In my recent piece on Steve Fisher’s Lowlight class, I spoke about the use cases for the regular civilian needing a weapon light. The cases were when you may only have one hand to operate your home defense weapon, because you have a small child or someone who will require one of your arms to move or defend, or if you only have one arm/hand to use! Maybe you just had shoulder/hand surgery? Any of these scenarios can necessitate alteration of gear to meet the demands of the situation (“Mission drives the gear train!” -Pat Rogers, RIP) that you may find yourself in. There are compact lights, smaller than the TLR-1 I pictured here, but again, the use/utilization is the issue I have. See the article I linked for an explanation of that argument.

5” guns aren’t GIANT, they’re roughly the same size as the venerable 1911 pistol in its original configuration. This gun, being a double stack, striker-fired 9mm, is thicker in the slide than a 1911, but not overly so. The trick with 5” guns is concealing them in normal people clothing, but it CAN be done. But that’s not an issue for the case I am talking about here. I carried a pistol similar to this, as a commissioned Reserve Peace Officer in Tennessee for several years (M&P 1.0 4.25”). Optics weren’t widespread in LE like now, especially in Appalachia, but I DID use a WML. But like I talked about in the article, on-duty LEO’s have a different job than regular folks, and it is important to know the distinction.

HOME DEFENSE

The classic home defense situation is the, “bump in the night.” You hear something strange, novel, and it cues you to either investigate, or at the very least, verbally challenge the noise to find out what it is. Hopefully it isn’t a black bear, like this poor gent. But with a pistol mounted WML, and no handheld, because you are in a sling for a surgery following a labrum tear, you may find yourself verbally challenging something at the end of your hallway, or the foot of your bed, hypothetically. Now, the laws of your jurisdiction may vary, but in mine, an unauthorized and uninvited guest to your home is there illegally, and if they are there for nefarious purposes, lethal force could be legally permissible to be used in a case of self-defense. But how do you do this, without muzzling the unknown source, who COULD be a burglar, but COULD also be your child who snuck out to go howling with their friends and you caught them sneaking back in. But my arm is in a surgical splint and sling, so how do I illuminate the unknown threat (it’s a threat at this point, because it didn’t respond to the verbal challenge and we STILL DON’T know who it is…yet) without pointing a gun at a loved one (RULE TWO: Never allow the muzzle to cross anything you are not will to destroy) and because you live in the sticks, the power is out, and you can’t just do the super un-cool Dad trick and turn the dang hall light on!

FOR MANIPULATIONS

Although my current state outlaws standard capacity magazines, having MORE than ten rounds in the pistol would be preferable. Not because you need to shoot more, but because you would need to reload LESS. If you are in your skivvies, or buck naked like most people who are sleeping are, you probably don’t have your EDC gear or your battle belt on. Ok, some of you true believers maybe sleep in the nude with a battle belt on, but I assure you, once you find a romantic interest, that’ll change! If I could use a 17 round standard capacity magazine or even larger, I would! A secondary effect of having tall sights and/or an optic is that you can rack the slide using the sights or the optic as a hook, to gain mechanical advantage, even with one hand.

OPTICS, SIGHTS AND LIGHTS

I like Holosun optics. I have seen every major brand of optic fail in classes that I have attended or taught, including Holosun, Aimpoint, Trijicon, Vortex and I’m sure some others I am forgetting. I also OWN all of those same makes of optics, and I use them with confidence. Pistol mounted optics (PMO’s) are an enthusiast’s tool; for my normy friends that want the Toyota Tacoma of guns, I would recommend a stock M&P or Glock 19, put on some sights or modify the OEM to something you can see, and press on. If they want a PMO, that’s going to require MORE training AND more maintenance than they are willing to give, so be wary. But many of the malfunctions I have seen were due to install errors, poor surface prep, under torqued screws, over-torqued screws that broke, or batteries not being changed. I change my carry gun batteries, as well as my handheld light’s batteries in November at Daylight Savings time day. Your day may be your birthday, New Year’s Eve day, whatever you like!

