P&S ModCast 447 - Low Light With Dan Brady from Apache Solutions - Primary & Secondary Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, so we're live right here, and let's see if
we're live on rumble. Maybe almost got to love all
these different things. Yep, all these different things happening, and
you don't know which one's working. But we are live.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We're fully live. Huh.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
All right, So there have been some interesting conversations Dan
and I. We both really like low light stuff. Low
light stuff is so cool for me personally, low light
is so misunderstood, and I never really, early on as

(00:46):
a cop, never thought about it. I remember going to
qualls where our low light walls consisted of us shooting
with no light. I look on it back now and go,
what the hell were we even thinking? Now? I was
not the firearms guy back then, but I remember being
at a completely blacked out range shooting at a target,
and there are no lights, there's no illumination on anything.

(01:08):
I can't positively identify my target. What I can see though,
I can't see my night sights. Good, good job, good,
I can all. I know my sights are aligned. I
don't know where the hell I'm shooting though. Yeah. So
low light is so misunderstood, and yet we could be
We could be on the equator at at noon and

(01:31):
still find places where, you know what, we probably need
to have a light with us. It happens working day
shift during the summer, I would find myself in places
where need to have a light with me. Dan, how
about you? What what? What what got your your interest
in low light?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, you know, you and I started in Elliott
about the same point in time. You know, it was
it was kind of the dark ages of flashlights. You know,
I'm certain it just I'm certain that your first was
either a kel light or a mag light, probably six
six D cell that's what That's what we got issued,
you know, back back then. And you know, I was

(02:13):
kind of a gun guy then, and so you know,
looking through the uh the gun magazines since the internet
was you know a baby back then, I would still
print media for most of my gun consumption. Yeah. I
found a uh, you know, an ad for a Surefire
six P, which was the new hotness with you know,

(02:34):
sixty five sixty five lumens of light. And uh, you know,
so I sent off I don't know eighty nine or
ninety dollars and you know whatever the shipping was, and
waited and waited and waited, and finally one showed up
and uh you might hate Amazon, but the ship gets

(02:55):
here real fast.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It does, and the selection.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Uh but anyway, and so I you know, I got this,
and you know, I put some you know, one two
three A batteries in it, and I shined it in
everything and it was just so much brighter than anything anyways.
I mean it was really more compact, and yeah, it
would fit fit in my pocket. Yeah, you know, and
this isn't two thousand and one, I think, and I

(03:24):
mean I think it was near as bright as my
spotlight and my cruis are from the from the A pillar.
I mean, it was nearly that bright. And you know,
people looked at me like I was crazy, like, oh,
what do you need that much light for? And I
you know, if twenty twenty five Dan Brady could hand
them his current carry light, you know, people would lose

(03:44):
their minds. But what got me really interested in in
that was, you know, being a rookie. I guess, you know,
I got stuck on night shift, and you know, I
liked the evening shift from five at night to three
in the morning, but midnights was always short on people,
and so the rookie had to cover down and and
get pulled for overtime, and so I was there on

(04:06):
shift all night, going to alley's, going to apartments, going
to bars and clubs and all the other things that
night shift cops do in you know, questionable lighting environments.
And it's not I I'm in a city, right, I'm
in a reasonable sized city. It's not dark. It's not
back country, middle nowhere dark. You know, it's not you know,

(04:31):
in a canyon on a cloudy night dark. It's inconsistent lighting.
And that's what kind of got me started to get
me thinking about what was needed for light. A short
time later, again looking through gun magazines, UH weaponmount pistol

(04:51):
mounted lights. The Glock Gen three was fairly new, still
with the with the rail on the front, and UH
Insight Technologies had a had a weapon mounted light, and
the Surefire X two hundred was the newest thing. I
didn't have the dollars for an X two hundred, so

(05:13):
I settled for the Insight Technologies M three again sixty
sixty five lumens. I was the first person on a
department to have a light on my pistol. And again
people are like, but why, And I was like, see
when we call next time. And we do our low
light watch how different my scores are than yours because

(05:37):
all the hand stuff, all the marrying hand stuff that
we did is as cops. It creates a lot of
marchmanship challenges that they not that they can't be overcome,
but it does. It creates a lot of marksmanship challenges.
And those almost all of those hand positions with the flashlights,

(06:01):
you know the one here the FBI were putting it
way out there right, you got the uh, the the
cigar grip right there, you got the back of the
hand to the back of the hand. All of these
carry with them a whole lot of challenges that need
to overcome, and just most people aren't going to put

(06:23):
in the reps to do it. They're they're just not
going to do it well. And I remember I remember
very clearly doing back to back and I was searching
a business open door alarm. I don't remember what the
circumstances were, but it was it was very inconsistent light
and the back to the back of the hand to

(06:45):
the back of the hand thing, and I remember very
clearly trying to shine my light and I started to
do with this thumb instead of this thumb and what
and you are. One of the things that most people
don't understand when they're talking about flashlight stuff is that
when you cross your hands, it's very easy to get

(07:07):
finger confusion or hand hand task confusion under any kind
of pressure and there any kind of stress. And there's
multiple scientific studies out there. I can pull up links
for a couple of them about that. And you know,
again with you know, the FBI, I understand the theory

(07:30):
behind it. But as we all know as firearms people,
what the left side of the body does the right
side of the body wants to do. And as you're
moving this arm around, this arm tends to move around
as well. So this is what kind of just got
me going in the in the low light and the
shooting directions. You know. In order of the course of the
last twenty five years, I have spent untold dollars on

(07:56):
new the newest hotness and lights. Yeah yeah, I just
just the holsters alone. I could probably buy a new
Honda Civic right like, very easily. But now we live
in this golden age of available white lighting for the
defensive minded individual in the realm of both handheld and

(08:22):
weapon mounted lights. And like most Americans people have this
tendency to be like, oh, this simple thing will solve
all my problems. The simple thing. The simple thing mostly
being I'm going to stick this light on the end
of my gun and now I don't have to worry

(08:43):
in the dark. And that is all the mind that
they pay to it.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yes, yes, well I think that might be one of
the main things that we've had discussions about. So I
don't remember what the so we just did that? We
just did that podcast? Is it last week, a couple
of days ago?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Whenever? That was four days ago?

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, basically what what? What started? That was? So if
you haven't seen it yet, it's it's still available on
on on Rumble. The audio version is going to be
released probably in the next couple days. And Steel carry
on Facebook posts some wonderful content and unfortunately some people

(09:25):
come in and share their views which don't really jive
with reality, and people like Dan and other friends come
and assist these people to understand well because of this,
and when I usually when I start a podcast, if
I have a specific episode, I do I create a
Facebook chat and include all these people while we're talking

(09:48):
about stuff in these in this chat, and this chat
might turn into something. This might be a normal group
to gather for these discussions just because well it's great
to have like minded people with so similar insight, similar
skill sets that are still open to feedback and to
look at a problem and dissect it. Well, I know,
Dan's a low light guy. I love low light stuff.

(10:10):
So I don't remember what it was. I think it was.
Someone did a post, was it Chris? There was a
post about was it the night sights one?

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Was basically was it the muzzle flash one?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's what it was. That's what it was.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
And so that got me thinking Red Dot Training range
up in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
It's justin Mattier, Yeah, and I thought, you know, there's
enough of stuff. There's enough a little things like that
where Dan and I we probably could get together and
invited the other guys. Unfortunately they were busy, But I
got Dan here. We could discuss some of these concepts
and it's it's fun to think about, it's fun to dissect.

(10:59):
And the best part though, is when those people get
that no pun intended the light bulb. When they understand Oh,
so when I was talking about my my night qualls,
so we're doing our night qualls as an early cop
I was, I had my M three and I'm ready

(11:20):
to own. I am going to own this because I
can illuminate. And then I'm told you can't use any lights.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
What?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
No, this is a low light shoot. You can't even
use your weapon light?

Speaker 2 (11:34):
What?

Speaker 1 (11:35):
This is just stupid. That's the mentality of law enforcement.
That's Yeah, until things are fixed on an individual level,
we're still I'm sure there's still agencies doing that, but.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
So with my agency, this is probably it's probably six
seven years ago. Now. There some new policies came out
with regard to holsters and things of that nature, but
there wasn't one that specifically said anything about weapon amounted lights. Myself,

(12:07):
my my one of my cohorts in Apatche Solutions, who
I also work with in the real world, Zach Halstead.
We you know, we immediately throw lights on our guns
and uh, you know, switch over to uh, you know,
light light bearing holsters, and a few other guys are like, oh,

(12:27):
are you allowed to do that? I'm like, I'm more
of a forgiveness than permission kind of guy. So, you know,
as long as it meets the criteria of at least
a level two holster, uh and it's made by a
reputal millium manufacturer. You know, I buy Safari land holsters,
and I was like, I don't see a problem with that.

(12:50):
I think I can justify it. So a bunch of
other guys do it too, because it's like the cool
guy thing to do. Now, we'll fast forward a few
months and one of the lieutenants walks into our Accident
Investigator Division office and one of the guys in there
is literally, uh, my guns empty. Here is literally doing

(13:11):
this and shining the light off his hand and being like,
oh yeah, that's real, real bright, and he is muzzling
himself and everyone in the opposite room through the uh,
through the through the wall with a live handgun. Lieutenant
justifiably loses his mind on this individual and uh but

(13:34):
then a reactive email comes out nobody said you could
put lights on guns. Well, yeah, that's the that's again,
that's the cop mentality, right, Like, unless there's specifically in policy. Uh,
you know, an administrator is likely going to have a
problem with it as soon as they see something go sideways.

(13:58):
But you know, we always talk about you always have
that ten percent who are responsible for ninety percent of
the policies you know, this guy was just one of
that ten percent, and thankfully eventually he got fired. But
those are the guys who ruin it for everybody else.

