handgun lasers, why is the dot so small?

[troy_mclure]

why is the dot on handgun lasers so small? what purpose does it serve being so small(aside from being hard to spot)?

why cant the dot size be bigger? its on a defensive handgun, not a precision match gun. the purpose is to quickly get sighted on the target.

id like to see a dot that is around golf ball sized at 7 yards or so. it would help immensely with quick target acquisition in a self defense situation.

 

[JustThisGuy]

I hope this explains it:

http://www.rp-photonics.com/beam_radius.html

In simple English, it's all about the physics of the laser. There is no adjustable beam width. It is what it is. To create a golf-ball beam width at 7 yards would require a much, much larger laser. Certainly one far to big to fit on a hand-gun and not one you could carry.

 

[aarondhgraham]

Not practical.

The projected dot is the same size as the laser lens,,,
To have a golf ball sized dot you would need a golf ball sized lens.

Aarond

 

[troy_mclure]

why not add a magnifying lens in front to expand the dot.

say at 5' the dot is .5" at 21' the dot is 2" at 50' the dot is 5".

 

[aarondhgraham]

It would add size and weight.

why not add a magnifying lens in front to expand the dot.

It would add size and weight.

Why would they do that,,,
Widening the beam would lessen it's intensity,,,
You would do better with an adjustable beam LED flashlight.

Aarond

 

[troy_mclure]

just replace the front lens with a dispersing lens, no added weight or size. and you dont need to see the dot 50 yards away with a defensive handgun.

 

[Frank Ettin]

just replace the front lens with a dispersing lens, no added weight or size. and you dont need to see the dot 50 yards away with a defensive handgun.

[1] A huge advantage of the laser is that the beam does not disperse greatly. Therefore the beam remains intense and easily visible at on the target at a distance. But using a dispersing lens will now cause the amount of energy produced by the laser to be spread over an increasing area as the distance increases. That makes the spot both wider and dimmer as the distance increases.

[2] It's possible that such a device isn't made because (1) the disadvantages are likely to outweigh any advantages; and (2) therefore, no one thinks there would be a market for such a contraption.

[3] We do have a free market. If you think enough people would be interested, have at it.

 

[Hook686]

For me the laser is used only for practice (slow fire). I can watch my trigger pull. For rapid fire I find it a definite disadvantage. I prefer to shoot rather than look for a red dot. I doubt a large red dot would improve that opinion. I find the front sight quite adequate for short range shooting and for fast target acquisition.

 

[JustThisGuy]

Lasers do not use lenses in the classic sense. The lens does not focus the laser beam nor control its diameter in any way. It is simply there to protect the laser diode from environmental harm.

 

[langenc]

How about-aim small, miss small.

A BIG dot give more room for missing??

 

[Jim March]

Because nobody has grafted a Wicked Laser monster onto a gun yet.

Believe me, I'm sick and twisted enough to try one day . Gee, I wonder what a knife-wielding nutcase will do if you set his hair gel on fire?

 

[ProShooter]

Remember too that lasers were never designed for use on defensive handguns. They're not meant for you to quickly acquire the red dot and blast away at center mass on Joe Crackhead.

Lasers were designed for training purposes to teach people how to acquire and properly align their sights. I tell my students that lasers (and flashlights) do not belong on defensive handguns, for a variety of reasons.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

How about-aim small, miss small.

A BIG dot give more room for missing??

How about aim small, hit small. There is no reason to aim to miss.

For self defense shootings, a golf-ball sized dot would give you a golf would cover a very specific POA and no matter how much you moved around, if the dot was on the POA and the gun sighted to the dot, the POI within 1.6" of the intended POI. That would be a giant laser dot, but great shooting for virtually any self defense shooting.

The cool thing about a larger dot is that your gun could literally be on target at much greater distances where your shot could be in the dot and not just somewhere near the dot from closer to contact to further out. A larger dot would also allow for parallax problems introduced into the windage via lateral tilting of the gun during firing further than a small dot.

A big dot is just easier to find and see (assuming same intensity) than a small dot and during a high stress situation, critical time can be lost when one is "hunting the dot."

So for self defense and at self defense distances with a handgun, a larger dot could be a very good thing, but as noted, there are some serious laser size and power issues at hand that would preclude it from working.

Remember too that lasers were never designed for use on defensive handguns. They're not meant for you to quickly acquire the red dot and blast away at center mass on Joe Crackhead.

Lasers were designed for training purposes to teach people how to acquire and properly align their sights. I tell my students that lasers (and flashlights) do not belong on defensive handguns, for a variety of reasons.

Whether or not a laser belongs on a firearm has nothing to do with the design intent. The first firearms were not designed with sights, so by extension it could be argued that guns should not have sights.

It is interesting that you say they weren't put on guns for sighting, but to learn how to align sights. Lasers had been used for weapon sighting years before they appeared on pistols. I don't see how the transition to pistols changed anything, but if you have some good source material, I would enjoy reading it.

The earliest handgun laser sight patent I find is from 1990. It is stated explicitly that it is for improved sighting and does not mention using the sight for sight alignment training. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6591536/description.html ...just in case design intent is still being argued...

