HANDGUNNING october 2019G&A^21
JEREMY STAFFORD
How to prevail in tough, dark situations.I RECENTLY RECEIVED NEWS about another horrible
tragedy involving an armed citizen mistakenly shooting
a family member. Luckily, the girl pulled through. This, of
course, brought on a number of social media arguments
about gun-mounted lights, handheld lights, how much
light is needed, and all sorts of good and bad opinions
about the use thereof. I
don’t generally speak in
absolutes in this realm, but
for this article I’m going to
get pretty close.
First things first: Search-
ing is not shooting. If there
is no clear threat or the
likelihood of a clear threat,
your pistol should be hol-
stered. Second: The light
mounted on your pistol is
not a search light; it is a
shooting light. Any time
you are searching your own
home, you need to exercise
an abundance of common sense. Is there anyone else
living in your house? Was the noise you heard a bump? Or
was it something easier to define, like broken glass? Even
if it were broken glass, is there a reason to go look? Or
should you hunker down and call the police? I can’t answer
those questions for you, but I can tell you that in over 20
years of police work there have been dozens of times I
could have shot someone, but didn’t have to. I was able
to use my white-light techniques to isolate them, identify
them, and get inside their decision loop before they did
anything unwise.
Handheld search techniques are an important aspect of
personal-defense training. First, you’ll need a good light.
My current nightstand light is the Surefire Fury dual-fuel
tactical (DFT), which puts out 1,500 lumens of light with an
18650 rechargable lithium ion battery. And don’t believe
the garbage you hear about “too many lumens.” It’s fake
news. In hundreds of hours of training with full-power
lights, I have yet to blind myself on a white wall or mirror.
When searching with a handheld light, make sure to
point the light away from you and downwards, utilizing
the corona and the spill of the light to do the searching.
Once you’ve got that down, use the brightest point ofthe beam/hotspot to do the identifying. You can also
use the same principle by aiming the light at the ceiling,
applying the so-called “umbrella effect.” Depending on
the terrain, both techniques have a place, and I would
implore you to practice both. You don’t even need your
gun to do it. With the lights off simply walk around and
practice using the beam.
This has the added benefit
of allowing you to memo-
rize the layout and terrain
of your home. Searching,
identifying and shooting
are all different tasks that
require different tools and
skills, and they all need to
be practiced — and often.
Better to stub a toe prac-
ticing than in a real fight.
The vast majority of times
you’re searching, it won’t
be a shooting situation,
but you can’t be compla-
cent in mindset or training. The burden of regret is much
heavier than the burden of training. What if it is a shooting
situation? Then you need to transition from searching to
shooting. This means maneuvering the light in your sup-
port hand to maintain the beam on the threat while clear-
ing the support hand out of the way of the primary hand
as it comes onto the target. There’s a lot going on there!
Luckily, the best way that I’ve found to do this is also the
way that most people with a little bit of training do it when
under stress, and that’s by using the neck-index technique.
As an instructor for the Surefire Institute and for my
department, I’ve seen hundreds of low-light Force on
Force (FoF) scenarios and can unequivocally state that a
majority of people default to the neck-index under stress
(with varying degrees of success). The neck-index tech-
nique is when the shooter brings the light into the support
hand and directly back to their neck or jaw, then presents
the pistol in a one-handed shooting technique. This posi-
tion is great because it allows the light to stay focused on
the threat while simultaneously clearing it from the path of
the gun being presented. It’s also not great because most
people don’t spend enough time shooting one-handed.
Don’t be most people; Practice one-handed.