(14:18):
So there was a constant battle for years about getting
us lights on guns, or at least allowing lights on guns.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Well, I remember early days before I, before I jumped
into it, and before I got I was admiring those
all those surefire weapon lights. Oh wow, those are so
cool with the cuff that goes over the grip and
they're so and they're huge. But thinking about, okay, so
how am I going to do this? Though? Because I

(14:50):
can't spend an addition one hundred dollars on a holster.
Maybe what I can do is I can have it
mounted to my belt and when I needed I put
it on, and then when I don't need to take
it off. And that in my young age, I was saying, yeah,
that's that would work, and then thinking about it, go
wait a minute, now what if I can What if
I can't? What if I don't have two hands? Well, wait,

(15:12):
how might accidentally muscle myself? Wait a bit, what about
what about this? This? This, this? And it's it's just
funny to think about how what my mindset was back then,
I will do anything to get this weapon light. And
now here I am in my advanced age, so old,
and yeah, you know what weapon lights for me. I

(15:33):
don't usually have them on my eedc or my off
duty on duty. I do, absolutely I do, but my
tasks are very different. And when I'm on duty, I
am seeking people go ahead.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Therein lies the difference, and that's yeah. There are too
many people like you and I, cops who decide to
poke their nose into private instruction and they don't think
about the different contexts of the civilian versus the on

(16:08):
duty police officer.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
And this is also not a diss against the citizen
at all. No, it's just a different tasks. You know,
I'm not a control cop anymore. You know, I work
in the officer. I work on a range.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
That was the only places that I am you know
or you know, classroom, So I don't you know, I
don't have a light on my duty weapon because if
I don't really use my duty weapon unless I'm on
the range. I don't have a light on my carry gun.
Now I did for a number of years. I bounced

(16:45):
back and forth between have a light, don't have a light,
have a light, don't have a light, and you know,
my my logic on it, uh changed a great deal,
back and forth, back and forth. I ended up at
a place for a while. And this is actually in
the relatively recent past, after I watched Aaron Cowen's you know,

(17:10):
weapon weaponmount of lights are mandatory video that he put
on YouTube probably probably about six years ago. A great video,
great video, and Aaron's a phenomenal shooter, phenomenal instructor, and
the guy has the digital dexterity of like a stage magician,
like he he can whip that.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
He probably does magic. What are you saying?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
So I basically ended up in this place like yeah,
you know, like you, I'm a pretty large person. I
can conceal with a light on my gun and read
dot on my gun pretty easily. It's not a big
deal for me to do so. And if the circumstance
arises in which I would need it, I now have it.

(17:59):
And then about four years ago I really started teaching
a lot more of the low light curriculum stuff through
APATCHE solutions, and a lot of people wanted to They
wanted some instruction on using their weapon mounted lights, So
I started walking through a lot of the what is

(18:19):
required to use this realistically and that that's kind of
where things fall apart. Yeah, you're talking about using it
in a defensive context.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
And one of the things that is very, very different
is the what my buddy Zach likes to call unrealistic
range choreography of this utilizing light switching from a handheld
to the to the weapon mounted light. Where do you

(18:55):
do that? What do you do with this one? When
do you activate this one? And what does that look
like when you put it on the clock, when you
do it under pressure. So one of the things that
I do in my class near near near the end

(19:16):
of the class, uh, is I set up some some
visual barriers and have people walk into a scenario of
tart and evaluate it with their handheld. Even the people
who carry with weapon mounted lights do not drop the

(19:37):
handheld to engage. They just don't.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
That's kind of telling Dot, you kind of tell you
some prioritization. Well, if you if you.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Look at it, humans naturally do do things, right, we have.
We have human instincts that have evolved kept kept us
safe for millions and millions of years. We've been you know,
you and I both have gotten some of the same
curriculum stuff, even on opposite sides of the country. We
get told in officer survival stuff, don't run backwards, don't

(20:14):
run backwards, don't run backwards. We've been told that since
we were baby cops, right, What does every video show
when a cop gets rushed by somebody, they take three
or four steps backwards, they catch their heel on something,
and they end up on their ass with somebody on
top of them. When human beings are under direct a threat,

(20:36):
direct assault, they have a natural human instinct to put
distance between them and the threat. Logic says, okay, well,
move offline of attack. Yes, logically, that's that is absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Are we thinking logically?

Speaker 2 (20:54):
But are you thinking logic exactly? The only the only
people I have observed in real life who do that
under real threat are are very long term martial artists,
combat sports athletes. Those are the people who have the
repetitions in to make it a subconscious task to move

(21:16):
offline of attack and to pick where they want to be.
Human beings don't naturally do that. You have to train
to it, and most people aren't going to train that.
They're just not another thing that people have a tendency
to do. And this is where where red dots are
really really useful is people threat focus. You are very

(21:41):
very very unlikely to look at your front sight as
as another human being is trying to kill you. It's
so unlikely. I'm not saying it hasn't happened. I'm not
saying there aren't people out there who haven't seen their
sites at least to one degree or another.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Well, especially at an entry level skill level. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, so we have a tendency to threat focus. We
have a tendency to want to put immediate distance between
ourselves and a threat. And the other thing we don't
do is that we don't drop stuff. If we have
things in our hands when we are under immediate threat,
unless we need our hand to do something, we don't

(22:22):
drop it. My buddy Phil Groff, who runs a training
company up in Pennsylvania called Vigor Training. Phil's great, very
very very good shooter, very intellectual guy, has a white
paper on movement. I should probably forward you that. It's
really good. Yeah, he was. He was telling me an

(22:42):
anecdote where he watched a badge cam video of a
cop who came out of a subway sandwich shop and
had his subway sandwich in his in his left hand,
and immediately came under assault and shot a guy drew
strong handed shot again. I followed him to the ground,

(23:02):
radioed it in and still had his subway sandwich in
his non dominant hand. Now you can make all the
jokes you want about, you know, dropping a foot long
in this economy, and you know it's you know, thirteen
dollars for a foot long.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Now, yeah, and it's not five dollars anymore.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
No, it's not. It's not five bucks anymore. You make
all the jokes you want. But the fact of the
matter is is that was Was it a critical task
for him to maintain control of that sandwich? No, of
course not, of course not. It would have benefited him
to let go of it. Yeah, it absolutely would have,
but it was in his non dominant hand. He didn't
need his non dominant hand to draw, so he just drew,

(23:40):
dealt with the problem, and then still had his sandwich.
These are what I refer to as just natural human tasks,
the things that we do instinctively. To my way of thinking,
it is easier to train a deadly forced tasks shooting,

(24:06):
low light usage staying within the envelope of what humans
and human beings naturally do. If I'm not going to
naturally drop what is in my non dominant hand, in
this particular case, my flashlight. If I'm if I don't
have a natural instinct to let go of this, why

(24:26):
don't I just use that and say, Okay, well, I'm
going to keep this light in my hand and I'm
going to draw my gun and use them in conjunction.
That's that's that's sort of my take on it and
the pushback that I get from it. It's a lot
harder to shoot with one hand.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
And work on it.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, yeah, it is, we know. But if you if
you put a little bit of effort into it, yeah
it it's it's harder to shoot, shoot one handed and
light your your adversary with with your non dominant hand. Yes,
that is. That is more difficult. I'll put you on

(25:10):
the clock on the range and see what takes more
time to identify, draw, switch and then get good shots
on target at a reasonable threat distance five seven yards whatever. Uh,
I'll I'll take you your work. Oh you do that
really well? Okay, be.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Show me.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah. So there is there's a huge misconception. Uh. And
as you you have pointed out on a number of
Facebook conversations. You know, people are like, oh, I've got
my weapon amun on a light. That's I don't need
a pocket light. You know, I've got my cell phone light.
You know, whatever, whatever they want to say, you are
you have a legal and moral requirement to identify your threat,

(26:00):
just to present your firearm, to point your firearm, to
get it out of your pants. It is not only
a legal and moral requirement from from my my way
of looking at it, it's also a tactical mistake to
introduce a gun what we want is not needed, especially

(26:22):
if there's.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
A potential threat and we're not to that level yet. Yeah,
you just showed your hand. Yeah, you just you showed
exactly what you have available to you. And if it's not, if.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
You're not there, you potentially induce an awful lot of problems. Uh,
you know, legal and you know situational. It's it's it's
just a really bad idea to have that light on
the end of your gun be your go to for

(26:54):
anything having to do with a defensive posture.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
The other thing, people, let's let's go one step further
with that too, to use your light to identify a threat,
to use your weapon mounted light to identify a threat,
because if you're doing that, you don't know yet is
this a threat. So one of the things I was
thinking is why don't we go over some scenarios and
break this down for people to think about. So let's

(27:21):
say it's noon, it's a bright sunny day, We're in
the Walmart parking lot. I see someone approach us who
might be a threat. Do I need my light at all? No?
I do not. If they do something where deadly force
is justified, I make the appropriate I draw and do
whatever appropriate actions. Now we're in that Walmart parking lot

(27:46):
and it is midnight. There is ambient light. I can
still identify there is a human. They're walking towards me.
I'm getting a little uncomfortable. That alone. Note for me
is not justs to pull my gun now. Once I
see something that I can articulate, I am now in
fear of my life because of this. I'm seeing this.

(28:08):
They have a weapon, they have something. They're engaging me
in some way. Then I draw. Do I need a
light for that? Potentially? So what light do I use? Handheld? Amazing?
So I illuminate the person. I determine, Hey, there's not
a threat, Do I still go after my gun?

Speaker 2 (28:30):
No?

Speaker 1 (28:32):
I've just now could this depending on how it's used,
And I did a video about this. If I shine
this directly in their face, could that create an altercation? Potentially?
It's up to you how you're going to use your light.
But if I have the light on, as Dan said,
and there is a absolutely legitimate threat, and I draw
and I take whatever appropriate steps are next, what do

(28:57):
I do with this? That's for you to determine. With
what Dan says, it sounds like this is probably going
to be staying in your hand, which that is not
a bad thing for me personally. I'm purposely carrying handhelds
that are brighter or as bright as my weapon light
and pistol. Pistol weapon lights have gotten better. I'm still
a fan of the mod lights despite despite the the

(29:20):
clickie switch on the weapon lights. But yeah, oh and there,
and the handhelds are my favorite for the rifle lights.
These are what I run on my rifles. Now, let's
let's talk. Let's say we're in a parking lot and
it's absolute no, No, we're not in a parking lot,
because that wouldn't make sense. We are in an absolute
pitch dark environment, and we determine there's a threat. How

(29:44):
we're in a pitch dark environment. Why are we in
a pitch dark environment? In a pitch dark's environment?