 

[erwos]

At the risk of sounding noobish, I thought the point of a laser on a handgun was so that you could still shoot effectively in situations where using the sights wasn't practical (eg, around cover while the shooter is in an awkward position).

 

[Nitesites]

I still have no use for a handgun mounted laser aiming device but...

This may sound completely insane but what about a multiple laser contraption? Remember the movie "Predator"? The sighting system utilized by the alien villain had a 3 laser dot arrangement if I remember. Which allowed more "red" on target with a "larger" sight picture. Could be faster? Maybe something similar could be developed. The idea is just to enable more red on target.

It does sound insane lol.

 

[BGutzman]

The funny thing is, there is absolutely nothing you cant do with a gun that has a laser than you can do with a gun that doesnt.

Laser in no way = lesser capability

What laser does = greater utility and a capability to announce the presentation of potential lethal force in an additional way and if used properly will not in any way degrade your shooting capability.

Now Tom, dick and Harry will tell you how you will shoot slower with a laser so the question comes rapidly to mind... Do your eyes suddenly start working less efficiently because you purchase a laser? Does you finger slow down because you purchased a laser?

Or is it as I suspect all just a matter of practice and training... If you want to waffle between looking at the front sight and looking at the laser I suppose your entitled but most lasers put the two systems in line in such a way that you do both at the same time with no delay... Otherwise what would be the point of the laser?

 

[Hardcase]

why cant the dot size be bigger?

Veering back on topic, one of the major advantages of a laser is that it has an unlimited focal length - the dot is in focus no matter the distance of the target from the emitter. While you can add a lens that will increase the size of the dot, it will only be in focus at a fixed distance. The more that you depart from that fixed distance, the blurrier the dot will be.

The laser light is collimated - essentially, all of the light is traveling in one exact direction with its wavefront aligned in one plane. If you disrupt that collimation with a focusing lens, then that planar wavefront only exists at a fixed point, which you see as a well-defined dot. At any other point, you get a fuzzy dot.

Want a bigger dot? You need a bigger laser. Sorry...

 

[Frank Ettin]

...Now Tom, dick and Harry will tell you how you will shoot slower with a laser so the question comes rapidly to mind... Do your eyes suddenly start working less efficiently because you purchase a laser?...

As far as this goes, I was discussing the subject with several instructors at Gunsite (two of whom were Range Masters). They had been trying out Crimson Trace lasers and putting them though the paces. They indeed found using the laser did slow them down.

Instructors at Gunsite are not your usual Tom, Dick and Harry. That will be obvious to anyone going to the Gunsite website and checking out the backgrounds of the instructors. So if they found lasers to be slower, their opinion is worth paying attention to.

They did find that lasers could be useful when shooting from awkward positions or making the most effective use of cover. And a laser is no substitute for basic marksmanship skills. If you jerk the trigger, you will miss -- whether using sights, a laser or any other method of indexing on target.

 

[markj]

I want a laser on my gun like the one almost nutered James Bond no need for a bullet..

 

[BGutzman]

They indeed found using the laser did slow them down.
Instructors at Gunsite are not your usual Tom, Dick and Harry. That will be obvious to anyone going to the Gunsite website and checking out the backgrounds of the instructors. So if they found lasers to be slower, their opinion is worth paying attention to.

Gunsite instructors and the man sitting on the right hand of the divine can all agree and are entitled to whatever opinions they choose... A current military of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of front line combat soldiers with few exceptions choose to have and choose use lasers.

It is factual for most lasers that gun sights and the lasers align at some given point. So from a logical stand point if the two align then the sight picture is close to identical or identical or by definition there wouldn’t be any alignment and it would be useless.

Further although you may train your body to fire from a position barely outside the holster you cannot align the pistols traditional sights without drawing your face or the pistol in alignment with each other? A laser on the other hand doesn’t care where your face is and its red glare under many circumstances can be seen and utilized without drawing the pistol or your face toward each other. Certainly a red laser dot on a BG would seem to be a more sane firing condition then hip firing without any visual aids especially as the distance to the attacker grows.

Hitting a guy at three feet from a hip draw hip firing position may not require any sort of visual aid but hitting a guy at 9 feet could be a whole different thing.

Lastly unless your eyes and trigger finger work slower because of purchasing a laser then your going to have a hard time finding a scientific reason for the difference. The light traveling to your traditional sights works at the same speed as the laser. It would also seem their is ZERO Empirical scientific research confirming your assertion and I have yet to see even one scholarly link to support it.

We can make a reasonable assumption that light travels at roughly the same speed if its coming from the sun or a laser and that light is so much faster than our senses that if there is a difference it is in the individuals processing of it and not in the device itself and generally we can probably assume it gets processed in a similar manner.

If I spend 40 years shooting with only traditional sights then maybe Im introducing a delay by second guessing the positional information the laser is showing but that is a training issue and not a issue of the laser not performing as well as anything else and in some cases possibly better.

If you find fault with my logic then please highlight it and we can certainly consider it but at this moment I see little supporting your position.