Crimson Trace vs. Lasermax vs. Laserlyte vs. TLR-2

[Zombland]

Unlikely about the CCW part. After all how would the bad guys know you were CCing?

In my experience, armed men present a different demeanor than unarmed men. People who choose to CCW tend to be more aware of their surroundings and more alert to prospective threats.

Such behaviors are observable. Criminals prefer to target people who lack these character traits. Sure, the bad guy doesn't know those three guys having lunch are CCWing a 1911, a Glock, and a Sig. He DOES know that they aren't oblivious to their environment, are not afraid to make and maintain eye contact, and don't reek of fear.

Predators attack those who appear weak, not those who appear strong. A group of law-abiding armed men is unlikely to be perceived as weak, even if the bad guy doesn't explicitly know them to be armed. He simply perceives that they aren't sheep-le, regardless of the reason.

It is in such ways that attacks are foiled before they are begun. And I suggest it's why we rarely (never?) hear of a group of CCW citizens being attacked by a criminal predator.

Incidentally, I was also unaware that US combat troops were using laser projecting devices for aiming purposes (as opposed to laser designation for target identification purposes). I, too, thought their aiming optics were of the red-dot (non-projecting) variety. Where might I read more about the US military's use of projecting lasers for the aiming of small arms?

[Blacksmith]

Units vary greatly.

Most units use CTs for the M9 and various different models of PEQs for the rifles. The PEQs have filters that you can put on them to change the signature. You can use these as IR or visible light.

Some units still use the pointer style in green on long guns for signaling and elevating response. These are no where accurate enough to use for engaging targets but are useful for other reasons.

[Zombland]

Units vary greatly.

Most units use CTs for the M9 and various different models of PEQs for the rifles. The PEQs have filters that you can put on them to change the signature. You can use these as IR or visible light.

Ah, for handguns, then. Got it, thanks.

[squinty]

This has never come up for me because I am maladjusted and have no friends, so I never thought about a self defense situation where I wasn't the only defender. What do you do if you have multiple people on your side, all engaging the same target or group of targets, and you are all using lasers? How quickly and easily, in the stress of a fight, can you differentiate your laser dot from your team mates'?

That's easy, go green, as in, get a green laser.

Oh, man, we already have competing colors of wire, and cake v. pie, Ima not do red vs. green frickin' lasers.

[Blacksmith]

Ah, for handguns, then. Got it, thanks.

And various model PEQs for rifles. Either with IR or visible light. Most units keep it IR however there nothing that prevents you from using it visible light.

[Zombland]

And various model PEQs for rifles.

Yes, I understood about the PEQs. Thanks again.

[BullOnParade]

Units vary greatly.

Most units use CTs for the M9 and various different models of PEQs for the rifles. The PEQs have filters that you can put on them to change the signature. You can use these as IR or visible light.

Some units still use the pointer style in green on long guns for signaling and elevating response. These are no where accurate enough to use for engaging targets but are useful for other reasons.

What makes the green less accurate? I'm a complete noob at this, but Hollywood likes to show the frickin' green lasers because you can see the full beam. I see them as being disadvantages in a tactical situation where you would be giving away your location with that line of light connected directly to your weapon, but damn it looks cool.

[Zombland]

Units vary greatly.

Most units use CTs for the M9 and various different models of PEQs for the rifles. The PEQs have filters that you can put on them to change the signature. You can use these as IR or visible light.

Some units still use the pointer style in green on long guns for signaling and elevating response. These are no where accurate enough to use for engaging targets but are useful for other reasons.

What makes the green less accurate? I'm a complete noob at this, but Hollywood likes to show the frickin' green lasers because you can see the full beam. I see them as being disadvantages in a tactical situation where you would be giving away your location with that line of light connected directly to your weapon, but damn it looks cool.

I think he meant projecting lasers in general, not just the green kind. Projecting lasers are built into some kind of housing, often glued into the housing, and that allows for a certain degree of inaccuracy of the actual laser beam as compared to the body of the laser device.

[Blacksmith]

Exactly. It has nothing to do with color and everything to do with design of the equipment.

A green laser can be useful for letting people know to move out of the way of the giant military vehicle or that you are getting too close to the wire of the FOB. Most people have seen enough movies to think that there is a weapon in the other end and lack the curiosity to test that theory.

[RickOShea]

I'd like to put one on my J-Frame, but it looks like it would force me to alter my grip a little bit - the laser emitter sits kind of low, to clear the cylinder. Did it seem to alter the grip feel for your SP101?