Speaker 2 (29:50):
All right, So if I'm at you know, the guy
who owns a Patchy Solutions, Tim Kelly, If I'm at
his house in the middle of four hundred acres of farmland,
you know, with three ball aroun around us and everything
else like that, and it's a cloudy you know, a
cloudy night, Yeah, is black? Is Yeah, it's dark. Are
you getting mugged in that area? Are you getting assaulted?

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Because are the bad guys waiting in those areas? The
people aren't going.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
I mean we you know, unless unless we uh we
go back to the killed by ninjas thing. You know.
It's you know, a lot of people will engage in
some some serious intellectual gymnastics to justify their own decision making.
And that's set. You know, that's it's fine. It's it's
human nature. You know. The the primacy of the first

(30:39):
information that you learn in something that you are interested
in tends to stick with you for a really, really
long time and overcoming that, especially if they learn it
from what they believe to be a legitimate source. Over
Overcoming that is is a huge challenge. It's a huge,
huge challenge. The the thing I think most people think about,

(31:05):
right is they go, oh, I've got this new light,
and they step out their back door at night, you know,
the back door of my house. You know, I got
trees all the way around around my property as a
six foot privacy fence, very little ambient light in my backyard,
and when I shine any flash light, my cell phone
light will illuminate my rear fence on my you know,

(31:27):
third of an acre backyard. It doesn't require a lot
of light to show you enough of what is going on.
But the example that I use most of the time
is have you ever had somebody just pull into your
driveway with their high beings on? Can you see who's

(31:48):
in that car? No, you can't. And you know if
you go back to you know, the Walmart parking lot
or the Dollar store parking lot, which are the two
most dangerous places any most of us ever go. Right.
I have heard it said from authoritative sources that Walmart

(32:08):
has a team of something like four hundred lawyers whose
sole job is to mitigate Walmart's liability in criminal activities
that occur on the on the premises. The Walmart parking
lot is usually fairly well lit, but depending on where

(32:32):
you are in relation to the front of the store,
in relation to the lights from overhead, it can vary greatly.
It can also vary greatly. Is if you have, like
you do in my town, groups of youths who like
to park all of their cars together and have them
running and going with all the headlights on. You can't

(32:55):
see anything past this row of headlights. You can't. You
can't because they all have aftermarket headlights that are just
incredibly bright. So I did a video for Concealed Carry
dot com a while back, and I don't know where
it is on their site. But I had my car

(33:20):
in my driveway in my neighborhood. I've got street lights,
you know, behind me, about two hundred feet or so,
and I had my camera right in front of my
house facing me. I had my brights on, and I
was sitting like a like a wayward youth, up against

(33:40):
the hood of my car like this. My feet crossed
on the on the hood of my car, and I
just said to the camera, can you see what's in
my hands? Is it my wallet or is it something
less innocuous than that. My camera's only like fifteen feet away,
and you couldn't. You couldn't. You couldn't see shit. You
can see an outline of me. You can see some

(34:00):
of my facial features. You can see I'm a white guy.
But other than that, you know, even with my hands
crossed at like this, you can't. You can't see what's
in my hands. And that is a fairly realistic lighting
condition that you if I'm sitting in some parking lot
like that, and I'm parked near your car, and I'm

(34:21):
sitting there and I'm talking to one of my friends
or whatever it is, and I'm sitting there like this,
and you come tool and buy and I'm like, hey man,
you got a light, And I go to get up
off the foot of my car and walk towards you.
Can you justify pulling your gun on me to point
your light at me?

Speaker 1 (34:43):
I would argue, I would, I would, I would argue, no,
I agree, I agree. So well, there's another part about
this about the Walmart parking lot thing too, And if
you want, I'll make a note of it that we
can discuss. We can discuss it in a minute. Yeah,
but yeah, continue your train of thought.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
I don't know about trains, more like a unic igo
with a flat tire. The So you know what I
do in my low light classes is I do very
little of the low light, and most of what I
do is oppositional or compromise lighting. I try to try
to mimic parking lot conditions, try to try to roadway conditions.

(35:32):
You know. Tom Gibbons says it fairly well, is that
we shouldn't even be calling it street crime. It should
be called parking lot crime because like ninety something percent
of it is done in parking lots.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, and there's another Tom Givens that's related to and
it's that the crimes are occurring during hours of low
light or times of darkness, not necessarily darkness in darkness,
it's just the time of darkness or something along those lines,
which I thought, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean
if it's in darkness, if bad guy can't see you

(36:07):
and you can't see them, how is there going to
be a crime.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Right, We're not running through the Ukrainian force with mvgs
on like it's just that this isn't the the operational
environment that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's not you know, it's not overseas combat.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
It's not you know, o'connas, MVG operations. It's none of that.
It's I'm going to the I'm going down to the
corner store. You know, the Dollar General is less than
a mile from my house, because my wife said that
we need X and I've got to go run out
and get it. You know. It's oh man, the you know,
the cat knocked over the litter box and we don't

(36:46):
have any litter. I need to go to Walmart and.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
To go further, to go further with that. Is there
any portion of that where you are out of your vehicle,
where you are in darkness, legitimate darkness, Probably not. There's
probably there's an artificial illumination all over all the point, Yeah,
to at least where you're able to see. Now, yes,
there are. And I know someone's going to listen and go, WHOA,

(37:10):
what about Yeah, I live in the country. Yes, there
are exceptions. If you're doing that, most likely you are
a smart person and you are carrying your artificial light
with you.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
You know. But the thing about having artificial light out
there is that it creates shadows, deep deep shadows under
certain conditions. You look at the front of my house,
all right. If you look at the very front of
my house, driveway just comes right up to the house.
My trash can is on the far left side, so

(37:41):
I can bring them down the driveway on Thursdays. But
right behind my trash can is where the left side
of my house goes back, and it's where the light
stops because my stockade fence sits back eighteen twenty feet
or so. And from that corner of the house house
down down the left side. Because the front of my

(38:04):
house is very well illuminated and the side of my
neighbor's house is very well illumined, there is a light
well right next to the front corner. And especially if
I pull my car up and my head lights are
bouncing off the house itself, seven feet off to the
left of my house, there is a light well that

(38:24):
I could hide Matt Lanfair, all six five of him,
very very easily. I'd never see him. I'd never seen
And that is a realistic lighting condition. I see it
in residences all over the place. People who have hedges,
people who have privacy fences. People who have you know,

(38:49):
security lighting that isn't ideally set up. They create these
light wells on their property, and those things happen out
in the real world too. Keep saying, you know the
Dollar General store up the road from me, the front
of it is lit up like Christmas Day, right, it's
all glass. There's you know, tons of led light or

(39:13):
you know fluorescent lighting cut pouring through the glass out
the front of it. But around the side there's like
one sodium vapor light at the back of the store.
That in between that light and the front of the
store is a big piece of parking lot and it's dark.
It's dark there. It's very difficult to see. And if

(39:34):
somebody is just on the other side of that corner
and they're back lit by that sodium vapor, you're not
going to see anything for the front of their body
as you come around that corner from a place of
brightness to this fairly deep shadow.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
And the fact that you just brought up sodium vapor
one of my favorite topics.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
I remember, didn't you share a picture?

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah with my daughter under one and I was using
different types of lights to show test out your lights,
because if you if you're around these your light isn't
going to work. It's not going to do a damn
thing in that environment.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
And people will be like, what are you? What are
you talking about?

Speaker 1 (40:15):
So one of my favorite things is tell people is
whatever your handheld is, whatever your weapon light is, take
the weapon light off your gun and go to those
areas that have these lights and look how it illuminates stuff.
And it's not going to It will reflect, but it
cannot illuminate because of that sodium vapor. And it's crazy

(40:36):
that it's overpowering your your light beam do a lack
of pandela.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, but people don't understand how light works, you know,
because light travels in two different ways. The travel travels
as a particle and it travels as a wave. And
the the analogy that I like to use about light,
especially when you start talking about oppositional lighting and photonic barriers,
specifically photonic barriers of light, i e. The you know

(41:04):
the bright headlights. You can't you not being able to
see past them. When light intersects with more light, it
diminishes in its path of the path of travel. You
think about it as water, right, And the way I
look at candella, uh, is if I take a water

(41:25):
hose and I turn the water hose on it and
I just hold it like this, the water is gonna
come out, and it's just gonna arc and it's gonna
be in a little rainbow of water coming out to the
end of the hose. It's going to go three or
four feet and it's all gonna puddle on the ground.
But if I take my thumb and I put it
over half of that water hose, now all of the
water is going to spray much, much, much further because
I have increased the amount of pressure behind it. So

(41:47):
you can think of candela as pressure, light pressure, its
ability to push through other stuff. I have not increased
the amount of light or the amount of water coming
out of that water hose. I haven't increased it. If anything,
I have decreased it a little bit. But I have
greatly increased the amount of pressure on that water, and
it has the ability to travel considerably further. And if

(42:10):
there were a shower or a curtain of water, it
would be able to penetrate that shower or curtain of
water and some of that water would still go through.
And sodium vapor is a very heavy light as it
is cast down and it has a tendency to mute
other lighting.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Sorry, absolutely as a little soliloquily that I go off.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
No apology because it's imperfectly such a Hopefully people listening
or watching, if they don't already have an appreciation for
this stuff, Hopefully it's going to start. So Walmart, we're
in Walmart. We have this ambient light and it's well,

(42:55):
let's see here. Those are at least I think over
by where I live. I think it's sodium vapor. Maybe not,
And at least it's somewhere. I'm seeing them everywhere, And
what a great place to go and test out your stuff.
And so with those heavy shadows as you discussed, and

(43:15):
I necessarily see the front of someone, well, if I
can't see the front, can I necessarily see if they're
a threat? Well, a light with high candela that can
punch through whatever that ambient light is can help.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
YEP.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Another condition. So you brought up your Dollar store, so
you're shopping in that brightly lit area and you leave
into a darker area. Your eyes are going to need
to adjust eventually. Handheld can help. It's not going to
help you adjust, but it's going to help you see

(43:51):
better when you go into the darker environment. So many
uses for this. The backlighting thing. Backlighting thing is really
is really.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
The thing that most people don't consider at all when considering,
you know, especially pocket lighting. Because if I am standing
in front of, you know, my dollar store, and you're
you're approaching me, and you're looking at this bright light
of the dollar store, all I am is a silhouette

(44:23):
to you. You can't see where my hands are, what
my hands are doing in front, because all that light
is coming out from behind me. I'm effectively just a shadow.
And being able to identify what I am, what's in
my hands, who I'm looking at, that kind of thing

