In the beginning, Man created the gun and the cartridge. The gun was without form and void; darkness was on the face of the targets that Man sought, and he was sore afraid for he could not see them. And Man said:

“Let there be light — let there be target acquisition and fire control implementations for this gun.”

And there was light; there was a 600-lumen SureFire M600 Scout, and Man saw that it was good.

The SureFire M600 Scout.

I think the bulk of us can agree that we need a light generation source on our personal and home protection gat (gun, weapon, firearm), but I’ll bet we can’t agree on which one out there is the best one. Yet, should we dare to exclude peer pressure and make informed decisions on our own, we can certainly resolve which is the best one for just ourselves.

The referenced SureFire M600 is among the top-of-the-line gun lights retailing for about $245.00, but you most certainly can pay a whole lot more than that for a gun light if you are more of a prestige whore than you are a practical shooter. There are plenty of gun-queer circles to run in out there who will promptly snub you dearly if you are not sinking at least $800.00 into your red-dot scope.

My red dot scope comes in at a disgraceful <200.00 American Tender. I can’t get any gun-queer clubs to let me in. Yes, my scope set me back two Benjis. And I don’t even need a scope that can be submerged in ice for 36 hours, baked in a campfire for 30 minutes, run over by a Jeep Cherokee, and (yes) shot with a rifle before it finally stops working, but only because the rifle shot dislodged the power source — the battery.

A red dot scope such as this Vortex SPARC resides at the sensible end of the snob spectrum far from the costly crowd.

Gun-queers will scoff at you if you are burning less than 600 lumens in your flood. Maverick me just needs enough LED to be able to put my red dot behind the ear of the home invader/rapist and squeeze (not jerk) the trigger. I don’t need to be able to read the fine print of a home warranty from the moon.

Early Delta first used full-sized, three D-cell battery-using Stanley flashlights like the kind security guards use to crack trespassers over the head with. They used steel pipe clamps to secure the flashlights under the barrels of their assault weapons. Miniaturized technology lets us carry more “practical functionality” on our gats, with some of it perhaps serving only a questionable role in the shooting.

Could we all agree on how many target acquisition and fire control gadgets we need on our gats? Not an ice cube’s chance in a ceramic glazing oven. A light source we may all agree on, but the accord tends to drop off even at the need for a red dot scope. What about an Infrared light source? Ho, that would be Kool and the Gang, but that means crossing over into the world of Night Observation Devices (NODs). Expensive but certainly not illegal… you just might wonder how difficult that would be for your defense in court if you shot an intruder on your property while junked-up like the Terminator.

Interesting config: although still some duct tape in the mix both Marines have gun lights and forward pistol grips mounted at different distances along the handguard. The Marine in the foreground has his forward pistol grip mounted as little forward as possible, almost to the extent of not serving as a forward grip at all, and both Marines fail to even use the grips. The front Marine also appears to have a holographic gun sight.

“I’d take my chances and fight it in court because it would be worth the peace of mind.”

That’s the same guy who says:

“I’ll kill anyone who touches my dog.” Yeah, good luck with that, Johnny Rambo.

What about a visible light, colored dot-projecting LASER for target acquisition? You wouldn’t need an expensive red dot scope, or NODs, or an IR flood lamp because the LASERs can be seen with the naked eye in daylight and especially at night without even sighting through an apparatus of any sort. You can fire your AR accurately from down at your hip with such a device. As long as your AR is bore-sighted well to the LASER dot projector you can hit your target.

A visible red dot LASER sight such as this one costs as little as $10.00. Such an inexpense may present a risk to quality, and certainly to dependability.

A thing to be aware of with a LASER dot is that LASER light reaches out pretty far and has no ballistic properties like a bullet does; that is, photons of light travel in a straight line without the rise/climb or drop/fall that a bullet experiences. Therefore the red dot LASER is going to be the most accurate at the optimum bore-sight distance.

A simple diagram showing the path of light juxtaposed with the ballistic trajectory of a bullet with regard to rise and fall and bore-site optimal distance.

Like with most things we can judge functionality by the outcome of what is left after the positives and negatives battle it out. I’m saying that it’s you against you here, and it is by no means a zero-sum game. The AR gadgets industry offers you enough rope to hang yourself, so there is potential to get yourself straphung by your own abysmal arrangement of TAFC “helpers,” be they necessary or… um… NOT!!

Cartoon by the author depicting a fanciful and extravagantly exaggerated evolution of an AR.

No, there is not a coffee press attachment for a modern assault rifle, but only because nobody has ever asked for one yet with a straight face. Besides, caffeine makes one jittery — a thing not conducive to the Eight Steady Hold Factors of Basic Rifle Marksmanship. I must tell you that my M4 in Delta had a bottle opener on it, a thing I found rather random and non sequitur to combat operations. I deduced that it was not an intentionally designed addition, rather a serendipitous discovery I ventured upon by happenstance among the planes, groves, and edges of the weapon’s exterior design.

You ask me then:

“What were you doing needing to find a way to open your pop bottles on your assault rifle?”

And I tell you:

“Who said anything about pop?”

By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends

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Editor’s Note: Let’s all do Geo a solid. Go out and buy his book and visit his website. I promise it’s all good stuff. — GDM