Home defense flashlight

[USSA-1]

Wisconsin,

Do not confuse a flashlight with a fighting light.  They are two entirely different beasts.  Mini-mag lights are for when the lights go out.  Surefires lights are for fighting.  If you ever attend a low-light fighting course, the differences will become apparent very quickly.

I'm a big Surefire fan and they used to be the only game in town, but now there are several other manufacturers who are making good fighting lights.  Blackhawk, Streamlight, Insights, etc.

There are a lot of features, but the two you need to have are dominating power and an end-cap activation.  To test for dominating power, stand across a room in broad daylight and have someone aim the light in your face and eyes.  The light should be brilliant enough to force your eyes to shut and possibly make your head turn away.  If not, find a stronger light.

I am also a proponent of using two lights to fight in low-light.  One on my weapon and one in my weak hand.  I use the one in my hand to search for and fix my threat.  I use on the one on my weapon to fight the threat.

Why not just use the one on my weapon?  There are things I may not necessarily want to point my weapon at, but I still need to light up and there are places I may need to put the light to see, but I don't want to project the weapon away from my body where I have a minimum amount of control over it.

Pony up the money and get the Surefire.

USSA-1

[Ksail101]

USSA Those are great points. I never really thought about having one in my hand and one on the weapon, it makes perfect sense. I have never had a real flashlight. I used my Mini Mag in my tent in Iraq, and my weapon light in the fight. But this all goes back to the difference between combat and civilian world. I wanted my weapon to point were ever the light was when I was over there.

I really hope I get the chance to come to the school soon. Just the knowledge you share in here is incredible so I could only imagine a week. Thanks for the insight. 

[wisconsin]

USSA-1. You make some great points. I will agree that there is difference in the two. Flashlight to carry the trash out with. Tactical light to use in a fighting situation. However you and I are running in two different worlds. I'm neither LEO, Military, or Blackwater if you will. I'm going to assume that your experience in this field, no I know from reading your past posts that you are light years ahead of me in training. And I respect you for that and your opinion. I weight my $$$ options when purchasing the best that I can afford. For me to spend $150-300 on a tactical light is hard for me to justify. I know, everyone will post a response to that and say how much is your life worth.Of course its worth everything. I use the mini mag and mag lights at my daily work. You use Surefire or other in yours. To you thats every justification for the product you use. For me its overkill. I can buy all the best of the best and look Dam dangerous don't it. But I'd only be a paper worrior. As I said I respect you and your training. But for me that extra money would be better spent on being more proficient with my firearm. And get an upgrade in the light I have or find something close to what you use but without all the bells and whistles.

[Big Frank]

The money you save by buying a Mag-Light instead of a Surefire, etc., could be spent on a pair of low-light goggles and a bunch of ammo. The goggles make it look like night-time and allow you to shoot in simulated darrkness. If you can't identify and hit a target in your own home with only a night light in the room, and no sights, maybe you shouldn't have a gun for self-defense. I'm sure that sounds stupid to some people but hope I'm not completely alone in my opinion. Since my full-size Mag-Light has brand new batteries in it I'm not worried much about seeing and POINTING my gun. If I were going to count on one of my Mini Mag-Lights instead I would have to install a push-button tail-cap, but the full-size models already have a push-button that's easy to locate and operate. It's also capable of "momentary on" flashing to blind someone when they don't expect it. The batteries are dirt cheap and long-lasting compared to CR123s or whatever those lithium cells are called. And any shot I take will be under 4 yards distance and nobody lives with me but my dog. My mom is the only other person with keys to my house. It won't take long to differentiate freind from foe even if I have to do it by "Braille".

[USSA-1]

Wisconsin,

I understand your situation.  I did some checking around for you and I found this,

http://www.skdtac.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=461

It is a reasonably priced Surefire that has all the features a good fighting light should have at a reasonable price.  Keep this one close by your pistol and keep using your mini-mag for work.

Jumbofrank,

Seems like you have a pretty good grasp of your situation, but I would still recommend getting the Surefire or something similar.  Even the 5-cell mag lights are not as powerful as the Surefires.

The idea behind using the most powerful light you can is to use the light to not only identify a threat, but to physically incapacitate him by blinding him.  Some of the stronger lights are so bright that people involuntarily turn their head away from the light because it physically hurts the eyes to continue looking at the light, even with their eyes closed. 

I agree with you that a 5 cell mag light is pretty bright, but it has been my experience that a person can fight through the mag light illumination.  It's even easier if they know it's coming.  By that I mean, you hear a noise and use the flashlight to check it out but the bad guy has moved positions or the noise wasn't what you thought it was.  Bad guy now knows you've got a flashlight and will be expecting to see it go on.  He might not be as surprised or as blinded as you may think.   I've never known anyone to successfully fight through a Surefire's illumination.

Another factor working against the Mag-lights is the adjustable bezel that allows you to rotate the focus between spot and flood light.  They have huge dead spots in their illumination pattern.  Try this, take your Mag light and focus the beam on the wall across your room.  Now use that setting to illuminate another wall farther away or use it down a hall way.  You should see a black, dead spot in the center of the pattern.  This is a bad situation.  If you don't have your light focused for the right distance, you could end up shining a less than optimal beam at a threat, making it even easier to fight through your light, or even more difficult to determine whether or not he's even a threat.

Just some food for thought.  Everyone knows the first rule of a gunfight, have a gun.  I would submit the second rule of a gunfight is to have a fighting light with you.  I've been in many, many scenario's, both in training and real life where the instant my bright light hit their eyes, the fight was over.  They gave up on the spot.  After all, how can you fight what you can't see?

USSA-1

[Sponsor]

[jnevis]

If cost of the Surefires are a factor look at the G2.  They can be found for about $35.  The G2LED is around $65.  The batteries come in a pack of 12 for $30, as opposed to $12 for two Eveready at WalMart, and they should last a while.  Check Midway or Brownells.  LAPolicegear.com has them for the same price with 6 free batteries.

[TAB]

No, boats  are great big holes you pour many into to keep them afloat, but come on down anyway, I do love to fish.

another great boat saying...


Every one wants a 100 mph boat, until you own one.


You want to talk about money out put... Never again will I own another 100 mph boat.

[2HOW]

The best in flash lights from Watchmaker               http://www.packing4life.com/showthread.php?t=3314

[HAWKFISH]

I agree with USSA-1 that there is a difference between the two. I also see a need for both a regular flashlight and a more expensive home defense/fighting light when you need a high quality light to use in conjunction with your pistol, etc. I also favor Surefire lights. Streamlights are good too. I always keep a Surefire G2 or 6P laying right beside my home defense pistol.

[m25operator]

Thank you 2HOW, a very good side by side comparison. I also own the streamlight, stinger xt and the ultra stinger that stay in chargers afixed to the headboard of my bed, always charging and always ready.

A question to USSA-1, and I had not really thought about this until, the surefire led's came out, a friend of mine got a surefire weapon light that fits on the picatinny rail and it is an led, in the home with a really bright light, you get what I call bounceback, or anyone in photography might say reflection, the reflection from the walls illuminates Me as well as others, Me and mine being my 1st concern, The Led version gave a nice white light that did not blind me, but illuminated the area very well, with surefires focused beam, but the 120 lumen + lamps illuminate me and also in some circumstances, take away my vision.

My L1 digital, with a 10 lumen setting is great for reading a map in the car, where anything brighter, not only lights me up for outsiders, but blinds me when reflected off the paper.

Although I own probably a thousand bucks worth of illumination, and think, they are mostly overpriced, I bought them anyway, as the good ones do the job, and what is job worth???

This is a great thread, keep the input coming in.