Category: Concealed Carry Gear

Which Is Better? Tactical Flashlight Or Gun Light?

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

I came across this interesting article on the Beretta blog (blog.beretta.com) that discusses the differences between a tactical flashlight and a gun light, and goes into good detail on the pros and cons of both. Have a read and I’ve added a little opinion at the end.

 

Gun Light“It’s 8:20 on a summer’s evening as I type this, and twilight is starting to settle in over the small town in Florida where I live. My wife and I will go for a walk after I’m finished with this article. I’ll have a concealed carry pistol with me as I usually do, along with a mobile phone, some other stuff, and a powerful handheld “tactical” flashlight. I consider a small, powerful light to be an absolutely essential part of my everyday carry, and I’ve come to see the benefits of having a light on my firearm as well. Both are useful, and both have their roles for self-defense.

Why you want a flashlight

We as a species discovered early on that having an artificial light source was a really useful thing, so we invented the campfire to keep away predators at night. Campfires are big and bulky, though, so we quickly invented the burning branch to light up our way at night and to keep predators at bay as we moved from place to place.

And that’s precisely the role that the modern tactical flashlight performs. A bright handheld light (150 or more lumens) lets you see clearly at night inside and as well as outside. It also allows you to see and identify the people around you that might want to do you harm. More than that, though, they can also help defuse a dangerous situation before it happens and also be used as a less-lethal means of self-protection.

A bright flashlight can be used to defuse a situation before it happens because, in a crook’s world, there are two types of people who most often carry and use bright flashlights: police officers and security guards. Both spell trouble for our bad guy, and so when they spot a bright light outside at night, they know something very bad might be coming as well. A bright flashlight shined into the eyes of an attacker at night can also blind them for a brief time, giving you time to try something else, and this trick can work in …

Understanding the Beretta Handgun Rotary Recoil System

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

Even though most CCW carriers are fans (at least to some degree) of handguns, many (if not most) don;t really understand the science as to how the operational process occurs in handguns. While I’m no expert in handgun function, I have a basic understanding of how the process works. But, I came across the post on the Beretta blog that goes into excellent detail describing how the rotary recoil system works and it’s basic benefits. It’s an excellent read as to how and why Beretta uses this system on the PX4 handgun platform.

“By very definition, semi-automatic pistols all have some basic features and functions in common. What makes them “semi-automatic” is the recoil system that performs a carefully orchestrated process of:

Moving the slide to the rear. Ejecting the spent cartridge case. Cocking the hammer or striker for the next shot. Moving forward and stripping a fresh cartridge from the magazine. Loading that cartridge into the chamber as the slide closes and locks into position.

_DSC0002-2

It sounds simple, but like most things that seem straightforward, there’s a catch. When a cartridge ignites, a whole lot of commotion happens in milliseconds. That conflagration creates a rapidly expanding cloud of highly pressurized hot gas. Pressure levels are astronomical, at least compared to everyday pressurized items like car and bike tires. Depending on the caliber, a handgun cartridge generates between 17,000 and 35,000 pounds per square inch of pressure in a fraction of an instant. That’s some seriously high-speed action. In fact, it all happens too fast for those semi-automatic recoil steps to happen reliably and safely.

If the pistol design allows the slide to fling back immediately on ignition, all that pressure hasn’t dissipated yet, so opening the chamber is a supremely bad idea. So, clever firearms designers have developed ingenious ways to “lock” the barrel and slide together as for just a bit as the recoil action begins. That allows the pressure to escape through the fiery end, while the chamber, as defined by the barrel and breech face of the slide (locked together), chills out a bit and begins its journey backward. Let’s state that differently for clarification. Upon ignition, the barrel and slide remain tightly locked together to contain pressure safely while both move towards the rear as a single unit. When pressure levels drop, they can safely disconnect.

In fact, the disconnection must happen or else …