This is the Holosun 507 Comp and the, “Comp,” stands for, “competition,” but it really is Holosun’s response to the also popular Trijicon SRO. I like the big window, and for civilian defender duties, an open emitter, if you are an enthusiast who keeps your gear maintained, is fine. I remember my buddy Jeremy Horton, of Horton Knives, world famous blade smith, once said that he didn’t like to use stainless steel in his blades because he can get a better edge with carbon containing steel AND he feels like a person who uses his knives for serious purposes has the duty to inspect their knife and care for it regularly, so that it doesn’t rust, regardless of the environment it is in! Makes sense! Although this optic has about 6 or 8 different reticle options, I use the 2 MOA dot, which looks great to my eye, and is easy to pickup on presentation.

For iron sights, the competitor comes with low mount, or standard height, fiber optics. While they are great if you are just running irons, with a dot, they are too low. So I opted to replace them with the XS RD3 Suppressor height sights.

Like optics, I have seen Streamlight and Surefires fail too, so choose whatever you like. I dig the switchology for the TLR-1 series and I upgrade the activation paddles with the Emissary Paddle Shifters. You may like the OEM switches, but they offer upgrades for the Streamlight TLR-1 and TLR-7 series, as well as the Surefire X300 series.

STORING AND TRANSPORTING YOUR HD GUN

If you keep your gun in a quick access safe or however you store it, I think it is advisable to have something covering the trigger guard. It’s a striker-fired gun, so if you press the trigger with enough force, it will fire. To lessen the chances of an unintentional discharge, holstering this big whammer requires a special holster, called a, “LIGHT BEARING HOLSTER,” and many of the popular manufacturers make them. They run the gamut in so many colors and styles, you take your pick! My favorite comes from the Hauptman’s of PHLSTER. In addition to being true MASTER’S of concealment, the Hauptman’s are also technical innovators and I use their gear daily, and have for about a decade now.

IN CLOSING

Another benefit of a 5” gun is you get a pistol that recoils minimally when fired with one hand, and tracks back to target without a tremendous amount of steering. Had I included this caveat piece in my original essay on Steve’s class, it probably would’ve had even fewer views than usual, because articles that exceed 3000 words, well, they are only read by the ENTHUSIASTS. Try as I might, I have never been a TLDR (too long, didn’t read) guy. But who would want a Doctor that performs surgery on people’s heads and mouth’s to be a person that doesn’t read the directions? I sure wouldn’t! Being an, “enthusiast,” isn’t a bad thing…I remember when I first started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, people would call the students who weren’t competitors or full time martial artists, “enthusiasts,” in a pejorative way. Like somehow the people who had to go to their normal jobs the next day were somehow less than their full-time martial artist counterparts. By merely accepting the responsibility and burden of maintaining your own personal security, outside of the requirements of your chosen profession, you are an enthusiast. Don’t be ashamed to be called an, “enthusiast,” by some of the, “professional,” gun toters out there who look at us in the armed civilian community as, “less than.” And most of all, keep on pursuing your studies and your practice with zeal and enthusiasm, YOU BIG ENTHUSIAST!

THANK YOU FOR READING! Please, like, share on your social media feeds, and subscribe to my RSS feed here so you don’t miss any of my posts. Social media and even google itself does a fantastic job of down throttling pro-gun media sources, so we have to get the message out somehow! -Dr. House

Ask anyone who, back in the days of Yore, carried a revolver in some professional capacity, and they will tell you that the cognoscenti of the era often preferred the 3” revolver over the longer 4” or 6” barreled guns that were used in a patrol capacity, or the 1 7/8” or 2” guns that were used by plainclothes or off-duty officers. You get the benefit of more barrel to burn powder, which gives a higher muzzle velocity but less muzzle blast, and more sight radius, without a tremendous amount of bulk that the larger guns inherently possess.

Now, in the, “Revolver Renaissance,” there are more and more people and companies who are recognizing the utility and benefits of using a 3” barreled gun. Whether for everyday carry purposes, for a nightstand gun, or just plain fun, the 3” guns are useful.

