For eight years, I’ve worked the overnight shift in a patrol law enforcement function. During that time, I’ve learned the value of using darkness for cover while appreciating how darkness also benefits the bad guys as much as it does me. I’ve invested a great deal of time in training and money on equipment to ensure I have the best possible advantage under those conditions.
For many of us, including myself, equipment translates to better and brighter flashlights while time is spent on the range under low light and no light shooting conditions. One of the first things I ever noted on the range under low light conditions was the sudden sensory distortion experienced when discharging a firearm at night. Shooting under bright lighting conditions doesn’t expose what we may experience in the dark. The sudden flash from the muzzle blast is nearly unobservable under most daylight conditions but obvious at night. This flash affects your night vision, obscures your target, and, produces a dust cloud most often unseen during daylight hours.
When shooting under low light conditions, there are many factors you, the shooter, must consider depending on the weapon, ammo, and caliber you’re shooting. Let’s delve into those factors to expand our knowledge of low-light shooting.
Ammunition
We all know there are a variety of different types of ammunition available — Hollow point, full metal jacket, ballistic tip, soft point, and so on. However, ammunition is more than just a projectile sitting atop a booster rocket of powder and primer. This is exceptionally important under low light conditions.
The powder type will depend on the firearm used. Powders burn at different rates. In a gross oversimplification, pistol and shotgun powders tend to burn slower while rifle powders burn faster. The burn rate of the powder is important because it determines the pressures developed during the discharge of the firearm. Those pressures are not to exceed a certain amount. If they do, the gun goes more boom than it’s designed for and you will have an explosive, not a firearm.
For comparison, I loaded my Glock 17 with a variety of 9mm ammunition. I fired a sequence of 115-grain reload, 115-grain MagTech factory ammunition, 124-grain Federal HST +P, and 135-grain Hornady Critical Duty +P. Each of those rounds provided a slightly different muzzle flash. A common belief is that defensive ammunition is loaded with “low flash” powder. While defensive ammunition tends to be less fouling, the muzzle flash in my Glock 17 was still prominent. The Federal HST produced quite the flame during testing. While this may be shocking to some, we need to recognize the powder is designed to maximize velocity and will have some flash — especially with +P loadings.
The muzzle flash is also a factor of firearm design, barrel length, and powder just as it is powder alone. There are some special loadings designed for shorter barrels, like subcompact handguns and snub nose revolvers. These loadings aren’t designed to minimize flash as much as they are designed to maximize velocities on short-barreled handguns. Low flash isn’t always guaranteed in these loadings.
This brings up the first point of consideration when shooting under low light conditions: have you shot your carry ammunition in the dark? If not, I would recommend finding a way to safely do so. The first time to crack off a round at night shouldn’t be during a time when life or limb are in the precarious balance of a gunfight.
Guns, Porting, and Muzzle Devices
This was touched on briefly above, but barrel length has a profound effect on a projectile. For instance, a 55-grain projectile in a .223 will have a variance of several hundred feet per second from 10.5” to 20”. This is because a shorter barrel length is not allowing the powder to produce pressure for long enough to accelerate the projectile to a faster velocity. Longer barrels can also produce less flash because of the additional time for the powder to combust before it exits the barrel along with the projectile.
The device attached to the barrel also affects the visibility of the muzzle flash. In a direct comparison using 55-grain Aguila .223 ammunition with rifles with 16” barrels, an AAC three-prong muzzle device provided a reduced muzzle flash signature versus a classic A2 birdcage flash hider. While a muzzle brake may be great for reduced recoil, it doesn’t always translate to reduced muzzle flash. The porting on the brake is designed to redirect the expanding gases (and the subsequent flash) in a direction to reduce recoil. This redirection of gas, especially in ported handguns, redirects the gas into the sight picture of the shooter — an unfortunate consequence under low light conditions.
Revolvers are no exception to this rule. Revolvers have a cylinder gap between the cylinder and barrel (forcing cone). This small space allows a significant amount of gas to escape as the cartridge exits the cylinder. In a comparison between .44 Special and .44 Magnum out of a 2½” barreled Smith & Wesson Model 69, the muzzle flash was impressive out the muzzle. In slow motion, the gap between the cylinder and barrel was equally impressive. This is noteworthy for those of us in love with the wheel gun — especially those snubbies we use for the convenience of day-to-day carry.
Suppressors
Many of us are under the impression that a suppressor, designed to capture and slow excess gas from the muzzle of a firearm, would eliminate muzzle flash entirely. While modern suppressor technology has advanced significantly in recent years, suppressors don’t completely eliminate muzzle flash. Furthermore, the caliber, powder, and barrel length can affect the signature of a suppressed firearm. In a comparison between suppressed and unsuppressed .223 on a 10.5” AR-15, the muzzle signature was dramatically reduced away from affecting the shooter’s line of sight. Nevertheless, there was still a pronounced muzzle flash from the suppressor that was noticeable perpendicular to the shooter.
A longer barrel length can reduce the flash of the muzzle signature when suppressed by allowing greater burn time of the powder. Nevertheless, this is dependent upon suppressor quality, barrel length, caliber, and powder. Ultimately, the shooter should test their equipment to determine how their firearm and its ammunition perform when suppressed. Suppressors don’t eliminate gas. Similar to an enclosed muzzle brake, they redirect the gas and reduce the velocity and excess pressure of the associated explosion before allowing it to escape the muzzle (or suppressor end cap).
Lights and Optics
For those using a weapon light, have you ever noticed how filthy the lens on your light gets after a day of shooting? This is burnt powder escaping from the muzzle and fouling the lens. It can diminish the performance of the light over several hundred rounds by reducing its brightness, but is easily cleaned off at the end of the day. While I would hope none of us are in a sustained gunfight of several hundred rounds, this brings up an important consideration. Each round fired is going to produce that fouling into the air.
When you have the opportunity to safely shoot under low light conditions, activate your weapon light and observe the cloud of debris produced from each shot. This cloud of burnt powder distorts your light’s ability to project onto the target, reflects the light’s beam back at you, and also affects the sight or optic picture. This fouling worsens when shooting in an enclosed area like a house.
What do I do?
For those invested in the shooting profession, you train with your equipment and test the boundaries of its performance. If I purchase a new piece of kit, I try to test it to ensure it performs appropriately in its configuration while identifying its limitations and failure points. No piece of gear is worth its value if it is unused and untested. Test your equipment and know its performance.
To know your gear is to also know the conditions you may use your equipment in. Low-light conditions are no exception. The numerous factors that go into the performance of a firearm in low light, and how it affects you, are broad and exceed the limits of coverage for a single article. Individual gun owners have to take it upon themselves to test their firearms and ammunition under low-light conditions. If they want to go a step further, a low-light shooting course is highly recommended.
Invest in your gear, invest in training, and, subsequently, you will invest in knowledge that will better prepare you for using a firearm under conditions outside of the average range day. Conveniently, that preparation prevents your first experience of low light shooting from being under the worst of circumstances — when life depends on it.
