By Donovan Beard

February 15, 2025

A trend that has been popular over the last 15 years is to have a flashlight mounted to your concealed carry handgun. I do think there are absolute benefits to this, however there are also liabilities that should be discussed. One of the biggest benefits to having a flashlight mounted to your gun is that it can assist with positive identification of a threat. Quite simply, you need to be able to see what you’re shooting at, and that it is a threat that you would be legally justified in applying deadly force on. I think this makes a lot of sense for a firearm you are using for personal protection in the home. The last thing you want to do is end up shooting a friend or family member that you didn’t recognize in your home at 2am because you couldn’t see exactly who it was.

The drawback comes from people disregarding the four firearms safety rules because they are using the flashlight mounted on their gun as a primary means of illuminating the area that they are conducting non-defensive tasks in. Unlawfully pointing a firearm at another person who is not presenting a threat to you or another person in most circumstances is a crime and is avoidable if you think ahead and plan accordingly. You do not want to use the flashlight mounted to your gun to find something in the trunk of your vehicle or to light up a path that you are walking on simply because it violates the safety rule of “never point your weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy.” Combine this with accidentally having your finger on the trigger and you are increasing the odds exponentially that you are going to unintentionally poke a hole in something that you didn’t intend to in a very loud and conspicuous fashion.

When I carry a firearm, I always carry a flashlight in my pocket regardless of if I have a flashlight mounted on my gun. This ensures that I always have a light source on me that I can use without drawing my firearm. If I choose to carry a firearm that doesn’t have a weapon mounted light, then I still could identify someone who could potentially be a threat without violating the four firearms safety rules. Another way to handle this is to purchase a weapon mounted light that is easy to install and remove. I think the Stream light TRL-1 series is a good example of a light that you can remove and reinstall on your firearm in seconds should you need to illuminate an area that you shouldn’t be pointing your handgun at. The problem with this is that flashlights that can be installed and removed without tools can be bulky and thus more difficult to carry and conceal. So, the best advice is to have a small flashlight that you can use for administrative tasks in addition to the light you have mounted on your gun.

When selecting a flashlight for either general purpose use or to mount to your handgun, make sure you get a good quality light that has between 500 and 1000 lumens and you will want to make sure it has a strobe feature. There have been many circumstances where people shined their 1000 lumen flashlight on strobe mode in a would-be attacker’s face, which resulted in the perpetrator deciding to leave without the victim needing to apply lethal force. I’m not saying this will work 100% of the time, however it is an additional tool that could be used to de-escalate a potentially violent situation.

Bottom line is this, Weapon mounted lights are great if they are used properly however they do have drawbacks. Using flashlights in conjunction with firearms does require training and there are a lot of techniques that a person should be confident in if they are going to employ a handgun in that type of low light environment. My recommendation is to purchase an airsoft gun that has a way to mount your weapon light to it and use that training tool to familiarize yourself with shooting and manipulating your firearm in a low light environment or alternatively take a low light shooting course from a reputable firearms instructor.