Higher Purpose Training has no affiliation with any of these companies and receives no compensation from any companies for endorsing their products. We have simply had good experience with these companies’ products and desire for our students to have the best experiences training in class and invest only in quality gear. 

 

Weapon-Mounted Lights on Handguns

A bright light with high lumens and high candela is important for threat identification in low light. Although there are many techniques for shooting with a handheld flashlight, most of them compromise your shooting grip. A weapon mounted light allows the shooter to maintain a two-handed shooting grip while activating the light with a thumb or finger. A factor when considering a weapon mounted light is finding a holster that is specifically made for the gun model and light model combination.

 

For full-size handguns, we recommend the Streamlight TLR-1 HL or Surefire X300. For compact and micro-compact guns, we recommend the Streamlight TLR-7 Sub and the Streamlight TLR-6, which is made for certain gun models. Angelo runs a Streamlight TLR-1HL on his Glock 17’s for carrying on duty and teaching and Streamlight TLR-6 on his EDC, a Sig Sauer P365 XL. 

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Weapon-Mounted Lights on Long Guns

As with handguns, a bright light with high lumens and high candela is important for threat identification in low light, especially on a long gun staged for home defense. We recommend weapon-mounted lights that are attached to the rail of a rifle or the forend or pump of a shotgun. We recommend using pressure switches on your long guns. Pressure switches eliminate the loud clicking noises when using the tail switch on a flashlight, while allowing you to hold your gun normally and get full use of your weapon-mounted light. 

 

We recommend the Streamlight ProTac and ProtTac 2.0. 

 

Handheld Flashlights

For an EDC flashlight, we recommend simple, quality, tail switch flashlights that feature momentary on and “click on” and “click” off. We recommend powerful and bright flashlights with both high lumens and high candela, capable of piercing photonic barriers for outdoor settings. However, for inside structures, we recommend less bright flashlights as they can shine too bright, blinding you and splashing light off of interior walls. Many reputable name-brand flashlight companies feature a separate button on their flashlights to change the brightness of your flashlight. We do not recommend flashlights that change the settings with every click of the tail switch. We recommend flashlights from Surefire, Streamlight and Fenix. Angelo’s EDC flashlight had been a Fenix PD25 for several years.