For this essay, I decided to take three popular 3” revolvers that cover the gamut from modestly priced to exorbitantly priced, and shoot them with HIGH DESERT CARTRIDGE COMPANY jacketed wadcutters (my home base indoor range only allows jacketed or plated/coated bullets). I used, “THE TEST,” that was created by Ken Hackathorn years back and popularized about 15 years ago by Larry Vickers, who commented that he felt it was a good indicator of skill with a pistol. After I shot 3 iterations of THE TEST, I fired 3 iterations of Tom Givens’ OLD WEST CARD TEST (shot on regulation sized playing cards). Along the way here, I will tell you about these revolving pistols, and what they do and do not do well in my hands.

FIRST, THE COMPETITORS

THE TEST

So just to review, “THE TEST” is preferably shot cold. Meaning no warm-up. From ten yards, and from the TRUE low ready (the gun pointed in front of where the feet of the target would be) the goal is to shoot SIX rounds, in SIX seconds or less, and then score the target appropriately. “Proficient,” is considered 90% or better. The non-revolving pistol version is shot from ten yards as well, but TEN rounds are fired, and the par time is TEN seconds. Easy enough? Try it! Let me know how you fare!

THOUGHTS

These are all good guns. Shooting iron sights is tough…now that I am soundly in middle age (50 y/o) I have discovered that the preaching I have heard from Tom and others of, “SIGHTS YOU CAN SEE,” which I really used to take for granted, is a problem now. Three years ago I started to wear progressive corrective lenses. I had LASIK surgery 20 years ago, and since then I have had 20/10 distance vision, which I still have. But I cannot read or see print clearly on my phone inside about 3 feet without glasses. Pretty normal problems for middle aged people from what I understand talking to my peers. The problem with progressive lenses is that up close, unless I look WAY up, with my neck hyper-extended, through the bottom half of my glasses, the front sight is not clear. The target, is crystal clear though when my head is neutral. So, when Tom says, “Get the gun up at eye level, look at the bumpy things on the top of the pistol and press the trigger to deliver effective rounds on target.” So this still works…it just doesn’t work as well as the old days for me when the front sight was CRYSTAL clear. I can say that the gold bead DOES make a difference, as does the bright fluorescent red paint pen on serrated front sights. Everyone has a spectrum of eyesight conditions and you will have to find what works for you!

I blew THE TEST with the revolvers. With pistols, especially pistols with red dots, I can smoke it consistently shooting it clean or down a point or two in the 6-7 second range. With 6 seconds, time is tight!

HIGH DESERT CARTRIDGE COMPANY (HDCC)

I am consistently impressed with HDCC and Steve Shields, the owner. They are semi local to me in WA State, and I like to support local businesses when I can. I use a GARMIN Chronograph at the range to collect data and this is what I found, firing a five round string from each revolver:

As you can see, in terms of velocities from each of the different revolvers, the numbers are similar. The recoil impulse in all three guns was very mild and tolerable. I fired a total of 100 rounds through the three guns in one session, and my hands still felt great afterwards. Ignition reliability was 100%, and the cases were nickel plated and ejected after firing with ease. The round I used is here and has a published velocity of 725 feet per second. I have more of this round on hand, and I like it!

Steve also makes a 148 grain poly coated SOLID base wadcutter that is slightly slower at 715 feet per second. I will get some of those next, and test them the same way, with THE TEST and the CARD TRICK.

FINAL THOUGHTS

IF I SHOT these same drills again tomorrow morning, I may pass all six of them. I find that as soon as I take my timer out of my bag, my performance is either awesome, or not quite! I DO notice that the more I use that timer though, the less that BEEP shocks me, and the more I react appropriately and in the right alignment to send my shots straight and true. If I sit down and shoot slowly, at a 3” circular paster, these rounds all shoot POA/POI out to 20 yards. That works!

