Priority of equipment for low light pistol training

[NCPatrolAR]

And this also tells me that in general there's a certain amount of fundamental technique to learn before worrying about the WML. True?

I teach handheld techniques first because I view the handheld light as being essential and the WML being supplemental. By developing a base in handheld techniques (and having a handheld light) you can easily transition to it in the event something happens and the WML is not available or desirable.

[jstyer]

I'm team Jippo on this one... I find tritium incredibly useful in low light, and absolutely mandatory in variable light. There is often times in variable lighting where my target is illuminated enough to see and identify, but my sights are shaded,or I'm standing in a darkened area. Especially when indoors or in a shoot house type setup where some rooms are illuminated, and some are not. Or you have light spilling from other sources casting all sorts of weird shadows... you just never know.

For variable lighting my hit percentage was around 30-40% with Ameriglo Hacks, now it's at 80-95% with Hack front, pro operator rear.

I would never go back to non illuminated sights for low light and variable light conditions.

[yellow50]

+1 for the tritiums. My duty pistol was issued with them and have to do night shoots as well. Even with the light switched on, I feel that Im faster ( and much more accurate) with tritiums because the light is not illuminating the sights.

[Ironman8]

The point was that tritium sights aren't going to help you ID a target if you don't have a light source, whether that be WML or handheld. Whether you have plain sights, front tritium only, three dot tritium, ect is purely personal preference...as I said in my last post.

Not even getting into low/no light tactics and the "proper" deployment of a weapon in these environments.

[jstyer]

Roger that ironman... Since the OP requested equipment for low light pistol, I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents about tritium. As I definitely think it's high on the equipment priority list.

[rackham1]

Since the OP requested equipment for low light pistol, I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents about tritium. As I definitely think it's high on the equipment priority list.

Yep, and I'm on board with that since I've already been using various tritium setups (2 dot, 3 dot, or tritium front/plain rear) on any gun I carry regularly.

I should have specified in the thread title that I was actually trying to priotize between a handheld vs. WML for someone just starting low-light training. I got enough info out of everyone's posts to decide that I'll start with a handheld and worry about the WML later.

[Jippo]

Well, this thread must have served it purpose already, but I'll just expand on why I wrote what I wrote now that I have a little more time.

No, I do not think fighting without a torch is a good idea.

But where I come from people seem to mostly neglect the importance of the tritiums, also in the thread there was no mention of them at all before mine. So here I am reading this thread thinking how come no-one mentioned such an important thing.

Shooting with a hand held and plain dark sights can be very difficult depending on the techinique used. With the FBI-method (or what ever it is really called) already aligning the flaslight with the threat is demanding: if at the time one has to find one's sights and think about how to align them as well things can get pretty hairy pretty quickly. Other methods with hand helds are not much easier unless the shooter has really solid basics with the pistol up to the point where he can align his sights from various positions even without seeing them. Most of the shooters are not that good and fighting the sights whilst learning the use of torch is not the best idea. Similarly I do think that in dynamic situation a good sight picture that is not dependable on the lighting level is very good thing to have.

On the other hand. I think a handheld flashlight is an absolute must have on your daily carry. It was already mentioned so I didn't put an emphasis on that at all.

[Jippo]

dp....

[Wake27]

I see so many people that talk about carrying 1-2 handhelds and sometimes a WML. I think its stupid, wasteful, and unnecessary, personally. All it does is make you that weirdo with a bat-belt. Spend that money to get a decent phone like an iPhone and get the flashlight app that uses the camera LED. Then get a WML and your set.

[Jippo]

I personally carry only the hand held light.