Weapon Mounted Lights and Holsters with Navy SEAL Mark "Coch" Cochiolo

Hey, it's Coach with Tactical Hive and today I've got some pistols that I used in the past and I want to go over how we carried them and how we implemented them. Way back in the early 80s and, you know, before me, this one rolled in, this Bianchi. The way it was looked at was a little bit different. You know, your pistol was not, you know, transition drills wasn't a thing. I mean, we didn't do that. It was looked at more of an E&E weapon or, you know, just something to have on you in case your primary went down hard. You at least could, you know, defend yourself. To that end with this good old Bianchi Generic and each one of these guns will drop right in there, you know, flap holster, flap over it. Yeah, that's how I carried this one and this one overseas. I said I never actually ran around with this one too much. I did qualify with it. It was available to me, but anyway, it fits in here as well. Yeah, it might even have been built for it. Who knows, but all the other ones worked. Even your good old Sig, your bog standard Sig, that sucker drop in there and you make that work as well. It was issued, you know, in green for everybody else, but we were special at Team 5 back in 1987. They gave us black ones. It was one size fits all, but we weren't in any big hurry to get to it and it wasn't really viewed as that important. As we moved on, we got better. As we went along, leather holsters that were specifically made for a specific gun, so you couldn't put your M9 into a Sig leather holster. That was the next step. After they invented Kydex, all hell broke loose. Because now, if you want to have a gun, you're going to have that particular gun in that particular holster. For me, I always advocate having a light on your pistol and that adds that extra bit of complexity. So now, that holster that you're getting to carry the gun around in has to not only fit the model of the holster, but also which light you choose to use with it. So we'll get into that here. We did do a little bit of low-light shooting back in my day. Well, back when I first started, I should say. When you had your good old single action, 1911, and then we had all those angles, green angled flashlights that momentarily come on. They can just marry your back, your hands up like this and flash the light and would light up your sights. Did it work? Yeah. Was it as effective as it needed to be? No. So as we moved on, I'll take you through the evolution. Okay, so when we start using the 226, this is a Safari Land and it's got a kind of a faux leather exterior and just the thumb brake. So you'd snap it and drag that sucker out. Again, it fits just this one, not any of the previous models. And then we want to put a light on it. Well, that was kind of a new idea back then. So it turned this, the same damn gun, but now the holster has to be just enormous. And the light was, again, pretty large. But initially, this wasn't a bad ticket. And it allowed you to light up your target, your threat. Didn't have the cool, and there was nothing cool about it. Well, no, I take that back. At the time, it was the coolest thing going. This one has had the pigtail cut off of it, but you can just come up, you know, for streamlining, you could work the light on and off just with your support hand thumb. I mean, we're talking enormous light for like 60 lumens, but it gave you a capability that, well, you didn't have up until then. So at the time it was a good deal. Now, of course, this is just, this 226 is just like this one. There's no rail. So the way they figured out how to put this on there, the takedown lever here, well, this one's flat on this side. On this one underneath here, there's a little nipple sticking out. So what you do is you'd remove that, slide this on part, put this through and snap it together. And that would hold it there and it would rattle a lot. And then you come under here with a little set screw and that would tighten up against the trigger guard. So that's what held it together. And it gave us a capability that we didn't have. I believe this one was also a fairly waterproof, but I don't think I ever took one of these diving. So I can't, can't report back on that one. This is a classic piece of equipment these days. Have you noticed on here, it says it was made by a company called Laser Products in Fountain Valley, California. And you might know them as their current name of Surefire. So this one actually predates Surefire as a name brand. Kind of cool. So we're going from the late nineties, early pistol light, big, huge holster. And then in the late, late nineties, right around the turn of the century, millennium, right? Yeah. Y2K. Remember that one? All right. Kydex became a really big thing and Safari Land got together with Surefire and put this combination together. The light has a side-by-side batteries, makes it a little bit chunky, a little thick in there, but shortened the overall length a bit. This has, it's removable, has a pressure switch. So you're just pushing on it with your, with your fingers here. You know, as you, as you take a natural grip, it turns the light on, which was fine. If you didn't want that to happen, you want to not turn the light on. Cause you're going to grip this sucker. You'd throw the lock out and then you wouldn't have any light ADS if that's what you, what you wanted. And then this dropped right in to that holster there. Boom. No problem. Thumb brake little tight these days. So I take this off and said, didn't want my light on for the weight or whatever these flanges here have match up with slots in the holster. So when I put it in there, I'd lock it in and you could use it without the light. So fairly versatile, but again, we're still working with a gun without integral rails on it. Moving into those early two thousands, the Surefire X300 comes out. And again, a lot of the guns in our inventory didn't have the rail. So they made a even smaller little setup here that went on there just so you could fit this bad boy on there. Again, same idea here. You've got a thumb switch. You can hit here or pressure pad right here. And then, you know, add on even more like, Oh, we've got a light. How about a laser? And so you've got a laser comes out of here that you can side in. And again, it has a pressure switch right here. So you get a light and a laser when you press out and get that, that good natural grip. From here, we went from this style. Okay. With the bail. Okay. You would have to actuate in order to get the gun out to then there's a new, a new latch here. You didn't have bail anymore. This locks in on the top of the ejection port. So when you press down out, it comes as a lot smoother, a lot nicer, you know, nothing to move out of the way. It took a little bit of getting used to, but worked out really well. Again, we're talking still the gun without a rail, but you get all this cool go fast gear that's coming to it. And you notice, and this is getting smaller, but like I said, we had a lot of these in inventory. So we had this and then we had this new, you know, cool, much more sleek holster. So because there's a little extra room here because that, uh, mount I had to go ahead and make a modification there. So now it slides in right there like that. Okay. Now about that same time, X 300 on the new railed Mark 25, that sucker drops right in there. Didn't change much on that. It still works with the newer gun, you know, that was designed for just have a little modification on there. No big deal. Now, some guys still like the, uh, uh, the bail, you know, they're used to it and it was what they've trained with. So they stuck with that when this does the same exact thing, rolls in there, you know, so it doesn't lock in quite so much, but you know, if you're used to doing this and you don't want to spend the extra time to learn that new, uh, technique because, you know, like we always talk about here at Tactical Hive, it's what you train to. So if this is what you wanted, you could stick with that. But again, the whole package has now gotten a lot smaller. Everything's nice and tight and we're still running with something like this today. I mean, we've gone to the, uh, the Glock 19, but we've got lights for the Glocks, the new, uh, M17, M18. They've got a rail, uh, you know, Surefire X300, still a really good viable option. So as you can see, lights keep getting better and smaller and brighter. Um, you know, the future is wide open. There's more, more of this coming. There'll be, uh, just, I'm kind of excited actually, uh, and, and a little bit bummed because my operating days are over and, uh, the gear that's coming out now is pretty awesome. Real quick overview. We started with no light on our gun, handheld lights, occasionally. Big leap in technology was this one. And then as we got better, everything got smaller, more compact, and the light became brighter. These lights are pretty much the same item, but once we move the rail, the integral rail, you can make it that much smaller. And the ones guys are using now are even better than these. So I guess you could say the future is looking pretty bright. As always, if you like this content, like, subscribe, leave me a comment.