Lasers for Communication

[ExurbanKevin]

REALLY liked Ed Head's latest on the home page, especially this bit:

"During several encounters with bad guys that would very probably have turned into shootings, the presence of the laser on my pistol de-fused the situation. I was amazed to discover, for example, when someone was advancing on me with a knife, that they were completely unimpressed by looking down the muzzle of my pistol (“What are you going to do, shoot me?”) but when they saw that red dot dancing around on their chest they apparently came to understand the bullet was about to go right THERE!"

Nothing says "Hi, you're now a target" like realizing where the bullets may actually land.

[alfsauve]

I'm not sold.  Oh, I believe Ed's assessment.  If it were me, I'd be intimidated seeing the dot on my body.  I'm intimidated on an indoor range just seeing some other shooter's laser waving around down range.

But unless the perp looks down at their chest they won't see the dot. The visibility of laser beams is almost nil in the daytime and varies greatly at night depending on particulates in the air.  Do you flash it in their face?  How long do you wait for this reaction?  How much closer will you let an assailant get before you realize the communication isn't working?

As a citizen, I think I should only draw as a last resort.  By then it's too late for a "warning".  LEOs operate under a slightly different ROE, I believe.

[brushmore]

I remember as a kid watching the TV show "That's incredible" and one of the segments was about lasers on guns.  They showed a cop using a laser in a hostage situation and because of the perfectly still laser dot on the perp he gave up right away.  The point was in the future cops wouldn't even need to pull the trigger because of the laser putting fear into bad guys.

[Solus]

Don't buy it.

If a bad guy sees a laser dot on his chest, he has two choices. 

1.  Surrender.

2. Move out of the way and start shooting or attack.

Why give  him a choice?  If you don't intend to shoot them, why do you have your loaded gun pointed at their chest?

I guess it would be of value if you didn't have a gun but did have a laser pointer. 

[alfsauve]

Thought this was funny.   I was researching Ed Head and came across the World News link of him testing the SR9c.

Forget the video, click on the "biography".  It says he died in 1980 and would have been 96 this year.  I think they have some things mixed up.

http://wn.com/ed_head_tests_the_sr9c

[Sponsor]

[alfsauve]

Actually, the short quote by Kevin isn't the whole jest of the article.   

Here's the whole article.

http://www.downrange.tv/blog/pistol-provocation/31380/