(44:45):
that can be important, you know, especially if you are
somebody who just kind of inherently looks like food. That's
not a problem with you, and I kind of run
into very frequently. Yeah, But if it's you know, my wife,
you know she's short, any bitty that that's that's that's

(45:10):
an issue that bears some necessity. And you you you
made mentioned of this, and so I might as well
address it. How you use this tool right here when
it comes to figuring out is this person a threat?
Immediately blasting somebody in the face with you know, fifty

(45:33):
sixty seventy eighty thousand candela is a sure way to
make somebody angry. I know because I do it in uniform.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
I rarely do that. I purposely avoid doing that unless
I absolutely have to. Off duty, I especially avoid that
unless I have to.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
And that's and that's kind of where I came up
with this, this idea. I was bouncing it around off
of some some fellow members of Apache, and what we
kind of came up with together, uh was when we're
addressing potential problems, uh is feet wiste face, just shining

(46:15):
a light off somebody's feet, especially a high powered high
candle of high loom and light. You know, some look
a mod light. I'll plug my buddy Jean Malcoff here.
The Malcoff lights are hugely slept on, absolutely fantastic pocket light.
If you're utilizing something like that, you get enough spill

(46:42):
and you get enough reflection off off the pavement to
see hands and even potentially a little bit of facial
expression in under the vast majority of lighting conditions. Uh.
If there, if, if it becomes something concerning, then elevating

(47:03):
that to a waste level with any kind of any
kind of quality flashlight at all, is going to illuminate
the entire person. It's going to give you a really
good idea of their intent and their capabilities, because you're
going to be able to read their body language, you're
going to be able to read their facial expression. But
it isn't one of those inherently rude things, because that's

(47:27):
what shining and bright light in somebody's faces it's rude,
you know. It's it's the flashlight equivalent of throwing up
a middle finger at somebody. It's it's rude. But that light,
that light to the face, if especially if it is close,
fairly close and sudden, has the advantage of literally stopping

(47:50):
somebody in their tracks. Uh, and other things. An other
thing that human beings naturally do when we chain lighting
conditions immediately, if we go from bright to dark or
dark to bright, our eyes do not adjust instantaneously. As
everybody is well aware, and enough people have had this

(48:14):
occur to them that I like to draw the parallel.
I want you to imagine that you're in your high
school gymnasium, You're the only person in there. You're walking
across an empty gymnasium floor on your way out the door.
You're halfway through and boom, somebody cuts the breakers to
the lights and all those heavy sodium vapor lights instantly

(48:36):
shut off. What do you do.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Stopping? As sets you.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Stop walking, you will instantly stop walking. Now, is there
all of a sudden, a bunch of pea gravel or
a set of stairs in front of you, or you
on a basketball court. You're on a basketball court, but
your natural human inclination is I don't know exactly what
is in front of me. We collect like ninety percent
of our environmental information visually, and when you take that

(49:05):
visual information away from us, our brains don't like it,
so we stop. We instantly stop. Same thing if you
have dark adapted vision. I actually did this to one
of my coworkers the other day who's sitting in his
office and I don't I don't shine in his boots
or whatever. I walked by and I saw him and

(49:26):
I was like, hey man, and he looked up like
this and just him right in the face with the
light and he just dropped what was in his hands,
went like this, and they couldn't see for forty seconds.
It's a it's an incredibly powerful tool. It's very very powerful.

(49:46):
And I can't count the number of times that on
the job that I have interrupted somebody doing something that
maybe they weren't supposed to be doing, or at least
that they were semi self conscious about. And then all
of a sudden, you know, young control officer Dan Brady's like,
hey man, and they just freeze. They freeze because it's unexpected.

(50:10):
And as a change in their lighting can be their
their ability to gather information, and that that bleaching of
their rods and cones that happens under that direct assault
from from a very bright light. It takes a human
being a little bit to adapt that and it really
gives you, as the concealed carrier, the defensively oriented citizen,

(50:31):
however you want to say that, it gives you an
enormous advantage.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
What a great way if you needed to flee, just
create that little.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, you create that that that little that short stop,
and you go, this is not a situation I want
to be a part of. And you engage the Nike
defense and you just turn them.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah. One thing that I've read, it's the idea that well,
it's people critical of the idea of p i D
identifying your threat. When we're talking about that, it's not Hey,
that's Dan Brady, his social is this this, this is
his blood type, this is his address. No, this is

(51:13):
an assessment to determine is this personal threat? That is
all That is the only thing I'm worried about. What
are they doing is this? Does this involve me?

Speaker 2 (51:23):
No?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Okay, continue on? Does this involve me? Okay? Why are
they doing this? What's what's the next step? That's that's
the whole p I D threat assessment. That's that's the
only thing we're talking about. So, yeah, it's not finding
out their personal details.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Yeah. And if if anybody who is listening to this
and they have not read the book The Gift of
Fear by Gavin de Becker, you need to do yourself
a favor and you need to read that book. It
is an incredibly instructive book on predatory criminal violence. It's

(52:03):
it's very very helpful in assessing stuff like that. And
that kind of leads into where we're talking about p
I D. We we ignore, like our brains just filter
out an enormous percentage of the data that comes through
our eyeballs and into our ears. Our brain just doesn't

(52:24):
pay attention to it at all. And it's because we can't.
We don't have the brain processing power to analyze everything
that is occurring in our environment unless we're thinking about
that thing or we have a specific reason to address
that thing. So when I'm walking into the into into

(52:48):
the Walmart at night to go get a cat litter,
h I'm only peripherally aware of the people who are
coming out of of Walmart. Well, Dan, you should be.
You should be scanning and assessing everybody.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
You should be.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
That's that's not what That's not what we do. That's
not what human beings do. And anybody who says that
they do that is absolutely full of shit. You don't
have the mental bandwidth to be, you know, condition orange
focused on each human being. You know, what we do
do is we are aware of stuff. We we become

(53:28):
aware of stuff that is unusual. We become we become
aware of things that fall outside the norm of what
we are used to seeing. If you think about traffic
right on two lane road, right with a with a
dotted line or a solid line and a dotted line
going going down the road, there's cars coming at you

(53:50):
in opposite direction all the time, and you're vaguely aware
of that fact that they are over there. You're separated
by a literally a painted line, and a social construct
is the only thing separating you. But if somebody makes
the tiniest little swerve, if they're tires five or six

(54:12):
inches over that line, that draws your attention just like that.
That is what we do with potentially threatening behavior too.
If your face isn't in your phone, yeah, that's one.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Of my notes. And there are two negatives to that,
at least two negatives.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I have to written that, at least two negatives, right
number one. If you've got your phone right here, uh
there's you know that that fairly bright light is right
there in your face and it is doing some of
that bleaching of your rods and cones, so that and
you know, your your focus is here, You're you're just

(54:59):
you're tracked and so you know, I'm sure you have
heard this as well, Officer. I don't know. He appeared out.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Of nowhere, out of nowhere, yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Yeah, he apparently you got robbed by David Copperfield. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Chris Angel was your your mugg No, they saw that
you were distracted not paying any attention whatsoever, and you're
you know, your nine hundred dollars coach handbag was barely
hanging onto your elbow, and they figured out, you know what,

(55:30):
I bet you I can pull on that for a rock.
But if you're at least open, if you're visually open,
and you're semi aware, you begin to pick up on
social cues that indicate something other than normal human behavior,

(55:51):
predatory behavior, if you will. And it is when your
focus gets drawn to that individual or group of individuals
that that this comes in real, real handy for two
major reasons. The way I look at it. Number one
is you can identify what kind of problem that is.

(56:12):
And number two, you can often, very often deselect yourself
from the criminal prevation process because that is a process.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Well, with that in mind, also, how many people, well,
who's associated with Karen flashlights? So Rando walking down the
street and breaks out the flashlight. Oh, that might pick cop.
I don't want to mess with that person.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, it just it. I look at this more than
anything else as a threat identification and criminal deselection tool
as well as an intermediate force option.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
You know, and well, and it's also utilitarian it's so helpful,
so useful. I dropped my keys there they are. Don't
break out my phone, no, nope, keep it charged.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, and now it's not even like you're burning through
two and a half dollars one two three A batteries. Right,
you got an eighteen three fifty AR and eighteen six
fifty rechargeable. You know, if you're if you're halfway intelligent,
you've got you know, four to six of them kicking around,
you know, if you're not a complete light nerd, and
you have tons and tons and tons of them, and

(57:35):
it's it's it's not it's extremely cost effective in that
regard as a very very utilitarian tool.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Heck, yeah, if you don't mind, I'm going to have
a break of one minute and thirty two seconds for
some ads. Yep, because where we're at right now. So
Dan and I were talking about this, and I said,
I think we're going to do something a little different.
I don't know if this is going to be a podcast.
This is a podcast, absolutely, this is the Dan Brady episode.

(58:05):
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(01:00:00):
talking about low light and this is truly one of
my favorite topics and I still have one, two, three,
four subtopics along these same lines that we need to
we need to cover.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
All Right, Well, I've I've kind of monologued for a
little bit here and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
There, so we this is this is I'm enjoying this.
So we talked about overall light use. So we're talking
about the handhelds. Let's talk about the what are we
looking for? What? Uh, what are the what are the uh,
what are the things we're looking for? Where do we

(01:00:42):
want to be putting the light? So for me, I
have basically I want to I'm traveling aid on foot,
going from point A to point B. If there are
dark areas, that might be some form of an ambush
or not. Not that I'm not that I think I'm
getting ambushed, but up until where there could be an ambush,

(01:01:02):
quick flash of light. Hey there's nothing there, I can
go by without any problem. If there's a group of people,
quick flash of light potentially, but also at the same time,
it also works for navigation. Local University has these paths
with some pseudo lit but it's still nice to you

(01:01:23):
hear a noise and oh that's all it is. And
I don't need to keep it on at all times.
So keeping it on is doing two things. It's killing
my battery faster, but also it is basically projecting or
it's telegraphing everything that I'm doing. And if all I
need is a quick blast of light, see okay, that's clear,
move to that area, or blast a light there, I'm

(01:01:45):
going to move to this area. I don't need to
keep it on and tell everyone, Hey, this is my
next projected area. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah,
you brought.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Up you brought up a really good point with the
college campuses, right, I myself did not attend a four
year learning institution. Well I guess I did, but it
was called the Marine Corps, not a university. I did, however,
as a young marine, visit a lot of college campuses

(01:02:20):
for some reasons. And most of those reasons were females,
and so yeah, there's social reasons. And what I did
notice there is a lot of those walking paths were
really poorly lit. They had some really deep shadows, you know,
and during the day it looked real nice, very park es,

(01:02:43):
very very very London gardens, sort of sort of ascetic, right,
but at night they're really poorly lit, and they've got
those little call boxes every so often with the little
blue lights on. Uh you know, so you could you know,
hit them in an emergency and you know, some can

(01:03:05):
then wait, some campus security kid who made eight bucks
an hour would come by in a golf cart. But
you know that that is a lighting condition that you know,
It's not something I run across every day, but I
could definitely see being an area of potential predation, So

(01:03:25):
how do how do I use it? And under those circumstances. Yeah,
that's that's pretty close to ideal on how to use
that of just being like what's that over there? Being yep,
I can see everything for one hundred yards. Good again,
removing yourself from that criminal selection process, uh, via just

(01:03:49):
having a light in your hand. People are like, oh,
I don't want to look like a weirdo, like carrying
a flashlight around. How much of that can you see?