Errrm....Actually, since I shoot lefty, the emitter is a perfect thumb rest for my left thumb with a high grip.

[BullOnParade]

Exactly. It has nothing to do with color and everything to do with design of the equipment.

A green laser can be useful for letting people know to move out of the way of the giant military vehicle or that you are getting too close to the wire of the FOB. Most people have seen enough movies to think that there is a weapon in the other end and lack the curiosity to test that theory.

Okay, thanks for clearing up your comment, had me confused there.

[spyderco monkey]

Options lead to success. A laser is a valuable option, especially on smaller pistols. Should still practice sighted fire and point shooting, and test it through FoF, but it seems silly to leave a solid option on the table if you can afford it.

However, the only lasers that are worth a damn are the grip activated Crimson trace. The reason is because under stress, they turn on automatically- there's no need to program flicking some little switch into your muscle memory.

What that means for glocks and 5-7's (own both) is we're basically fucked laserwise. I have a lasermax intenral guiderod laser for my G21, and while a brilliant piece of engineering, and the most accurate of all the lasers (since it's directly in line with the bore rather than offset) it's almost totally fucking useless- the take down lever is the activator, and it tends to be slightly difficult to activate on the draw- yet activates unintentionally when I'm at the range. The result is that it's almost always dead when I get home.

However, if in a home defense situation, possibly useful. But for a SHTF situation, where you would be dealing with angry/rowdy crowds, a laser would be worth it's weight in gold. Any asshole can have a gun, but a guy with a laser equipped one is considered serious business by most, providing a much more psychologically effective deterrent and quite possibly preventing the situation from escalating.

As I recall, some (gaurdsman? not sure who) durring Katrina reported using lasers to great effect for managing angry crowds when distributing limited supplies of food and water. I don't have a link to support that assertion so YMMV.

However, here's Larry Vickers take on Lasergrips, for whatever that's worth:

http://vickerstactical.com/tactical-tip ... asergrips/

"At night and in conditions of limited visibility they are nothing short of awesome; they make accurate handgun shooting easier than any other sighting system currently on the market. Don’t get me wrong, night sights and white light have their place but a visible laser at night rules. Period. Anyone who has had one of my classes or been taught by Ken Hackathorn can attest to that. They dramatically improve the shooters ability to get accurate hits at night."

[Jsimmonsgr]

This has never come up for me because I am maladjusted and have no friends, so I never thought about a self defense situation where I wasn't the only defender. What do you do if you have multiple people on your side, all engaging the same target or group of targets, and you are all using lasers? How quickly and easily, in the stress of a fight, can you differentiate your laser dot from your team mates'?

Its more for at the range that I use it to ID targets... For instance if I am shooting at a series of targets and my wife is keeping score for me she can instantly see what target I am shooting at, conversely if she is shooting I can spot a target for her and it helps her with speed drills. Also with our ARs it allows us to both center on one target. Plus the psychological impact of having a laser on your weapon is not lost on crowds or criminals. One extra benefit on a handgun is it allows you to do dry fire training and correct for your trigger control. Try it sometime, dry fire your weapon at a wall, say about 25ft away, with the laser engaged. Watch the dot move when you pull the trigger, it allows you to see if you are pulling your gun off target during your shots,

[Gunner_CAN_zombies12]

I'm with Quietus on this one.

Why bother with a laser sight? I presume you have regular sights on the weapon, yes?

I can imagine a very few rare scenarios where a laser sight may be useful, mostly where it's not possible to bring the gun up to line-of-sight--say, and guard in an armored car shooting through a port while peering through ballistic glass a considerable distance above the port. A a riot policeman shooting around a transparent shield is another. But not very many such situations come to mind.

In the other 99.9% of cases, the laser sights are nothing but another doodad of questionable utility and durability.

In any case, sight-related issues have very little to do with effectively shooting a handgun. Just about everybody can line their sights up. The difficulty comes in not destroying the sight alignment through poor trigger management. And a laser sight does NOTHING to optimize this critical trigger management.

That said, it's a free country. Although I have no use for laser sights, I'm certainly happy to have them on the market, and don't begrudge people who buy them. I just don't see the utility, I guess.

Anyway, good luck with them.

