Putting a laser on might make things worse. especially for someone who doesnt practice much.
I know if I handed my gf a gun with a laser, in a stressful situation she may pull the gun out and spend her time trying to put the red dot over the bad guy.
it can be hard at times to "SEE" the red dot if you dont see it on your target, and even harder to move that red dot ONTO whatever I want to hit. Which again concerns me that an inexperienced shooter would concentrate too much on where the laser is and not enough on instinctively pointing and shooting.
I tell my gf to point and shoot. At under 15 feet, i dont think she should be doing any different. She hits the target and is certainly much.....much faster than when she tries to use the sights... adding a laser in her situation (and i imagine a great number of inexperienced people) would complicate things for the worse.
I dont know why people think an untrained person, scared for their life, is going to take the time to line up a laser as opposed to lining up some sights.
I practice alot, and running through 90% of situations in my head, cant see myself taking the time to acquire sights, align laser dots or anything else but taking out my gun and instinctively firing.
From
http://www.pointshooting.com/ssfails.htm :
"If you have a handgun at home, you probably bought it with the thought in mind that you could use it for self defense. And, you probably have been trained to use the sights for aiming and shooting it.
Well, if you think you will be able to use your handgun and that training in a real self defense situation, you could be dead wrong. And here's why.
Darrell Mulroy, who passed away in 2003, was a LE trainer and an owner of Plus P Technology Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. He stated that he made a review of 900+ videos of real shootings, and found that Sight Shooting was not used in any of them. Here is what he said about Sight Shooting: "You still ASSUME you will look at the gun in a real shooting. Wish we could find it on REAL videos of such things. We are still looking 900+ videos later."
..........
In 1969, the Firearms and Tactics Section of the New York City Police Department instituted a procedure for the in-depth documentation and study of police combat situations. It was designated Department Order SOP 9.
Data gathering began in January 1970, and over 6000 cases were studied during the 1970s. The study results and findings were released in 1981.
The following is from the SOP 9. More info and a link to the SOP 9 data is on the main page.
As to shooting distances:
The shooting distances where officers survived, remained almost the same during the SOP years (1970-1979), and for a random sampling of cases going back as far as 1929. 4,000 cases were reviewed. The shooting distance in 75% of those cases was less than 20 feet.
Contact to 10 feet ... 51%
10 feet to 20 feet .... 24%
As to sight alignment:
In 70% of the cases reviewed, sight alignment was not used. Officers reported that they used instinctive or point shooting.
As the distance between the officer and his opponent increased, some type of aiming was reported in 20% of the cases. This aiming or sighting ran from using the barrel as an aiming reference to picking up the front sight and utilizing fine sight alignment.
The remaining 10% could not remember whether they had aimed or pointed and fired the weapon instinctively. "