http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18Ai4cZ1jA
Reader Joshua asks (nearly a year ago now):
Can you tell me how useful a Crimson Trace laser system would be for a beginner?
A red laser sounds pretty cool. Green laser sounds cool too, but given physics, is going to have more powerplant issues, and buying batteries is annoying, and replacing them often is annoying. The whole option itself gets this new shooter wondering: how important is a laser sight at all? Is it a supplement for dark environs? Is it to make things easier in a chaotic combat situation, day or night? How hard are red lasers to see, how easy are green ones? . . .
So let’s say three questions:
1. How important are laser grips for a beginner?
2. What can laser grips do for someone who is not a beginner?
3. How do those specific benefits translate into weighing the benefits between a green laser and a red laser?I guess I can conclude with this: I don’t think any gun magically gets better by putting a laser on it. Operators are not obviated from the need to operate the trigger and handle recoil and aim properly, they just get some visual feedback if they are doing it wrong. So, how important is that? Is it more important the more of a beginner you are, or something an intermediate shooter should only then begin to think about incorporating into their shooting?
Anyway, I love your blog.
A laser is quite possibly the most useful thing you can put on a self defense firearm. But you have to understand its limitations, and practice with it.
In terms of a home defense situation, lasers are downright essential. When properly aimed, they give you a visual reference point as to where your round is going to land even in the pitch black of an Oregon night. Take it from someone who’s done a bit of competition shooting in that inky blackness: everything you intend to fire at night needs a laser. While you might think that a flashlight is good enough to let you see your sights, the reality is that under the dump of adrenaline, you’re going to feel they’re impossible to use.
Lasers also can have an almost instant behavioral modification effect on attackers. The psychological impact of seeing a laser pointed at your chest, especially one attached to a gun, has been known to make attackers think twice about going after people. Its comforting to know that I have one more option in my arsenal before I need to take that step to using lethal force.
But I get the feeling that you’re looking for the usefulness of lasers in terms of training.
For live fire training, lasers are marginally useful. You can kind of see where your shot is going to end up and watch how your muzzle moves as you start to squeeze the trigger. It’ll let you know if you’re flinching, and what your muzzle is doing, but the actual moment of recoil is still so overpowering that the laser isn’t really useful.
Where the laser really shines is in dry fire training. When I’m sitting at home watching TV, I have a bunch of pictures on my wall that I practice shooting again and again with the laser on my pistol turned on. I can see how the muzzle moves as I take up the slack in the trigger, and I can see any flinching or other nasty habits going on and correct them. It also aides in my point shooting practice, getting to the point where I don’t really need to use the targets to hit a man-sized object. In fact, there are a number of training aides on the market that perform the same function using lasers, but I prefer to use one attached to the pistol I’m actually using (as opposed to a facsimile of some sort).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCVL1AkFOkY
So, to answer your questions, lasers are helpful for both beginners and those with some firearms experience. In a home defense or low light shooting situation, they make life MUCH easier and I cannot recommend them enough. Which is why my nightstand gun has a light as well as a set of CT lasergrips. But even for training purposes, using a laser for dry fire practice is a fantastic idea and highly recommended.
As for the green laser / red laser question, the answer used to be that reds are smaller and cheaper while greens are brighter, bigger and more expensive. However, Crimson Trace has done such a good job in creating low-cost and tiny green lasers that there really isn’t that big of a difference in price anymore. The question comes down to which one you’d prefer. Humans see green much better in the dark than red, but red is the color people usually associate with lasers and would be better if you’re wanting that “behavior modification” ability.
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For real-life situations they are useful if you have no way of getting a sight picture, such as defending yourself while in an automobile.
And who will enforce these gun laws on us? The state police and other cops who by doing so are betraying their own people. They should refuse to obey this order to violate our civil rights.
Change “principal” to “principle” in the second paragraph. Otherwise, spot on.
Of course, we know that there has been at least one semiautomatic revolver, one I desire with a yearning that no journalist could comprehend. Anyone who’s watched The Maltese Falcon has seen one.
One other factor with lasers is they tend to be blinding when pointed at the face. I have several red laser, and just got two green ones. Love em!
