TRAINING STATION
Products, Services, Classes and Seminars for On The Job
Laser guidance
Many people have long criticized the use of lasers
with firearms. I myself still have my reservations. But,
if you are trained properly and use lasers appropriately,
they can be great tools.
I never liked weapon-mounted lasers for these
three reasons: affordability, accuracy and the effect
that the laser can have on a nervous shooter. My early
RICH
experiences with lasers found that these devices were
NICOLETTI not initially affordable for every type of shooter. The
first time I actually saw one being used was by a fellow
police officer. The laser had been installed on his off-duty gun, which
he was using to qualify during one of our duty weapon qualifications.
The first thing I noticed was that the laser projected a wavering line
to the target. The red dot darted around the target like an annoying
mosquito. My immediate thought was that the shooter was
extremely nervous (and that may have been the case), but my later
experience would find this to be normal. I also found that the rounds
were not hitting the target at the same location where the laser had
been pointing.
After my career as a police officer ended and I became the Training
Coordinator at RTSP in Randolph, I was trained by one of our vendor
companies to set up and shoot with a laser. I now see the benefits and
understand that lasers are discredited only if they’re not used properly.
Weapon-mounted lasers for today’s weapons are not a generic
“one size fits all” solution. For the most part, the lasers are integrated
into handgrips or mounted on Picatinny rails that are specifically
made for your weapon. Additionally, they have become affordable,
and affordability usually dictates the frequency of purchase. Therefore, we are now seeing more beginners as well as expert shooters
using them.
My next hesitation is the translation of the wavering laser dot into
nervousness. Anyone who has ever given a verbal presentation to an
audience and has anxiety about public speaking knows that it is a
good idea to memorize their written words as much as possible. This
is so they don’t look down at their notes and see their hands shaking,
which is usually exacerbated by the thin paper. The translation of
your eyes seeing the shaking paper is that you are nervous. The same
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NEW JERSEY COPS
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JUNE 2015