Everyday carry flashlight options
This is something that seems to go with the 380 pocket guns these days, a pocket flashlight. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not big on small flashlights because the smaller they are the easier it is to loose them. I am seeing insight flashlights showing up at classes I teach but I don’t have very much experience with them, flashlights really are new to me because the technology has changed so much that we’re really in a new age. Having a bright and powerful flashlight use to mean that you needed 3 or 4 D batteries and you most likely were using a mag-lite flashlight. Those days are long gone. You can get 130-180 lumens from a pocket light, but you better be careful how you carry them because I’ve seen guys on more than one occasion jump up quickly when they realized the light was on and they moved over and felt the heat on an inner thigh.
The pelican PM6 is a nice pocket flashlight and it comes with a clip on which will be very practical for a flashlight like this size. I am not big on carrying lights on my belt line because after carrying a gun, spare pistol magazine and a cell phone, it’ll get harder and harder to conceal your weapon and gear if you have that much on you. The Streamlight flashlights that I like the most for CCW are the Streamlight professional tactical flashlights. They are small, reliable and most going to break the bank. The PT-1 is probable the smallest flashlight I would consider carrying, but I really prefer the PT-2 because 180 lumens is so much that it actually might give you a few extra seconds in blinding a threat that didn’t see it coming.
There has been much talk over the last 2 decades about lasers and flashlights being a liability to an operator more so than an asset. In about 45 seconds of teaching closer quarters combat and inside the home self defense, a laser is an obvious outing of a users location. I understand that if you are trying to sneak around your house and take out a threat, a laser that is turned on will tell the threat you are near. Flashlights run the same risks if they are used incorrectly, but try and tell a SWAT Team to enter a dark room and determine where a threat may be hiding and whether or not an innocent bystander is hiding in the dark.
We was flipping through a few gun magazines and noticed I was living in a new era of flahslight technology. The age of ever ready flashlights and mag-lite flashlights seems to have passed. Battery technology has also improved, but we still haven’t gotten to wear we need to be to really break into a new era. The major advancement is in light bulb technology. LED bulbs are thousands of times longer lasting and don’t drain batteries like the previous designs. Flashlights are almost all water proof these days and the beam and throw is increadable.