HEAR, HEAR!!!
But… BE HONEST, now: how many of you CRINGED – even just a little bit – at Neil’s use of the word “conspiracy”? I can’t HEAR you!!!
It IS, of course, a massive conspiracy – to disarm America in advance of whatever they have planned for us.
But every one of you who wave the phrase, “conspiracy theorist” about something you know less about that the person who described the conspiracy: YOU’RE A ‘CONSPIRACY THEORIST’, TOO – if you believe there is a forceful, foreplanned effort to disarm American citizens.
Be careful what you toss around. It might just splatter on you, too….
Funny coming from a guy with armed body guards who was involved in the shooting of a dude back in the day.
“Perhaps the same brilliant “strategists” who told them that Iraq and Afghanistan would be a “cake-walk” are telling them now that the descendents of these pioneers will be just as easy to overcome.”
and
“We must be resolved — and we must demand the same resolve from the Republicans and the NRA — not to be satisfied merely with fending off this or that newly-proposed law, as we have been over the past several decades. That’s the “strategy”, both cowardly and stupid, that brought us to the ugly mess we find ourselves in now. The entire structure of federal, state, and local gun law must be obliterated. That’s what the Constitution mandates; we must be content with nothing less.”
While I appreciate the overall sentiment of the article (comparing recent gun control measures to the disenfranchisement of various sub-cultures in America such as Blacks, Jews, Italians, Chinese, etc.), it must be pointed out the same “strategists” and architects behind the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were mainly Republican. And putting pressure on only the Republican party? Why not put pressure on BOTH parties?
I’m nitpicking, but overall a well-written article. Unfortunately, the cynic in me says that America’s not had a great track record when it comes to the rights of the minority versus the majority, even with the protections built into our Constitution to guard against the tyranny of the mob…
I absolutly need to know if this is real or not.
I don’t want to but I can believe it is real.
Please verify Please
Noobs should first learn to shoot well with iron sights, never with lasers. I’ve watched too many new shooters “chasing the dot” all over the paper when they should have been learning how to line up a good sight picture.
+1
Learn everything low tech first to better understand how a firearm works as well as basic marksmenship and then add optics, scopes, lasers, and whatever other goodies.
They forgot that when a 17 or 18 year old thug gets shot by a rival gang banger, it should read “local teen was gunned down”.
I’d be shocked – absolutely shocked I say – to find a gun in a black ballistic uni-strap bad covered with MOLLE loops.
Every time Wayne LaPierre appears on any of the Sunday morning TV shows based out of Washington DC, he needs to have a 30-round AR-15 magazine with him, and taunt the authorities to come after him.
Don’t do this just once. Don’t do this just twice.
Do this every time, even it means doing it for years and years.
The District’s attorney general has already gone on the record that
What better way to show how useless gun control laws are, and how hypocritical the Civilian Disarmament Lobby is?
The problem is that
(1) LaPierre doesn’t have the guts to do it, since such an action does carry a risk of doing time in prison, and
(2) LaPierre has more in common with fellow Washington-insider David Greogry than he does with 4 million NRA members, and 10s of millions of other gun owners. To expose NBC’s hypocrisy would be a violation of “professional courtesy”.
Never heard it called Carne Guisada before, must be getting old.
Her whole story could be summed up by reading this “open letter” over at JPFO;
<a href="http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
If i screwed up the hyper link it here also;
http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
NO! Say it ain’t SO!! Not the Hoppe’s #9! That crisp, manly scent? Wifey no likee?
What’s the prob?
It’s usually good for a smile wherever I drag it.. What’s this world COMING to?
Benjamin Franklin said it very succinctly, “We’ll either hang together or we’ll hang seperately.”
Watching Malloy repeat the same Bloomberg/Obama “talking points” over and over irregardless of the question is quite comical. It’s comical until I realize this guy is a governor of one of our states. At which it starts to become a bit worrisome, I mean scary as hell, that a governor could be so misinformed on an issue that he is legislating.
Nicknicknicknicknick. I’ve sent you a question via [email protected], but it refuses to send due to my device. Any other way I can send in a question?
Thanks for finally talking about >Ask Foghorn: Are Lasers
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