Once a homeowner has settled on the caliber and type of firearm he wants to keep nearby for home defense, it is worth spending a little time considering a light–or lighting system–that can be added to illuminate the night when evil strikes.
Lights for firearms have been around a long, long time. But the brightness and battery life of today’s lights are unsurpassed, as are the mounting options.
So whether you keep a shotgun, rifle, or handgun by the bed, there are myriad options to help you see clearly when strange noises force you out of bed to investigate.
For example, a Mossberg 940 Pro Tactical 12 gauge comes standard with M-LOK mounting slots on the side near the end of the barrel. Fenix Lighting makes M-LOK-compatible mounts and tactical flashlights that fit the 940 Pro Tactical like a glove.
We mounted a TK20R V2.0 to a 940 Pro Tactical and if we need to grab it in the night, we simply press a button on the rear of the light and darkness disappears.
Fenix Light (AWR Hawkins/Breitbart News)
A Picatinny railing system is also a very popular system on which to mount lights. Picatinny rails are on the underside of pistol frames which are of sufficient size for such rails. (Usually full-size and compact pistols, although their are some subcompacts with such rails as well.)
Sig Sauer and other companies make lights that snap right onto the railing and put lighting controls literally at the tip of the homeowner’s fingers.
We put a Sig Sauer FOXTROT2 on a P365 XMACRO pistol:
SIG light (AWR Hawkins/Breitbart News)
Streamlight makes some incredibly bright lighting systems that work well on rifles and can be purchased in a system that allows an on/off pad to be mounted on the foregrip some distance from the light itself. This allows the homeowner to mount a light on his rifle, perhaps further down the barrel than he usually grips, then mount the on/off pad where his hands naturally rest when holding the firearm.
We put a Streamlight TLR1-HL on a DoubleStar Star-10 pistol:
Another option for rifles with Picatinny side or top rails on the foregrip is an Inforce flush-mounted flashlight.
The Inforce WMLx White is designed to be sleek and provide incredible lighting while taking up minimal space on the firearm. We have an Inforce that we shift back and forth between a Colt M4 and a Daniel Defense V7.
Inforce light (AWR Hawkins/Breitbart News)
To be sure, there are other lighting options besides those listed above, but the examples in this article give the reader some idea of what is out there.
Having a great light makes it easier it identify whether the shadows are being cast by a friend or a foe in the middle of the night. And the bright light in the face of a foe can be helpful in gaining control of an otherwise uncontrollable situation.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.