Crimson Trace Laser Grips

Defensive Concepts

    This started as a test and evaluation of the grip mounted laser sights manufactured by

Crimson Trace for my department. A neighboring agency had purchased them for their

entire department. Both agencies use the Beretta 92/96 series pistol as the standard duty

sidearm.  I was asked to evaluate the grips by my chief.

    The biggest advantage I could immediately find is the ease of installation, just swap

the grips out and the unit is on your gun. This alleviated three big concerns. The first was

the laser coming off the pistol during firing. The second was the sight being knocked out

of alignment during use. It is not going to happen with the Crimson Trace product. The

third was having to purchase new holsters for the entire department. Sight adjustments for

both windage and elevation is easily accomplished with an allen key that is provided. The

operator can very easily set the sights to point of aim/point of impact at whatever range

they desire.

     Now to the testing of the unit. I brought each member of my agency to the range and

let them try a pistol equipped with the Crimson Trace grips. (Hey, they're the ones who'll

be carrying and using the thing, they need to have some input about it). After an

explanation and familiarization fire with the grips they fired a standard State

Qualification Course. To a man (person, person we must be PC nowadays) every shooter

took noticeably longer to fire their rounds. I asked each one about this and all said that

they were "trying to hold the G**damned dot still!" Even after explaining to them that it

is physically impossible to do this their times to fire were still longer than normal.

    A majority of officers also had problems activating the pressure switch on the unit. We

experimented and found that for most of the shooters I was working with, the switch fell

under the hollow formed by the palm when a normal firing grip is taken. This

necessitated a change in grip forcing the shooter to concentrate on pressing his palms

together to "pancake" the grips and allow activation of the laser. This caused an

additional problem with recoil management due to the shooter concentrating on pressing

the grips and not squeezing fore and aft as firmly as usual. This was not a problem with

left handed shooters because the location of the pressure switch on the right grip panel

was directly under the fingers of their strong hand.

    One final difficulty, albeit not a large one, when working with standard paper targets I

have my shooters hold on the target until it edges so they aren't conditioned to reholster

immediately after shooting. The shooter goes to low ready (pistol pointed at the target but

lowered just until the hands are visible if the arms are completely down). I noticed that

with the right handed shooters that could activate the laser the laser seemed to be off

when they went to low ready. I at first thought that it was light discipline because the

shooter was a SWAT operator who was extremely careful of this with his light mounted

weapons. I mentioned this to him and he told me that he thought he had kept the laser on.

A closer examination showed that when the shooter put his finger outside of the trigger

guard at low ready it blocked the laser. While this is not a problem when shooting the

piece, if one of your justifications for having the laser on your gun is intimidation you

will need to find somewhere to put that trigger finger while you are trying to scare the bad

guy. 

    The Crimson Trace unit is very well constructed and appears to able to stand up to

rugged use.  All in all, however, I was not impressed with the Crimson Trace unit for

general service. I believe that it has real utility for a SWAT operator behind either a small

shield running point or behind a large shield in a barricade position. The laser could be

used while the operator looked through the view port and he would expose almost no part

of his anatomy to incoming fire. Beyond this limited area, in my humble opinion, you

would better spend the $329.00 suggested retail price on A) a light mount for your pistol

or B) as much practice ammo as you can lay your hands on. One final thing, we humans

tend to use technology for a crutch forgetting a primary rule of life "Anything made by

man will eventually fail" and it's cousin "Anything made by man can be destroyed by

man". My advice would be if you do purchase a laser sight, or have it issued to you,

practice both with and without it. That way when the day comes and it breaks, or the

batteries die or it just doesn't work you won't be left standing there, gun in hand

wondering what to do now.