Most of the bad advice in this article is accurate, but I take some exception with the following:
1. A firearm light or laser will just give away your position!
In real life, the benefits of seeing where and/or what you’re shooting at far outweigh any realistic disadvantages of “giving away your position.” One more thing, make it a point to tell the hundreds of thousands of military and law enforcement personnel who mount lights and lasers on their guns specifically for the purpose of fighting in the dark that this is a tactical blunder. What do they know anyway?While the complaint about giving away your position is overblown, it's still kind of true. Also the articles response to the issue uses a ton of BS and employs a tactical strawman about tactical ninjas on chandeliers (which I did not quote). However on military and police:
1. The military is possibly the worst example you can use. The Army uses passive night vision devices wherever possible because they know lights and lasers will give away their position. Likewise the lasers that the military mounts on their guns are typically IR-spectrum and only visible with NVGs. Again this prevents them from giving away their position as much. The primary reason for the laser is that the goggles get in the way of using iron sights on the rifle. The military would like to go to weapon mounted night vision so they don't have use active laser illumination at all. They still use white light for room clearing because it gives them better field of view compared to NVGs. They think the tradeoff in visibility is worth giving away their position.
2. Cops typically don't care about giving away their position which is why they yell things like "Police Officer!" and wear clearly marked uniforms with hiviz reflective elements. Any most people will actively run away from cops rather than engage them.
3. Most people who have weapon lights are planning to use them for self defense within their own homes. Except that you have practical illumination you can use for target identification (which also doesn't give away your position) keyed to wall switches all over your home. You know exactly where all of these are and a potential home invader does not. This make a weapon light unnecessary for pure threat identification.
4. Because if you plan to check out a bump in the night, using a weapon light to do so is not ideal. That bump might be a housepet or your kid stumbling around. In fact this is far more likely than a home invader in most places. You do not want to point your firearm at your kid or pet. It's a safety violation. So you need to train to illuminate with the off-beam flood of your weaponlight, or carry a standard flashlight which is not mounted on a deadly weapon, or just employ your tactical light switches.
5. This is also why CCWing with a weaponlight is also of limited use. You don't want to have to draw your weapon (and by implication threaten lethal force), just to light up an alley because you think someone might be down there. Or because you heard something. That gun shouldn't leave your holster unless lethal force might be required in a clear and present way. You want a normal harmless flashlight for shining down alleys, etc. Which means the weapon light is kind of redundant for target illumination and becomes another thing to carry.
6. The primary reason the police and military use flashlights and weapon lights is because they don't know where the light switches are. They also don't know which lights those switches turn on. They also have to operate places without power and illumination. The military operates in third world areas without light switches a lot. Cop conduct traffic stops on the side of the road or respond during an emergency when power is out. The cops probably don't want to be using their weapons lights in those cases because 3 and 4. And cops can't afford NVGs.
Notice, none of the things in 5 really apply to civilian using weaponlights except that the power might go out.