THANK YOU FOR READING! Please, like, share on your social media feeds, and subscribe to my RSS feed here so you don’t miss any of my posts. Social media and even google itself does a fantastic job of down throttling pro-gun media sources, so we have to get the message out somehow! -Dr. House

When I look back at the ~11 years I have been writing for my own site, and for the previous ten or so years I wrote for print publications and for Tactical Response, I would write AAR’s and reviews for classes that were comprehensive. They were more of a, “notes from class,” summary. As I’ve been in the training lane for about 30 plus years now, and in the higher education field as a student and as a Medical University Professor for about half of that 30, I have a pretty good grasp of education. It isn’t novel for me to take additional continuing education in a variety of fields, whether those have been related to firearms training, surgery, medicine, dentistry, pharmacology, forensics or philosophy classes these days that are more geared towards my vocation. So now, instead of vomiting up a list of, “First we did this, then we did that, then they said this, then they said that,” I thought it would be more interesting for both of us (me writing this, and you, the one person who will read this far) to hear about what Steve’s teachings illuminated for me or inspired me to do, STOP doing or think more about. And then relate it all back to my professional experience as a shotgun messenger, reserve peace officer AND professional second responder in the fire service/EMS AND in my current capacity as an average schmuck who has taken many hours worth of civilian sector disaster preparedness, self defense and martial arts training.

FOR THE NORMAL FOLKS…

As my mentor Tom Givens is fond of saying, “Many lethal force encounters take place during the hours of darkness…NOT necessarily in low light conditions. I have seen the sights of my pistol better at 11pm under the lights of a filling station than I have on some sunny days.” As I’ve learned doing this writing thing over the years, if Tom Givens said it before, just quote it and move on! I can’t say it any more succinctly than Tom can! The Surefire Stiletto Pro that I carry as my EDC utility light CAN be used in any of the techniques we used in class (in fact, that IS what I used for the class, along with my old police issue Streamlight STINGER and my Streamlight SL20, which I left in my range bag because I was embarrassed for anyone to see it in its 300 lumen glory AND because it was older than most of the LEO’s in the class!

So, building on Tom’s case of the hypothetical gas station robbery, that may take place on the fueling pad by the gas pumps, why do you need a light? If it’s nighttime and there is plenty of ambient light to be seen by the badguys, but can also see them. Outside the penumbra of fueling pad cover, you may need a direct beam flashlight to see what’s out there. But why are you worried about what’s out there? The dude trying to rob you is in front of you or to the side/rear of you. Again, no light required. Many of the EDC crowd that advocate weapon mounted lights (WML) for regular folks (I am NOT talking about on-duty LEO’s or military folks here) say that they need a WML to be able to ID a target. How much more positive identification of a target do you need? If the dude is going to rob you or carjack you, he is going to be close enough to touch you or close enough to verbally communicate with you. Again, no light required for that…you’ll know who is speaking to you or attacking you.

When I worked in the armored truck industry, there were guys that started carrying Glock lights (the old incandescent models) and the USP light. WML holsters were nylon, very crude and almost completely lacked retention. They sure thought they looked cool though! One overlooked thing about openly carried duty guns most lay people don’t think about is that hip carried duty guns get beat up. Our proprioception doesn’t work well for something that is carried on our hip, outside of our peripheral vision, that sticks out 3-4” further than the rest of the side of our body. So that duty gun is constantly getting whacked into door frames, steering wheels, cargo, etc. One of my coworkers actually LOST his Glock 22 from one of these low quality holsters and didn’t even realize it was gone, until the gun had been spotted on the street by some bystander who called the Seattle PD to report that it was missing. The culprit? A crappy holster. The point? Carrying a WML in the rig at the time, didn’t help him. WML utilization for an armored truck guard is the exact same as it is for a normal citizen. They do not have any enforcement powers, so a light, outside of a handheld, isn’t necessary nor prudent.

My argument is that WML don’t have utility for normal civilians outside of a dedicated home defense gun, and even then, I’d say there is nothing a handheld can’t do that a WML can OTHER THAN BE OPERATED with one hand. If you have a baby or a loved one who is immobile and you have only one hand to spare, a pistol with a WML and a pressure switch would be useful. The only other application that MAY hold water for the civilian is from my buddy Greg Ellifritz who uses a pistol with a WML when he goes to the movie. For him, that makes sense. I’m a movie snob…I like sitting in the back row, right under the projection window, dead center, and I will often buy the seats next to me so I don’t have to sit next to anyone else. I personally would be more concerned with the prospect of making a 100% accurate long range shot from the back row of the theater than I would be worried about positively ID the person shooting. But Greg is much more fun than I am, and he probably wouldn’t walk out of the movie theatre like I would if he couldn’t get the seat he liked, so for that, I support the big man’s choice to use a WML for that purpose! In most theaters, if the screen is on, even in dark scenes, anyone who is low (around the screen and fire exits underneath/behind the screen) will be backlit.