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah? Not much?

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Like it doesn't look like anything, right, And you know,
if I'm under those circumstances, I can literally just walk
around do do do doo doo doo. I'm just walking
and I have a super bright flashlight in this hand
and it can of pepper spray in this hand, and
I just look like I'm just walking down the down

(01:04:24):
the sidewalk. I could have him in my my hoodie
pocket like this. Yeah, and I'm I'm literally ready for
anything except you know, Robert De Niro al Pacino heat
level gunfight.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Like yeah, and what hand is that flashlight in?

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Oh, this is my non dominant hand. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Yeah, for a reason, Yeah, because because.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
If I do need something, right, if I if I
don't need pepper spray, and I do need a gun,
then obviously to draw my gun, I'm to need my
dominant hand. I need to possibly yeah, but I may
I may need to be illumina meant you know, as
I said earlier, you know something north of ninety percent
of our environmental information is gathered via our eyes. And

(01:05:16):
when we use our flashlight and we identify this, you know,
two or three wayward youths who are hanging out by
this park bench, who now have locked eyes with us,
and they're making their way here. I'm not I'm very
very unlikely to a stop looking at those people. I'm

(01:05:42):
very very unlikely to stop looking at those people. And
B since I am in a compromised lighting condition, I'm
also highly unlikely to turn my light off dominate control.
I'm going to want to control my lighting condition to
allow my eyes. I used to gather all the required
information and start that decision making process of what tool

(01:06:06):
do I need to fix this issue?

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
And what information are they getting as you're shining light
on them? And that and that's that's all they get
as a light, that's all I can see that that
is that that That's that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
You not only with with a quality handheld with high
loom and count and high candele account, you are not
only able to penetrate those photonic barriers that exist in
those compromised lighting conditions that exist in our everyday world.
You're now creating a photonic barrier of your own for
you to utilize. You are you? You know, like if

(01:06:44):
for those who are watching this, if I do that,
you can no longer see anything. It is just a
white sheet in.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
What happened on your camera?

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Right that that is when when I when I shine
my flashlight at the camera, the exact same thing happens
to your eyes when you get hit. You know, this
is a mod light. This is the PLHV two heads.
So this is I think like sixty eight thousand candela
something along those lines. People people do asking classes like

(01:07:16):
what's what's like the minimum candel account for a defensive
oriented flashlight? And I said, I usually say that you
truly useful defensive Candela starts at around twenty twenty thousand.
The stream streamlight HLX handheld flashlight a thousand lumens and
pushes I want to say twenty or twenty two thousand
candella something around there and pretty pretty useful. One hundred

(01:07:39):
ish dollar flashlight my favorite. Yeah, go to the Malcoff.
That's pushing I want to say, like fifty five fifty
six thousand candela. But the thing I like about the
Malkoffs is the run time. The run time on these
and the lack of drop in output. That's what I
really like about those.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Well, and that's that's something that from the old lumenhars,
the whole misunderstanding of all that. So I'm running OKW
OKW that's my favorite lower lumen though it's not a
thousand women well at least the ones I'm running. My
hog is different. But that's a light.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
That's a light. That's a light, that's light.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
But with the OKW handhelds that are running the eighteen
six fifties or eighteen three fifties, the lumens are fairly low.
And you look at that and go, oh man, check
out the candle candela. That's some serious horsepower and that's
punching through schools. I couldn't say that on YouTube, by
the way. Yeah, I've I've seen several police officers. If

(01:08:49):
you can imagine this with the harbor phrase specials that
are like three three thousand lumen advertised lumens and it
gives about this bar.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
It doesn't push out at all this it's got this
very wide angle reflector in it, and it floods a
very decent size area in terms of the cone of light.
It definitely puts out a large amount of of of
light for a short distance. But it's not dominating, not

(01:09:21):
at all, not at all. That's you know that that
is by definition flood lighting. Uh. And for a defensive use,
light is not something.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
That's, if anything, that's evening out the playing field. Yeah,
where the where the your your potential threats aren't as
affected and you might be illuminating yourself accidentally just from
the pierced bill.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Maybe maybe a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
I sinned it. It happens, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
What else you got?

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Phone lights? Not for outdoors use unless you are in
an environment where you know what, I just need I
just need a light to see something. I'm not using
it to search. I'm not using it to p I
d'd identify people, because that's what this guy's for home.
Might I use in the house all the time?

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
God?

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Oh, that's that's all.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
This This light the iPhone light. This is for in
the movie theater and you drop your your candy bag
or your kid's candy bag or something like that, and
you don't want to, you know, reflect, you know, a
gazillion candela throughout the movie theater and draw a lot
of attention to yourself. That's what that's what this is for.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
This is for I dropped my keys in my own
house at four point thirty in the morning, when you know,
my wife and my kids are still asleep. Uh, and
I don't need to just light the entire place up.
That's what that's what this is for. It's for extremely
controlled environment and very very minimal light light needs. That's

(01:11:03):
that's what that's for.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
So you talked a little bit about selection. I don't
I can't say what how much the malcovs are. I
can say mod lights it's not inexpensive. Mod lights are
an investment. I am a big fan of basically putting
these on rifles, but definitely I really appreciate having these

(01:11:25):
and handheld form with these. I have them. I actually
have them in my pocket at all times, and they
are so accessible if I'm going through an area, if
I'm in a parking lot, and it's night time, this
might already be in my hand even if I don't
need it, it's already there, just out of habit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
People comment about the glow tape. It's if I drop it,
that's all. And typically if it's in a pocket.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
I'm not giving away my position. It's just handy and
if it drops on, if I drop it on something
that's dark, this glowy contrast helps me find it. But
I think i've I've had this specific one well since
the I guess they're the Gen twos came out, but
I have some of the older ones that the very
very first ones. Wonderful investment, absolute wonderful investment if you can,

(01:12:16):
if you can afford to drop that kind of coin
a on a good quality handheld lad light doesn't pay me.
I just really, genuinely, I really like their products. They
make good stuff with excellent output. As you pointed out,
the rechargeables the eighteen six fifties, so the I'll just

(01:12:36):
take out the battery right now, so that's an eighteen
six fifty rechargeable. The three fifties are about half the
size and they're just a slightly slightly larger than a
CR one T three Alpha, so for the about half
the battery battery run time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
So for the viewers, both of them are here. So
the sizing here is yeah, just a little over half
the half the height on them. The sizing is in millimeters,
so they're they're they're eighteen millimeters in diameter across this way,

(01:13:20):
and then the six fifties or sixty five millimeters up
and down, and the three fifties or thirty five millimeters
up and down. So that that's that's where they get
the numbers from the Yeah, the battery capacity for the
three fifties is about about half and the drivers on

(01:13:43):
them in the lights will usually drain sometime between between
two and three times as fast as at the eighteen
three fifties or eighteen six fifties. I should say, Yeah,
the the mod lights are there. They're pricey. They they
definitely are, and they're also pretty durable though, and this

(01:14:05):
is yeah, they they take a beating and they do
the malcoffs. I'm I'm not I'm not sponsored by Malcoff.
You know, a couple of us at a patch you
have a you know, a passable relationship with with Gene
at Malcoff. But the thing that I really like about

(01:14:25):
the durability, uh, the malcoffs are actually potted. The electronics
in there are actually potted. Potting is a electronics safe
epoxy that that helps with some of the durability. And
they're about about two thirds the price of the mod
lights get give give or take there there I wouldn't

(01:14:48):
say exactly budget friendly, but if you're not looking at
dropping three bills on a flashlight and mod light, maybe
a place where go if you're really really budget conscious,
stream light HLX right around one hundred dollars. A lot
of people are, and I was to I'm not I'm

(01:15:11):
not casting any any native shade on anyone. A lot
of people are wowed by lots and lots of features
in a flashlight.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Good, good topic and the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
The feature rich flashlights have. They got two things really
that go against them in my view. Number one, most
of them are not true high candela flashlights. They don't
usually push light really hard. Some of them will have

(01:15:52):
you know, seven thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand candela when
they're at the you know, eighteen hundred lumin mark. They're
more utility flashlights. There's something you use in your backyard
when it's you know, this time of year and it's dark,
and you got to put you know, like me, you
got to put your chickens away and whatever else. Companies

(01:16:14):
like UH like Phoenix. Phoenix makes a lot of flashlights
F E, N I X and a lot of those
they look on Amazon to be uh, a quality option
with a lot of it's got I don't know, six
or seven modes to it, pushed, a lot of lumens,

(01:16:36):
it's rechargeable, it's got a strobe, it's blah blah blah
blah at all these different things. When you use one
of these defensively and you press that rear button because
you have something that is concerning you, you want all
of the lumens and all of the candela. You do

(01:16:58):
not want it to come on in moonlight light mode
that is, you know, I'm reading a book next to
my wife in bed mode level of light. That's not
It's not what you want. You want a pocket sun
that is just shining forth truth onto whatever you need

(01:17:20):
it to shine. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
So there I was, as a young patrol officer with
one of these newer flashlights that took one two, three batteries.
It appeared to have great output, and it had all
these different features. It was feature rich. And I was
on a traffic stop with my light in my hand,
shining into the driver compartment of speaking to a speaking

