5 Comments

  1. See time 4:40, when you first realized you had a “no-shoot.” At that instant, you were already muzzling your daughter.

    Think how much safer it would have been, if you had been using a non-WML.

    Just a thought – – from somebody who has never muzzled their daughter when she was getting home late.

    1. I don’t necessarily disagree. A regular flashlight is preferable for searching and threat ID. The best advantage to a WML is it allows you to change your mind about a threat situation. So let’s use the “daughter’s boyfriend as an example.

      You’re at home, it’s 2am, you know where your kids are (at least you think you do). You hear a crash and a bang from outside the master bedroom, which at this point it’s reasonable to assume there is an intruder. Because you need to assure the safety of your kids, you decide to search, and upon entering the hallway you see a silhouette at the end of the hallway. It’s also reasonable in this moment to assume that the person in question is the intruder, so pointing a gun at them isn’t necessarily an unjustified use of force.

      So you point your gun at that person, at the same time illuminating them with your WML. You’ve already decided this person is an intruder and that if they act in a threatening manner you’re going to shoot, however when the light hits them you see your daughter’s idiot boyfriend trying to sneak out. Right up until that point you had been 100% justified under the reasonable person standard in your actions, but because you had a WML you didn’t have to kill an idiot teenager.

      Now if you’re using a hand-held light in this situation, and it is the boyfriend, it plays out exactly the same and no one dies. However, what if it’s not the boyfriend, and it’s a crackhead with a crowbar? Now you have positive threat ID and you’re cleared hot, so you can smoke that fool.

  2. I strongly DISagree. I noticed that when you turned on the light you used the same hand the gun was in (in other words, your shooting hand). I think this is a recipe for disaster for the average shooter (which you’re not) in a high-stress situation (which you weren’t in). People revert to habit (good and bad) in high stress, and “trying to use the middle finger of your shooting hand to turn your light on” can easily become “using your index finger to press the trigger.” And when that happens, your pistol is pointing at a target you haven’t identified and might not want to shoot.
    The problem might be mitigated by a light switch you have to manipulate with your non-shooting hand, like on a long gun, or it might not. People’s brains and hands do strange things under high stress.

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