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AJSully421 wrote: ..
While I understand what you are saying... that would be like saying you cannot handle a manual safety or a retention holster because it is something that has to be done with your gun hand. On an AR, your gun hand has three functions... Same on an 870 shotgun. Do you shoot any of those? Training is required to make it work, just like anything else, including using a handheld light.

Practice, practice, practice. Well worth the time invested, like any weapon handling skill.

I have done it and I have practiced it. That's why I think it is a bad idea for people who do not routinely do building searches, and even then a handlight is still a necessity. Using the weapon light for a last second verification of something you have already decided is a target is OK. Using it to locate the target sets up for tragedy. That's what hand lights are for.

And with my comparison to the taser -- I should have said it is not just the gun hand, it is the brain command to use the gun hand's trigger finger... which is why retention holsters that require use of the trigger finger are a not a good idea, and neither are safeties. (Heck, safeties in general are not a great idea. I love my BHP, but the safeties on it are not positive features of it). At least with thumb operated safeties and thumb operated retention holsters your are not engaging precisely the same actions to active them as you are to shoot. I've thought for awhile that tasers should not have been designed with triggers, but with maybe the thumb...something other than the trigger finger.

Sure with enough practice you can learn anything, and if you engage in building searches routinely it is worthwhile to go with the handgun mounted light (as well as the handlight), but you can achieve and maintain a decent, safe, and cost effective (in both money and time spent) level of defensive skill for home self defense with just a hand light and the same pistol you started with. Take the money you would spend on the weaponlight, buy a decent reliable hand light and some training in light (and other) tactics. That's what I am trying to get across.

I am very leery of assigning two functions to my trigger/gun hand, e.g. using a handgun-mounted light to illuminate a room by reflected light. It feels like I am setting myself up for a crossed-wires boo-boo, like where the cop inadvertently shoots a guy with a gun when he meant to use his taser. Except I don't have have to draw, just press the wrong button.

If I did keep a light on my handgun, it would be solely for last milli-second target ID, where I've already decided what the target it and the muzzle is on oriented on it.

Much prefer sticking to light in one hand to illuminate, gun in the other to shoot. I didn't find this too difficult to do. Even I put a light on my gun, I will still use a hand-held light to search with.