Life is about choices. Dr. Hoomans’ article cites that we make 35,000 choices a day. Of course, none are as important as to what pistol and light I should run at an upcoming low light/night class I will be attending.

The choice is simple. Shoot what you carry and that’s the advice I would give most people. If you’re like me that means you probably have more than one but there is that go-to setup. For me that is my G17s and Viridian X5L gen5.

If you have having problems recalling what is a G17s that is because I made it up. It’s the gun Glock should have come out with when they made the G19X, the mid length slide on a full size grip. The G17s is a full size G17 with the grip reduced to the G19 size. To me that makes sense in a concealed carry gun as the grip, not the slide, is what usually prints.

So, why not run that at the class? It has decent light output at 500 lumens and has a green laser. It also has a stated battery life of 40 minutes. In a carry light that should be more than enough. In a class that probably means changing batteries. The X5L gen3 uses a proprietary rechargeable battery and are $50 each for spares.

I would like to run the Surefire ILV2 but that has been on backorder for months. The compact white light, IR light, Green laser, and IR laser is like a fat TLR1. I’ve made several holsters for this light and it’s the fattest but the shorter overall length makes for a shorter holster and clears faster.

If this was a straight nods class the Surefire X400VH would be my choice for what I have available. Since this is not a night vision class do I want to run a large 350 lumen light? The Streamlight TLR2 light laser seems to make the most sense but I really not the biggest fan of the mode toggle switch location. CR123’s are plentiful around here and I usually have several rechargeable ones on standby.

What light would you run and why?

Outtrain • Outlast • Outsurvive