(01:17:43):
to a driver for some reason, I don't remember why,
And as I'm speaking to this person, my light is
getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Because you were holding it down. Oops.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
I was on the wrong setting. My mod lights are
on and off, and there's a momentary if you just
supply pressure and then if I pressure all the way
through to the clickie, it stays on. That's all I
want on this. That being said, there is absolutely a
time and place. Okay, So I like flashlights, I like trinkets,
I like toys. Is the brand wubin I've seen it

(01:18:17):
on Facebook and I thought, yeah, try it out w
wub Yeah yep, Feature rich yep.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
And you know what.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
This is great for an emergency light in my house,
power goes out, it takes rechargeable eighteen six fifties. It's
a fun light. My son enjoys it. That's all that matters.
And it has it has some cool features to it.
But am I am I using this tactically. Oh no, no,
not at all.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
Yeah. Lights are lights are cool, Lights are fun, and
I have a ton of different ones. One of my
favorite little kind of emergency utility lights is made by
a company called Lumen Top and it is there their
double A two point zero what the double A two
point oh tool is what it is. Market is it's

(01:19:09):
like twenty three dollars on Amazon, and it doesn't take
takes double A batteries. There's a rechargeable it also takes
that is about the same size, but fourteen five hundred
for chargeable is what it is. And the when Hurricane
Florence came through here in twenty eighteen knocked out power

(01:19:29):
for I don't know how long it was, it was
several days, it was we were without power for several days.
My wife had taken the kids out of state. So
I was just kind of here by my lonesome, and
you know, I did. I've worked a whole bunch, but
when I wasn't at work and I was at home,
I had no power options available to me. I didn't

(01:19:50):
have a generator at the time, I didn't have anything. So,
you know, I'm a guy who does like to read,
so I took my little lumen top and I turned
it on the middle now one of the lower settings,
and it has a flat rear to it so it'll
table stand. And I used that same double a battery
for like three or four nights of reading. I mean, yeah,

(01:20:14):
it's it was a cool and I've got one and
it stays in my bag that I carry with me
all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
I've got one in there full time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
I've used that to change blown out tire on the
side of the road at three o'clock in the morning.
You know. I used it to find all kinds of
stuff and great, but it is not a defensive tool.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Yeah, yeah, so one of the things I was doing also,
So I wound up purchasing two of these wobans and
it has a pretty pefty clip on it, and so
I put it on my external vest at work. And yep,
to a have a shoulder light. Not tactical at all.
It's for if I have to fill out a form
or if I'm on a search, I have that light

(01:20:57):
available to me. That's just kind of fun. Explorer note
taking on field interviews.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
Having Appel shining down absolutely. I think when I was
still on Patrol one two three four I had, I
think I had. I had five or six flashlights with me,
h that for different things. You know, I had my

(01:21:23):
traffic directing flashlight and my patrol bag. I had my
my standard UH issue Stinger flashlight on my patrol belt.
I had my my pocket flashlight, my mod light or
malcoff or whatever I was carrying at the time in
my pocket, weapon light on my pistol, weapon light on

(01:21:44):
my rifle. Just all of the lights, all of the time.
And you know, yes, I am a light nerd. I
get it. But there is a huge difference between a
utilitarian tool and a defensive tool. You don't can and
you get by with one. Sure, under some circumstances you

(01:22:04):
can a few of these multimodal lights. Now, the the
multi mode things will be on the side of the
light near the head and if you press the rear
button that is a defense that is a default defensive
light and put all the womans all the candela. I

(01:22:26):
don't know which models those are off the top of
my head, but I have seen a couple of those,
and under those circumstances, yeah, that's probably okay if you're
extremely budget tight. I get it. But the way I
kind of look at that is from a defensive standpoint.

(01:22:51):
I want something that will work all the time, like
as close to one hundred percent as I can get.
You know, will a pocket revolver get me through most
potential deadly forced threats? Yeah? It will, right? Will a
pocket revolver be sufficient for a forty five yard food

(01:23:15):
court shot at the mall?

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Not my first choice?

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Probably not my first choice. I probably want, you know,
a modern striking fired semi auto or a twenty eleven
with a red dotter something, something that is easy to
shoot well under high stress. Same kind of thing goes light.
Do I want to press a button and have moonlight mode?
Come on? No, I don't. Is it possible I could

(01:23:41):
cycle through and get to the right one, And yes,
it's possible. I just I don't. I don't want to
overly complicate something under those circumstances.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
A men, that's the way I look at that. I agree,
I agree, and it's said it. I'll say it again.
It's it's a it's a worthwhile investment to get a
good defensive light.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
YEP.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
I agree. Car it with you, carry it with you everywhere,
even if you travel. Make sure it's with you. This
gets through TSA without any problem. This is with a theorem,
loop and clip.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
Just gonna say that is that this had this. This
traveled with me to Alaska. Uh, it came through TSA
with me. It came with me onto the cruise ship
in Alaska back in October. I had it with me
one hundred percent of the time. I was never without it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
Well, my dad gives an example. So he's also a
fan of carrying a light with him at all times
as well. And he told me a story of Yeah,
he went to the bathroom and the the bathroom light
was on a censor and it went out. Well, that sucks,
So he just turns on his light and continues whatever
he's doing. It's a and so we can use this. Yeah,

(01:25:02):
this is a tactical light or whatever. We can use
it for utilitarian purposes. Doesn't work as well the other way. Additionally,
I can use this in manners where I can reduce
the output by just using my hand in different ways
and mute the light a little, not for very long,
but get hot unless it Yeah, and the dead of
winner it's great. It warms up your hands. I have

(01:25:29):
three more topics, all right, as we were speaking, some
got added.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
This.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
So this isn't necessarily completely white light related or defensive
or anything like that, but it's more of in conjunction
with light irons versus red dot. I remember that came up.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
It did, and there is that. It's something I addressed
in class. There is is some potential, especially with red dots,
of of washing out your own your own aiming module, right,
especially if you're one of those guys who tends to

(01:26:16):
carry your dot on a on a dimmer setting. H
I'm not one of those guys. I think, Uh, I
think my s ros stay on. I think seven of eight.
I think that's where they are almost all the time,
unless I'm like zeroing them or something. Now, for this,
this is gonna be difficult for the for folks who

(01:26:38):
are listening to this and not not watching. So when
I am utilizing and let's actually let's use my VP
insense that doesn't have a light on it. My specific
technique for shooting, specifically shooting while utilizing a handheld light,

(01:27:03):
is kind of a combination of a neck index for
the light and Craig Douglas's vertical elbow shield. It has
some defensive utility there But the thing that I do
is I tend to take the meat of the meat

(01:27:25):
of my thumb right here and anchor that to my
temple right and that allows my thumb to activate deactivate
my flashlight. And it has a tendency to put my
light on whatever I am looking at, but it doesn't.
It goes over the top of my operatic rather than

(01:27:48):
into my optic and that I have seen work very
very well for a huge variety of students of both
hands and you know, both dominant eyes. It does tend
to work very well with iron sights. It works extremely

(01:28:08):
well because the spill of that light illuminates your sights
and it really tends to highlight them as a as
a silhouette against whatever you are aiming it at.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
It works.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
It works for both irons and red dots very very well.
And like I said, defensively, it has a significant amount
of utility to be here my offside. Yes, it does
hinder some of my peripheral vision, but if I'm threat
focused in a low light environment, I'm just looking at
what the hotspot of my light is illuminating. Anyway, It's

(01:28:49):
this is not a way I would search or anything
else with that but when I am under duress, I'm
under threat anchoring it here and you ualizing it to
to come over the top of my gun. I have
found to be highly, highly useful. I've watched I don't

(01:29:11):
know how many Aaron Cowen videos and watched him flip
flip it with the theorem and use it incredibly effectively.
If you are willing to put Aaron Cowen levels of
repetition into developing that school, God be with you. I'm
one hundred percent behind that as a technique if you're

(01:29:34):
willing to put that time in. But let's be honest,
Aaron does that more than any other human being on
planet Earth. He makes it look really really good and
on all of his video content, and it is a
fairly simple technique. But simple ain't easy, you know, especially

(01:30:00):
under threat. If you're going to put in one hundred
thousand reps in the next two years, do it, get
after it. I highly highly encourage it. If you're not
going to do that, I think the way that the
the technique I use, the technique I teach, I think

(01:30:22):
has the highest amount of utility and highest rate of
success of all the handheld flashlight techniques I've used.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
The thing I've verged with handheld use with firearms not rifles.
That's a whole another ballgame which I've had to do.
But the biggest thing for me was to show, not
only show students, but explain to them. Look, you got
to be proficient and have an under a basic understanding
and application of several things, because whatever your favorite is,

(01:30:59):
it won't all be the thing. You need to have
a B plan, you need to have potentially a C plan.
I especially appreciate what you've said about of course I
don't have a red dot gun in front of me.
I do well, I have a bunch behind me. But
I especially I appreciate what you said about using the
handheld and getting that reflection off that glass, because that

(01:31:19):
is a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
And so if you're always doing that neck index and
you're and you're illuminating, and you're and that light's bouncing
right back at you, okay, you're going to need to
adjust do something else, doesn't matter what it is. An
additional thing also is initially when we're using our lights,
we're determining, okay, is there a threat? Am I justified

(01:31:43):
in using deadly force? Once I've made that determination, okay,
I need deadly force. I don't necessarily as long as
I'm illuminating the person, I don't necessarily need the hot
spot to be center mass. It can be down like this,
and if I'm able to see my threat still and
press press the trigger and have shots effectively on target,
I don't need the hotspot necessarily on the person as

(01:32:06):
long as that light is illuminating threat and I can
and I can see, oh yeah there's still a threat.
Press press, press until they're no longer a threat. Yeah.
Those those are the couple of things that I've picked
up through the years because I had I've had officers
that get so wrapped around the axle, not the ankle
or the ankle, but wrapped around the axle that whatever

(01:32:30):
whatever thing that there, whatever method they're using, the light
has to be perfectly centered on that target before I
can shoot.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
No, can you see it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
Can you see your sights? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
Okay? Do what do?

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
What the next step is? When? And what was it?

Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
There's a term for that. Yeah, it doesn't need to
be perfect. Take the shot when it's acceptable.

