Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Range with a new toy

Went to the range last Tuesday.  And I brought something new.  Something that looks like this.


My brother gave it to me as a gift.  Laser!!!

Let me give the sample target before I go into the grips.  On the left is the Commander, on the right the Snubbie.



Typical 1911 performance for me lately.  I shoot better when I can see the holes, as the shoot n' see shows.  Trying to get the squeeze good. 

The two revolver targets are not too good.  And I blame the laser.  Sorry Crimson Trace.  Part of that issue is me, to be fair.  The geometry is different, so figuring out where to put the thumb is awkward at first.  But for a lefty, right on top of the laser is just fine.  The support hand wants to block the beam.  The activation button didn't work for me half the time because of my grip (it wasn't broken, no.) And concentrating on the red dot and on the sights... well... all these things were distracting and my shots, never great normally, suffered.  I'm not giving up on it yet.  I want to put it through a few more range sessions and see if it grows on me.

That's the bad.

The good is...  The geometry of the grip is similar to the geometry of VZGrips I normally use, so that was nice.  Point shooting with a laser is SPOT on.  It's nice to hold the pistol at waist level, place the red dot on the target, then a hole appears where that light was.  You can concentrate on holding the gun, and dot, still that way, and the sights aren't there distracting you.  If you can rely on your grip lighting it up, and the laser not failing, using that kind of sighting system in defense situations might be hunky dory.  Finally, I find that the Crimson Trace grips really shine not at a range with live fire, but when practicing dry fire at home.  THEN you can see where the trigger is pushing you off center, and the click give you a better 'call' on where the hole would be based on the beam, and you can concentrate on making the wobble less without the distraction of a BANG!

Presuming my range performance with these things doesn't improve, are the the laser grips worth keeping, for me, considering the cost, time, and trouble of just using them for dry fire only?  I would say yes, definitely.  I'm not going to set up all my pistols with lasers now, certainly.  But I am glad I have this set.

3 comments:

Keads said...

I have several laser equipped pistols and I generally don't use them. As you say they are useful for dryfire but there are lasers you can temporarily place in the chamber for dryfire. I will put up a post on that system tonight. Cheaper than CT too.

Old NFO said...

I'm not a fan, but you knew that :-) The BEST training is trigger time on the gun!

C3PO said...

for your Commander, stop looking at the target, look at the front sight! You've trained your brain to watch something happen to the target. Wingshooters and backyard plinkers and, admittedly, myself who introduces others to shooting using the shoot-n-see targets suffer from this problem.