cheapest equipment isn't always the best; I watched WML come flying apart after just a few rounds
-Expensive WML are no good if you don't mount them properly

Agreed! Something that needs to be tested with live fire to make sure its actually going to work if needed for real.

-Expensive or cheap WML are no good if you don't have working batteries in it

I like the Olight WML that charges up with the magnet. I keep the magnet in the same pistol case so it's easy to charge it up when needed. I keep a couple of the small button batteries for the TLR-6 in my sling bag.

-Super bright WML are great if you are shooting at 100 yard range, you can light up the whole area; they really suck if you are shooting at 15 yards in a house mock up where you totally blind yourself when you turn on the light

Can you say bounce back!!

Folks like to feel like their getting the best bang for their buck and fall into the trap of getting the light with the most lumen output. They need to thing about the role of the pistol. If it's a hunting pistol and you're going to be out in the wilds where it gets 'country' dark then yeah, go for the max lumens and light up the woods like a runway. But if its a night stand pistol where the likely field of fire is in the house with walls, hallways, mirrors etc then 100 lumens is more than enough to clearly identify a thread, even out to around 35+ yards without getting all that bounce back.