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
Yeah. Perfection is the enemy of good myth. There you go,
there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
And also for me with my red dot. Basically, what
I do is so I have I'm running either shirt
prior the new hotness or mod lights, and I find
a white wall, turn on that light and bring my
brightness up on the dot until I until I can
see it, and then that's where it stays, and then

(01:33:22):
change battery on that red dot. And most of the
time what I find is that brightness is brighter than
anything I'm seeing outside.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
Yeah, I'll agree with that. I have yet to wash
out one of my one of my red dots RMR
sro house on five O eight five O nine T
five O seven. I've used most of them at one
point or another. I do need to try some of
the vortexes. I've heard some pretty good things on the vortexes.

(01:33:52):
I haven't tried any of those yet.

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
But well there's more to that too though, because versely then, okay,
what if I'm in a in a condition with ambient
light and my my dot is now blooming. Okay, put
the center of the bloom where you need to shoot.
You can if you're if your eyesight is work functional,

(01:34:15):
you can still see where the dot is even if
it's blooming. And put the dot where you need to
shoot it because you still have both eyes are functional.
They should be hopefully, I'm sure Dan Grenshaw.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
Yeah, yeah, Or you know, my buddy Mohammed Altman, he's
he's also a cyclops.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
But they're among us.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
They they are among us.

Speaker 3 (01:34:40):
But the.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Yeah, if you're if your red dot is sitting on
one of the higher brightness settings, it is highly improbable
that your light is going to wash it out if
unless you aim the center of that being directly into
the glass, it bounces back at you. So and these

(01:35:05):
are you know, it's fine to be like, oh yeah,
that technique sounds like it would work. Go dry fire
it like a whole bunch, yeah, and go through multiples.
Figure out what you like and practice it and practice
the stuff you don't like. You know, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):
Because okay, think about it too. Also, even on the job,
I might want to move out my light somewhere else,
so I'm using the light to bounce off a wall
or something to illuminate a different angle because direct illumination
may not be functional. So I need to be familiar
with how this guy works, yep. But also I need
to be good with one handed shooting. That's that's crazy,

(01:35:47):
crazy talk, crazy talk. Last topic cons imports in low light,
and that was an Aaron Cown video.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
Yeah, and uh, just a Matier post from recently. Look,
I'm not a comps imports guy. I I I've shot
a bunch of them. I just I don't. I don't
think at my level of shooting, which is not super

(01:36:19):
super high, We're friends with lots of people who shoot
way better than I do. I just I'm not getting
anything extra out of that point zero five split time
that a port or a comp might be pushing my
muscle back down to you know, going from a seventeen

(01:36:43):
split to a twelve. It just it just doesn't interest me.
It just doesn't interest me at all. The mythologies around
comps and ports, though, I find to be disingenuous, uh
and generally pushed by internet lore more than anything else.

(01:37:06):
The first argument that I get on comps imports is, well,
what if you got to shoot from retention and it's
right up under your face, It's gonna burn your face off.
I've shot a bunch of different comps imports from a
thumb pectoral index. Is it pleasant? No? Is it going

(01:37:27):
to blind me?

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:37:30):
It's it's it's loud, and there's a little extra puff
on my face. I just I just don't care comps
imports in compromised lighting condition, people seem to have this
idea that they are going to be in pitch black

(01:37:55):
and it's going to be the equivalent of touching off
of five hundred Smith and Wesson magnum out of a
four and a half inch barrel, and there's going to
be this, you know, three and a half or four
foot long, eighteen inch diameter flame that exists in time
for half or three quarters of a second of powder burn.

(01:38:17):
It's that it's just untrue. If I take a modern
port done by any of the really competent CNC shops
that are around, shout out to my guy Jeff at
Pepu CNC, Jeff Whitaker's he's awesome and does really really

(01:38:38):
great work.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Modern ports just they're not putting out that kind of
that kind of light.

Speaker 2 (01:38:45):
They're just not. And the even the the.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
Ignited powder that does exist.

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
Within the plane of your views, it's literally there for
like er point one or point two seconds. It's less
than the amount of time it takes to blink your eyes,
and it is it's not sufficient enough. It is simple scientifically,
it is not sufficient enough to bleach the rods and

(01:39:13):
cones in your eye to create that that night blindness,
right if you're in your dark adapted vision.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
But even if it was, even if it was, here
comes a good part.

Speaker 2 (01:39:29):
Two. It this gets me so frustrated. Yep, even if
it was, what the fuck are you shooting at? Yes,
because if you have either a flashlight in your hand
and you're illuminating illuminating your threat, that is a viable,

(01:39:49):
deadly forced threat, and you are making that decision to shoot,
or you're using a weapon mounted light because you're in
a home defense context and it's dark inside your house.
Either the barrel of that gun is illuminated from behind

(01:40:11):
the gun with a handheld flashlight, or it is illuminated
from under the gun with a weapon mounted light. The
contrast between a high illumine high candela defensive light, weapon
mounted or not, and the muzzle flash from any port

(01:40:31):
or any comp that I am aware that exists is unnoticeable.
So stop it with that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
Stop it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
It's just not a thing. I didn't come to this
conclusion by imagining these things. I've done this for twenty
five years, and I have shown everything I can imagine
in a variety of lighting conditions. And yes, I've shot
a four to fifty four Castle at night. I've shot

(01:41:10):
a five hundred Smith and lesson at night. And if
I'm using another lighting source, it doesn't do anything to
my vision nothing, that's right. Nothing, it doesn't. And unless
you're in the pitch black of an indoor range that

(01:41:31):
has all of the lighting off and you have I
don't know, a twelve and a half inch barreled full
auto fal the muscle flash is not gonna do anything
to your vision nothing, it's not. So stop it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
The concussion a little though, Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
Yeah, the concussion is going to eat you up. And
hopefully you're not doing that when it's an occupied engin
you have people if you're right and your that's just
that's just rude.

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
That's mean. You brought up something also that I forgot
to bring up earlier, and that was the role of
a weapon light with a home defense weapon. Yeah, on
a home defense pistol. Yeah. Yeah, if you were you
only have one gun and that is your home gun,
that's your carry gun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
Absolutely, I'm all about it. You know, I'm several of
my good friends, uh you know, Chris Bean among them
have weapon mounted lights. Why mostly holster utility that snood light,
you know, the having have a floodlight holster. You know,

(01:42:47):
I've got two of them right here. Yeah, the the
original and and and the second one. And uh, if
you're somebody who switches guns on a fairly regular basis,
you're not buying new holsters all the time because that

(01:43:09):
key is off the light, not the gun. So but
they're there. That's the reason. They have a reason, a
logical reason behind utilizing that. My buddy Mohammed's the exact
same way. Uh, he uses you know, uses a flood light.
It's a great holster. It's a great, great way to

(01:43:30):
just be like, yeah, you know, I'm done with this gun,
I want to try this gun whatever. All right, I
throw my flesh light on there. I already have a
holster set up for it. It's it's not a big deal.
So if you're one of those folks who is budget
limited or you are socially limited for whatever reason, you
know your spouse doesn't like guns. So you know, one

(01:43:52):
pistol is enough in their view, and you're trying not
to rock the boat. Whatever your personal is and your
your pistol is your do all gun to your home
defense gun. It's your C CW gun, it's your competition gun,
it's your planking gun, it's your everything gun. And you

(01:44:15):
set that up and you have a solid weapon mounted light. Right,
you've got a you know, a tailor one h L
or where did I put that there? It is an
X three hundred turbo or you know whatever. It is
the UH, the new compact sexiness of the UH, the
t l R seven h l X, which for a

(01:44:37):
compact is actually a really passable weapon light. How do
I how do I use this UH to greatest effect?
I will actually shut my light off to greatest effect.
Is what is called umbrella lighting. And this is I

(01:45:00):
literally aim my weapon mounted light up at the ceiling.
All right. This is done at a high port, right,
so I can look directly across my muzzle and directly
across my weapon light, and I can see everything that
is in my field of vision. Well, why not use

(01:45:20):
the low ready? Well, low ready's fine, and that's called
baseboard lighting. But what color is the ceiling in ninety
nine percent of American homes, that's what?

Speaker 1 (01:45:32):
And what reflects better and absorbs it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
Reflects considerably better than beige or gray carpet or your
tile or your hardwood. And also most people, oh most
people I'm aware of, don't keep furniture around the freaking
ceiling so that that lowers the amount of shadow and

(01:45:55):
photonic barriers that you're creating for yourself. I'm a real, real,
big fan of utilizing umbrella lighting in an indoor home
defense situation. Why is this important? Why can't well Dan,
Why can't I just you know, I just search over
my muzzle. This is where I use my twenty year

(01:46:18):
old son as an example, because twenty year old sons
do twenty year old son dumb shit and do things like,
I don't know, crash through the front door at three
o'clock in the morning, hammered out of their minds with
two of their buddies because that's what they did. I
did dumb shit like that too. I'm not casting any
negative shade at my son. I love the kid. He's great,

(01:46:38):
and he actually does way less dumb stuff than I
did at the same age.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
So if.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
If that happens in my house, does my son and
his buddies deserve a muzzle or the consequences of being
afraid of what is occurring, and I press the trade.
He shouldn't be in your my house anyway. If somebody
crashes through my front door, I'm just gonna look. If

(01:47:12):
your drunk ass neighbor thinks it's his house and his wife,
that happens it. I mean, we lose a couple of
people every year to this, right.

Speaker 1 (01:47:21):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:47:21):
You know, your neighbor's a drunk idiot, and his wife
threw him out of the house, and he went and
got more drunk with more of his drunk buddies, and
they just dropped him off at the corner. And he
stumbles down the block. And your houses look the same
because you live in suburbia, hell, and they all look
the same. And he can't get in and his key
doesn't work or the code on his door isn't working,

(01:47:41):
and he's like, it's my house and boots his door
in to go sleep it off on the couch, and
it's your house. And you're like, well, af that guy
may and you just shoot that shadow in your living room.
I'm sorry, man, Like, in a lot of states, you're
gonna go to prison. And even if you don't, even

(01:48:05):
if you live in one of the states where well,
that guy kind of had it coming because he made
some really dumb decisions. You still killed a dude you
didn't need to kill. And you know, I'm not the
nicest person in the world, but that kind of Oh,
that doesn't that doesn't feel good to me. Yeah, you know,

(01:48:27):
I'm not, by no means am I against shooting people
who need to get shot. But they should need to
get shot to operate award. There is need. So you know,
here's where I plugged my stuff. If low light stuff interests,
you come to my class, right, host me, come to

(01:48:48):
have me come to you.