The issue that many people in the EDC community overlook and run off of the flawed reasoning of, “the DEVRGU use the blah blah WML and I do too!” Is that the military special operations community isn’t subject to following the laws of the United States, since they aren’t operating domestically. As my friend Lee Weems has said, “If you are not legally justified to be shooting someone, you aren’t legally justified to be pointing a firearm at someone.” Do you know what doesn’t require you to admittedly use deadly force (pointing a WML at someone) and in fact doesn’t even require a report to the police? Pointing a handheld flashlight at someone! With cameras being everywhere, do you want to end up on John Correia’s ACTIVE SELF PROTECTION YouTube channel showing his millions of viewers how NOT to do the right thing? My goal is to never be in a self defense situation of any kind!

An overlooked skill with a WML that many people just don’t grok, even LEO users who SHOULD know better is that just because it may be excusable in an on-duty context to muzzle someone who doesn’t need to be muzzled, you still shouldn’t do it. You CAN illuminate with the secondary spill of the light, depending on the head of the light/the light’s power and the distance to the person, while effectively keeping the gun pointed in a TRUE, “Low Ready,” position, where the muzzle is not covering the suspect. For laypeople, the argument stands though…with cameras everywhere, why not take action that removes any and all doubt? It would be hard to confuse a handheld flashlight for a WML equipped pistol and much easier to explain to a jury of your peers.

I HAVE personally pointed a powerful handheld light at many people on the street (mostly while innocuously walking my dog or hiking in the trails) in the city and said in a loud voice, “NO THANK YOU,” or, “GO AWAY.” And it makes them go away, look away and/or gives you, the user, the initiative and choice of what to do next. If they press an attack, you’re hopefully one step ahead…if they don’t, mission accomplished. Either way, your goal is to go home safely at the end of the day. Anything else is contrary to your mission as an everyday person.

BACK TO STEVE

Like I said earlier, I don’t want to give away Steve’s secret sauce recipe. If you haven’t had any lowlight training, you should catch Steve next time you can. If you are an LEO, Steve’s material would be beneficial. The main push of the class is to help the students understand that they can use light to control people, places and spaces and increase their effectiveness by using the light correctly. BUT ALSO remembering that if you are in the dark (and nobody is using night vision equipment) and you can’t see the bad guy, he probably can’t see you either! So again, use the light to control the interaction!

Lights are all the rage these days. People post their nightstand, pocket everyday carry item dumps, and they all have a light. Whether they carry that actually or if it’s just for the photo, that is a great question! I tend to carry a light whenever I have pants on, which is most days! I use my light far more often to check the mail at night, not fall down the stairs in my front walkway, find something on the floor/ground that has been dropped, or at work to look in someone’s mouth when I am not in the operatory. But like any kind of technology, they are an electronic item and they will fail. If you don’t have a handheld light that has at least a tactical level of light, you may need one! A handgun accompanying capable light should allow you to see someone’s face, hands and waistline to at least 25 yards…but 50 yards would be better! This is easily accomplished with most of the commonly carried EDC lights.

Depending on where you live in the world, you spend at least half of your day during hours of darkness…but you don’t have to be afraid of the dark. We have black bears, mountain lions, rumored Sasquatches, and orcas here (in the water). I worry far more about the humans that go bump in the night than I do about the creatures that go bump in the night! Luckily, most humans, who go about in the dark to carry out unsavory behavior, in some strange nearly religious significance, are afraid or at least apprehensive of bright light! And that’s a good thing! But like any kind of skill, the utilization of light for defensive purposes takes teaching and practice. And my very tall friend Steve Fisher is just the man to learn it all from! The greatest philosophical quote of Steve’s from this class I recorded was, “The GUN will save your life; the LIGHT will save someone else’s!”

THANK YOU FOR READING! Please, like, share on your social media feeds, and subscribe to my RSS feed here so you don’t miss any of my posts. Social media and even google itself does a fantastic job of down throttling pro-gun media sources, so we have to get the message out somehow! -Dr. House