In the military Ive done a lot of room clearing with laser sights, both IR for when im wearing NODs and daylight situations. each time having the laser option on my rifle was one of the best things I could use. Even though a lot of room clearing you dont even need to aim, On slightly longer distances it helped for quick aquisition. I have crimson trace laser grips on my 1911, I mostly mounted them because I got em for 40 bucks brand new. Since ive had a concealed carry license Ive needed to draw my weapon twice, both times were at night and the laser grips would of definately been helpfull If I had them, They are a cheaper alternative then buying some tridium night sights and having them mounted by a gunsmith, I myself am also confident with a laser. But this is all just me and my experience.

[Mild Thang]

... Even though a lot of room clearing you dont even need to aim,...

I'm sorry man, you are going to have to explain this one to me; I read it twice to try and figure out if you made a typo or what, but I can't come up with an answer, so I'm throwing it back to you to try an clear this up for me, please.

[williaty]

1) - I see people with backup sighting options on long guns all the time, why not a backup option on handguns?
2) - There may be occasions, when using a defensive firearm, where you cannot raise the gun into a proper shooting grip and focus on the front sight. Maybe you get knocked down, or have to fire quickly from a speed rock or retention grip. In any situation in which you would rely on point shooting, lasergrips can be helpful.
3) - If you ever are in fear for your life, the natural tendency is to focus on the threat, not on the front sight of your gun. An aiming device that allows you to focus on the threat and still fire accurately is an advantage.
4) - While a laser certainly won't, ever, ever, make up for or compensate for poor trigger control or poor marksmanship fundamentals - (and in fact, if you've been shooting awhile there's a bit of a learning curve to go through to shoot them as well as you would shoot with regular sights) - they are wonderful training aids. I spent a lot of time dry firing my Sig and my Ruger P90 with the laser trained on a target 30 yards away. Any slight variation in grip, any slight imperfection in trigger squeeze is magnified by the motion of the dot at that distance, and the feedback was very helpful to developing a good smooth trigger stroke.

I agree with this list plus I'll add three more

5) The Lasergrips fixed my grip issues on my main gun. The factory backstraps didn't change shape in the correct places. The CT LG did.

6) I have pretty bad astigmatism. Iron sights don't work without my glasses on. Hell, iron sights barely work WITH my glasses on once the target is much beyond 20 ft as it blurs out too much to tell where center of torso might be. However, since I can focus just on one plane, the laser allows me to put sort-of-blurry-red-disc on top of less-blurry-than-sights-torso and go boom.

7) I have a spinal injury. If I go down, I'm probably staying down, possibly for the rest of my life. In dry-fire practice, due to that same injury, I have a hard time being down on my back and getting the gun in front of my face to use the sights against an attacker who might be standing over me. LGs allow me to actually aim even when I can't get the sights in front of my face/

1) - I see people with backup sighting options on long guns all the time, why not a backup option on handguns?

Because on long guns the back-ups are more resilient iron sights backing up a potentially more fragile scope or electronic sight.

Putting a laser on a handgun as a "backup" is using the potentially more fragile electric sight as "back up" to the iron sights. Doesn't really make sense.

Good quality, non-adjustable, metal sights on a handgun simply don't fail--or at least any cataclysmic event that would cause such simple, robust sights to fail could hardly be expected to spare a laser sight. (Note that I've excluded from that "don't fail" statement the plastic OEM Glock front sights in particular and adjustable rear sights in general, both of which I've seen fly off guns in matches.)

But whatever floats your boat. I hope you try them and love them. Whatever works best for you, works best for you.

So far, my CT LG have been MORE reliable than my factory sights on two pistols. No stoppages at all with the CT LG. About a week ago, the center stalk of my front sight cracked off during recoil. Two days ago, different pistol, the front sight came loose and indented my forehead. Neither pistol was old, both less than 2 months in my hands. Neither had been drawn from a holster yet. There's no way damage had happened to the front sights.

Here's the target from that second incident. Note the horizontal stringing. I was going nuts trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Finally gave up and started aligning the sights "wrong" in order to get into the black. About 5 rounds later, the front sight hit me in the forehead without the slide coming along for the ride. Suddenly, it all made sense. Since I was function-checking the gun on new ammo, I shot the rest of the brick with no front sight just "guessing" at if I was pointed in the right direction and that's how I chewed the center out. Never in my life have I shot better without a sight than with!

[Blacksmith]

In the military Ive done a lot of room clearing with laser sights, both IR for when im wearing NODs and daylight situations. each time having the laser option on my rifle was one of the best things I could use. Even though a lot of room clearing you dont even need to aim, On slightly longer distances it helped for quick acquisition.

Really? Why? and er why not?