Speaker 1 (01:48:50):
So how do people do that?

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
Yeah, you can reach me. My email is Dan at
Apache n c as in North Carolina at patcheanc dot com.
You can find me on apatche Solutions, social media, Instagram, Facebook,
et cetera. I'm very active on Facebook on the Deliberate
training page. You can find me there pretty often. I

(01:49:13):
go to the most of the major conferences. I go
to tack Con, I go to the Girl and Gun Conference,
I go to Concealercerry dot com, Guardian conference. Yeah you can,
you can. You can find me a bunch of different places.
And I'm I'm I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
Pretty socially engaged with the with the with the training community,
or the.

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
Internet adjacent CCW community places like Reddit.

Speaker 1 (01:49:44):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):
I do a fair amount of redditing, and I try
to pass good information there. A lot of people are
very information resistant on Reddit. They have their uncle who
was an army ranger who taught them to shoot when
they were six, so they know everything but onesies and twosies.
Here and there I find people who are like, huh,

(01:50:09):
you know, I never thought of that. Thanks, And that's all.
That's all I need. I need, that's all as the
ones he's and tuessies to make them, to make the
make the mission continue to be worth it. Uh And yeah,
I get frustrated just like anybody else with some of
the internet jackassery that occurs, but uh yeah, it's if

(01:50:30):
one was to believe in a calling. That's I'm just
trying to push good information to people and make them,
make them safer and hopefully, over the long term, spend
less money and less time getting where they need to
get to, uh, to to not just feel safe, but
to actually be safe, to be competent enough to keep

(01:50:52):
themselves safe under some some really really less than ideal
situations and.

Speaker 1 (01:50:58):
How cool is it to explain some of these concepts
to people that have been around it forever but never
stopped and thought about it.

Speaker 4 (01:51:04):
Then they go, oh, yeah, I taught I taught my
I taught my low light class to uh to a
group of folks I don't know, a month or so months,
month and a half ago.

Speaker 2 (01:51:15):
Uh. It's a church security team, a bunch of guys
from church security team who were there, you know, a
couple of Apache adjacent folks who have come to several
classes out there, and uh, we had a we had
a really good time. And the feedback that I got
was was was really heartwarming. It was people who were like,

(01:51:37):
you know, I've been I've been doing the training thing
for a while. You know, I've I've competed in I
d P, A, us P, S A, that kind of thing.
But you know, I really I really didn't think a
lot about the low light stuff. And uh, you know,
under you know the conditions that I'm operating right and
a church security team, based on where we are in

(01:51:58):
the structure, our lighting can conditions can vary an awful lot.
And you know, I needed to know the difference of
you know, what I need for uh, you know, for
threat identification, and you know, having a weapon mounted light
and having a handheld light and how do I balance it?
And you know, these these folks give me some really
really good feedback of being like, you know, I'd never

(01:52:19):
even considered that before I and that that's what makes
me keep coming back and during all of the all
of the verbal abuse that I take.

Speaker 1 (01:52:31):
Really heck, yeah. So my favorite thing to say sometimes
I say at the beginning, but I try to say
it at the end of every episode, is you, the
listener of the viewer. Make sure you are supporting those
sources that you found to be beneficial. If you like
what Dan had to say, make sure you're finding him
on all the socials. Give him likes. If he shares

(01:52:55):
something that you especially appreciated, that helped you understand something better,
you got to share it. Because the algorithms aren't working
in our favor. Let's go the next step. Okay, we're liking,
we're following. I did this with pat Rogers. I was
a big fan of what pat Rodgers would do. What
I ultimately did was I hosted him. And that's taking
it to the next level. Not only is that in created,

(01:53:17):
Not only is that giving business to the sources that
we appreciate. Now this applies to Aaron as well erin Cowen.
But to have those those direct interactions in person are invaluable.
To have that that coaching opportunity to be coached by
the professionals, that is completely invaluable. Just to have the experience,

(01:53:40):
that's something that's yeah, there is a price on it,
but those experiences that's where it's at. And to have
that understanding. Because we can watch we can watch videos
all day. We can watch YouTube all day and the
main points might completely miss us. But if we have
that class with Dan and he sees something and he

(01:54:00):
brings it up to you that you would have avoided
or not avoided that you would have missed, he's there,
he can help you. It's so much better again having
an in class specialized class like this. Dan.

Speaker 2 (01:54:15):
Also, if if you do host me for a low
light because low light is one of my favorite classes
to teach. Low light and vehicle defense my two favorite
things to teach. I love both of them on So
in my low light class, I have a challenge drill
all right, challenge drill being something that you know, I

(01:54:37):
give a prize out for a lot of people give
out coins or patches or whatever else. In my low
light class. If you if you win my low light drill,
you beat the part time my low light drill, I
give you one hundred dollars flashlight. I give you a
stream light HLX. So nice. That's also really de surprise.

Speaker 1 (01:55:00):
Yeah. Also, if you're on the fence, if you haven't
hosted people before, there might be some benefits that you're
not aware of, like maybe some a free slot or
two depending on So if.

Speaker 2 (01:55:12):
You're for us generally speaking, if you're east of the Mississippi,
because I can drive to everything pretty much east of
the Mississippi. If you're east of the Mississippi, at least
a one day class at least twelve paid seats. The
host gets two free seats. If you're west of the Mississippi,

(01:55:34):
I need sixteen paid seats because that's going to require
airfare and stuff like that. I need at least sixteen
paid seats. But again, you get two free seats with that.
If you pack. If you pack a class, if you
get twenty, you get three free seats. Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:55:49):
Nice, and that right there, that's there's a bit of
a value there. There is a little asterisk associated with that,
though you're probably gonna need you have to do the work,
and you need to fill the class because if the
class doesn't if it doesn't meet that minimum, class doesn't happen.
You don't get anything. But when you are doing that

(01:56:11):
host stuff and you do get those free free seats,
it's nice.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
It is so nice, you know, and free freeze relative
because you know, you know, at a patche we host
we host people all the time, and it's it's work
to fill those seats. You know, it takes some It
takes them putting the arm on you know, your your
shooting buddies and being like, yo, dude, you really need

(01:56:36):
to come to this class. You need to fork out
the cash for it. Like, it takes some effort a
lot of times to fill those seats.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
Yeah, and if you're sneaky, maybe you could divvy up
that free spot and lower everyone else's price. You have
the free spot, you know what, I'm gonna chip in
X amount to lower everyone else's prices. There are things
you can do. But yeah, if you haven't hosted a class,
or if you haven't taken professional classes, if you're in

(01:57:06):
law enforcement and you've never taken anything outside of what
your agency has provided for you, truly prepare for something
that you Everything else is going to pay in comparison,
because department provided training just sucks for the most part.
But to go to a professional class, that's that's where

(01:57:27):
it's at, that's where the that's where the real learning occurs.

Speaker 2 (01:57:33):
One of the things that I have seen over the
course of this is that the very, very huge dichotomy
between teaching in service cops who are required to be
there and teaching people who have paid a few hundred
dollars to be there. From the instructor's perspective, it is

(01:57:58):
a night and day a difference in student engagement. So
it's a lot more fun to teach not cops.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the engagement is yeah, total side topic. Justin,
aren't you supposed to be on a date right now?

Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
He's probably his dates don't last very long.

Speaker 1 (01:58:21):
If you get my drift, okay, gotcha. But if you
need Dan's number, just message Justin. He'll he'll give it
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:31):
So two hours not bad.

Speaker 1 (01:58:36):
So again, I wasn't anticipating this to be a podcast.
I thought this would be kind of a we could
do some low light discussion. This turned into the low
Light discussion and again one of my absolute favorite topics.
It's awesome to be able to discuss this with Dan.
I know Dan is passionate about this, and it's so
fun to read his comments and anything low Light and

(01:58:56):
Dan's in there, just just take notes or go yeah,
I like that, I like that, I'm stealing that. Big
thank you to the panel, Dan, and also big thank
you to you the viewer or the listener. The sponsors
as well, Lucky Gunner, Filster Walter, thank you to them. Additionally,
on Patreon, if you go to Patreon dot com slash

(01:59:19):
Primary and Secondary, you can help support the network. If
you don't want to help support the network through Patreon,
if you go to Primary and Secondary dot com slash forum,
there's a band that says network support. You can go
that route if you don't want to support that way.
Likes shares subscriptions are also helpful. I am now on Rumble.
I'm also on all your favorite audio podcast apps, but

(01:59:42):
I am on Rumble versus being on YouTube. No longer
on YouTube, they remove me. We'll see if I ever
come back, We'll see. This was live on Rumble. This
was a spur of the moment. We talked about it
earlier today or was it you know, we started talking
about it yesterday. I'll fine tuned it here. We are,
great discussion, love doing these things. Still have a couple

(02:00:03):
episodes that are still overdue, this being also December, I
still need to do an airing of grievances. So Dan,
you're invited. Yeah, if you've been on one of these,
you are, you're invited to be uh. And I guess
Justin can show up to especially considering the content he's
been making recently that's been really good. Same with Chris.

(02:00:26):
But I think that is pretty much it. So this
is going to remain on Rumble. The audio version will
be available in about a week ish. So that is all.
I will now kill this. Go upstairs, see if anyone's
still awake. It's only eight o'clock. But the five year old,
he's he gets tired, he's been sick.

Speaker 2 (02:00:47):
So well, it's ten at my house, so I'm talking.

Speaker 1 (02:00:50):
Yeah, it happens, it happens, so cool. Well, thanks again,
thank you, Matt.

Speaker 2 (02:00:56):
It's always good. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:00:57):
And then yeah, and if you have it, if there's
a topic or something you want to bring up, on
one of these, we can do what we just did,
or we can do a quick little discussion throw panel together.
I'm always up for it. So cool a love, that
is all. And I'm going to hit and stream now,
so we'll talk to you later, all right,

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P&S ModCast 447 - Low Light With Dan Brady from Apache Solutions

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}P&S ModCast 447 - Low Light With Dan Brady from Apache Solutions