A lot of thoughts here about navigating your house in the dark, stealthiness etc. my counter point is you should use a light when you NEED it, be it for a few minutes, a second or as a defensive weapon to blind an assailant. But in all cases the primary requirement is to HAVE A LIGHT in your hands!
Again, mount it, don’t mount it, but have one and train with it!!!
The problem with many experts that have a really good credible backgrounds is that they tend to get stuck in whatever they learned last in their training before they converted themselves into “gurus” and then they stop learning.
He brings to bear a lot of “good sounding” points that unfortunately have been disproven by new techniques, equipment and field experience in the last few decades. He actually says he doesn’t like new things and stays with whatever works for him. Ok, today, find ONE elite military unit that does not have lights mounted on their weapons. That the is the state of the art and they train for it and they use them when appropriate.
Again if something you intend to do with your light is unsound, like lighting it long enough to loose your “night vision”, then don’t do THAT, but by God at least have the tool available to you in case you do need it, which is HIGHLY more likely than the scenario he describes only to prove his point!
Here is the problem. The question is way to broad. It is a very general question. There will scenarios where having that light may save your life, and there will scenarios where it might get you hurt. The good thing about lights though, they have power switches. Just because you have a light on your pistol does not mean you have to use it. As Enzo Y said above, it is better to have it and not need it. You can still carry a separate light.
#1 So… how could a light be a benefit, even if you never turn it on? Well, it is a backup to the handheld light. And I get that you do not point a gun at something you do not want to destroy, but it beats getting killed. Not to mention, I never met a gun that shot without somebody pulling the trigger. So keep you “Booger Hook” out of the trigger guard until you KNOW 100% it is time to stop a threat, simple.
#2 Forward weight reduces muzzle flip. I would rather carry with a light during daytime for this simple reason.
#3 There are holster companies out there now that make holsters to fit the light, not the gun. If you get the right holster you can have multiple options for a carry pistol by just moving the light to the gun being carried that day, or you can buy additional lights (same brand/model) for convenience.
So my point is there can be some advantage even if you do not intend to use the light as your primary.
Welcome aboard sir! Great post.
It sounds like absolutely no one in here practices either the Sul position or the use of the light periphery to illuminate an area while in the Sul ready position. Modern tactical weapon lights are generally absurdly bright and have a significant amount of spill, so much so that they will light an entire room with just a quick on/off with it aimed 6" in front of your feet
People use it…never knew it was called that before.
The catch with EDC is that using that requires drawing your gun first, and drawing your gun when you don’t have an imminent deadly threat yet can be a sticky situation, if you have already identified your threat (which you generally should before drawing), you probably don’t need a WML to identify your threat.
Home defense and LE or mil use are different stories.
Oh, i agree on that, and i also carry a handheld flashlight everywhere, but the idea that a WML isnt useable without pointing the light directly at someone is pretty silly in general tho. As with everything CCW related, GET TRAINING ON IT.
Edit: usually when using the wml in Sul im in “bump in the night” mode, where im stalking through my home armed. Its highly likely im not going to be wearing pants, so its not going to be holstered to begin with. The tactic is to quick flash the light on/off to give yourself a snapshot of the room, and as soon as you turn the light back off, MOVE.
And some of this is personal preference. I can always see well enough in my own home to identify an intruder that doesn’t belong. Between the locked doors and windows, alarms, dogs, and lighting (including battery backup lighting that doesn’t require power), personally I can’t imagine a scenario where I would need a light to illuminate a room just to tell if there is a threat there or not.
'course, my HD rifle and shotgun still have lights on them anyway, just in case I guess.
My house is dark enough usually i can walk through it with NODs 
That’s a lot harder to do than one would think. At least without walking into and tripping on literally everything. And bashing the NV into the doorframe or whatever. Is not easy lol
Just takes practice and awareness honestly. Using an inlet iris helps with the close in focus a lot. And you learn to do the NOD walk, where you exaggerate your steps to avoid tripping hazards
Let’s say it is dark and somebody is mugging you, you have an imminent deadly threat but you don’t know what they have whether it is a knife or a gun, it’s too dark for that.
If at the time you believe you have an imminent threat, draw and fire, and once the threat is down, use your weapon mounted light to illuminate him, and you’ll be able to look for the weapon near him and clearly identify if the threat re-emerges.
I always carry my EDC flashlight, and use it to check the backseats of vehicles and maintain my situational awareness. (Haven’t had anybody really say anything, except for one guy that was kind of nervous but he didn’t understand what I was doing, only other thing I get asked if I’m looking for something, or when I check my backseat before getting in with it a coworker asked if everything’s all there) If a threat emerges, I will shine my flashlight right at them and address them. If they become a deadly imminent threat, drop the flashlight go to gun, and use the weapon mounted light to help identify.
I don’t think I care to point my gun at a downed threat in order to illuminate them with a WML. Once the threat is down (and by context I am assuming you mean down “and seems to be out for the time being”, not merely down) I am going to GTFO, create distance, get cover, probably holster firearm once I have that distance/cover, I’m not going to choose to stay close enough to illuminate them and look for a weapon or provide the optics to others of having just shot someone and now I’m standing there pointing a gun at them as they are on the ground that’s not a good look IMO if avoidable.
A reason to ilumunate an attacker while down, he reaches for another weapon, I’d like to see it. That would give me the opertunity to defend or retreat.
I’m trying to understand how this would work. So you determine that he is an imminent deadly threat/imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death, you shoot him, he goes down, and now you want to turn on your WML to watch for them reaching for another weapon because if you didn’t have a WML to shine on them you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were an imminent threat…even though you JUST determined that they were which is why you shot them?
A person that has taken a round and is on the ground bleeding and in pain can still aim and pull the trigger of a firearm. If when I turn my light on he still has his firearm in his hand and is pointing it at me I want to know about.
I would also add, by having a weapon mounted light, you can be absolutely sure, and testify in court 100% how you fully believe that he was a deadly threat on the ground, and you reasonably have the justification to put more holes in him.