Low-light shooting is, for many us, a mostly academic debate. We either haven’t trained in the dark, so most of our information is based off second-hand information and a whole lot of conjecture. That only gets you so far. Pardon the pun, but actually going out and putting theory into practice was an eye-opening experience.
I’ve taken 4 classes with Steve Fisher (Magpul Dynamics & MDFI), and knew of his school in Michigan, with his teaching Cadre of Erik “Trek” Utrecht, Tom Fineis (of Raven Concealment Systems), and Keith Denman. At the end of the most recent Magpul Handgun 2 course Steve invited me out in September to attend a low-light course, both handgun and rifle. Having wanted to see the guys from RCS again, wanting to see how MDFI runs its courses, and wanting to exercise a skill-set I almost rarely get out to practice, I jumped on it.
Hoping on a mid-day flight out to Detroit, which put me in fairly late the day before class, I was greeted by the eloquent and always personable Steve Fisher, “Goddamn, get your shit, Isaac?! Alright get in the goddamn car, lets go already!”
MDFI (Michigan Defensive Firearms Institute) utilizes multiple ranges over the state, and this one was the perfect size for the 17 or so students. Like most of the classes I host here in Portland the ones done by MDFI feature lots of repeat students. This meant that because of the complexity of the material we could do a bit of a warm up but then hit the material hard and fast. This “friends and family” roster also meant that MDFI knew all the locals, and allowed for a disciplined but very welcoming class environment. This was also a great chance to hang with Tom, Michael, and Kyle from Raven Concealment. In attendance was also Jake Sebens from ARES Gear (his belts + RCS holsters, equal fried gold!), Douglas Holloway (who does the awesome serrations in Fisher’s guns), and Joey (from Diversified Firearms Concepts).
It was no shock that almost all of the students in class were using Phantom holsters and RCS pouches. This paid off later as people did gear shake-downs to understand light placement even when running weapon-mounted lights. For this class I decided to run my Nighthawk FLX 9mm. While I don’t carry my 2011 for defense, I love running that gun so much, it served as a good surrogate for my daily carry gun because I don’t carry a weapon-mounted light on my M&P 9C. This meant I would be forced to run a hand-held light constantly through the first day’s pistol class. To me, despite being a different gun, it also meant I would have 1:1 practice with the techniques I needed. It also wasn’t a surprise that almost ALL the lights were SureFire, regardless of model. Lots of X300s, lots of LX2s, and lots of Scouts later on.
We began class around 1700, and started with the initial safety brief, discussion of the firearms safety rules, primary emergency contact, and then rolled in to drills. Specifically we began with basic fundamentals, controlled pairs, reloads, malfunction clearances, and then lots of one-handed weapons manipulation. Much of this had been covered in the Magpul Handgun 2 course 2 months prior, and those skill-sets really paid off. Since most of the students were graduates of MDFI’s other handgun courses it meant that people didn’t get flustered when confronted with a stove pipe while shooting strong hand only. Because so much of this class REQUIRED you to be driving a flashlight at the same time this meant that either you could or you couldn’t do the low-light equivalent of rubbing your tummy while patting your head.
Erik, Tom, Keith, and Steve, walked us through the 4 main grip techniques, the pros, cons, and helping us figure out the best technique for our body mechanics and preferences. Those being:
FBI: Arms length, usually at a 45 degree angle.
Chin: Fist/light placed up under your chin.
Harries: Curled up under your firing-hand wrist.
Syringe: Held like a cigar near the trigger guard.
Each has it’s pros and cons. Specifically the FBI offers you the ability, when used with a weapon light, to make yourself look like two shooters, as well as disorienting your attacker due to the inherent urge to shoot at the light, which is placed away from your center of mass. The downside to the FBI is that it’s fatiguing, even with something as small as a light, I also found getting the alignment hard as my light almost always ended up high-left, so it was slow to get it into the fight.
The Chin technique works by locking the light in to your head, as well as reducing fatigue by keeping arms and muscles tight and to the body. By capitalizing on that head alignment it meant that once tucked in place the light was straight on to the target. The downside was that if someone shoots at the light they’re shooting at your head and upper chest.
The Harries technique is something most of us have seen in movies, or police procedurals, and it allows for the support of your strong hand wrist, locks the light into your natural point of aim, but it’s also again fatiguing and like the other techniques doesn’t provide any support of your firing hand for follow up shots.
The final technique is the syring-grip, also known as the Surefire, or cigar technique. Which like the name implies that’s how it’s held, with the shooter using the base of their palm to push the light on. For my money this is the technique I preferred, as it allowed me to get some of my left hand’s meat on to the pistol to retain as much positive control as I could. The downsides are that it’s not as easy to activate the light, and the light can be momentarily activated due to the trigger guard bumping your hand on recoil, which screwed me up in a walkback drill later that night.
We ran each technique multiple times through one-handed reloads, malfunction clearances, offline of attack, and forward and rearward fire. This gave each student the time to figure out which setup worked best for them. Also covered was light discipline, and specifically how to search and assess with minimal light expended, and in the process not blinding ourselves or our fellow shooters.
To round out the class the instructor cadre set up one target with a SureFire G2 taped to the top, this shone directly at the shooter. They had all the students line up, facing away from that target, in one big line, front to back. They’d pull one of the students (back to the target) towards the target, their eyes closed to keep their natural night vision. Then they’d turn them around, they’d open their eyes, and engage the target WITHOUT using their own white light. What this summed up was how overpowering even a 60lumen light in the darkness can be, and how best to engage that target. Then the same drill was repeated with the student firing back with a white light. Essentially the two lights cancel each-other out, illuminate the target, and reduce the harsh nature of having a bright light shined back in your eyes. Essentially this helped de-mystify a lot of the preconceptions of a low-light engagement.
One of our final drills for the night was a low-light walkback drill. Which started at about the 25-30yd range, and worked back to 50, 75/100’ish. Using a chest-sized steel target, each student could take as long as needed to illuminate the target using the technique of their choice. The light then had to be switched off and the shot made in the dark. So you searched, found the steel, aligned your sights, and fired in the darkness. Most students made it to 50yds, with 3-5 going all the way back to 100 for a tie breaker. I scrubbed out at 25yds not due to a miss, but because using the syring grip my light ND’d when my gun caused my light to bump on for a split second. It was a good solid hit on steel, but within the confines of the rules it was a DQ. It served as a teaching point that while I preferred that grip for the control it provided, it also had downsides in practice just like the other techniques.
We finished up the evening around 0130, said goodbyes to the students not staying on for Low-Light Carbine, and then went back to the hotel to crash.
See Part 2:
