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Beamshot Lasers

Things usually don't change much in the world of firearms.  For example, the most popular pistol in the market today is the Colt Government Model, as made by various manufacturers - a gun that has been on the market since 1911.  Although they have been around now for thirty years, laser sights are still quite "new" in firearm terms.

Back in the 1970s, someone had the idea of mounting a laser on top of a rifle.  The idea was that if the laser was zeroed to the bullet's point of impact, it would simply be a case of putting the laser dot on the target and pulling the trigger.

The first laser sight I remember seeing was colossal.  It was mounted on an M16A1 rifle and must have weighed almost as much as the rifle.  Undoubtedly it must have cost many thousands of dollars.

By the 1990s, lasers had gotten small enough and inexpensive enough that hobby shooters could afford to buy them.  Interest in them was spurred on by the dramatic portrayal of laser sights in movies such as Terminator.  The first laser sight I bought was quite expensive and bulky, and required me to get a scope mount for my Beretta 92F, upon which I bolted the laser.  After about a thousand rounds, the internal components of the sight self-destructed from the recoil of the gun, and I was left with a pile of expensive junk.

Things have moved on since then, with laser sights getting smaller and smaller and more and more inexpensive.

Recently I was sent some lasers to test by Beamshot and this brings us to the subject of the article.

For those of you completely unfamiliar with laser sights, they work essentially the same way as a laser pointer, i.e. they emit a beam of focused light, and what you see is a dot wherever you point it.  There are various ways of mounting them onto a firearm.

Before I go too far, the question many people have is: what can I use a laser sight for?

Visible light laser sights are to the best of my knowledge no longer used by the military and rarely by the police.  There are several reasons for this, however the two main ones are that a laser sight gives away the position of the firer to an enemy, and also they are seen as being politically incorrect, no doubt due to films like Terminator.  I'm sure most of us have seen some silly movie in which a laser dot appears on someone's forehead, followed by some gory scene of them being shot.

Several countries, including Germany and Switzerland, have actually banned laser sights.  In Germany the reason given was that they were "unsporting", although I suspect in reality the ban was driven more by paranoia.

The military nowadays use laser sights which emit light on a wavelength invisible to the human eye, but it can be seen through night vision scopes.  Not surprisingly, many countries also ban those, too!

However, while this is a fascinating topic the reality is that 99.9% of laser sights are purchased simply because they are a lot of fun to play with.  Certainly in a country like the UK, the use of firearms for anything other than sporting purposes is frowned upon anyway, so the only use for anything firearm-related is for less than life-or-death reasons.

The first fallacy I want to dismiss about laser sights is that they are somehow a substitute for knowing how to shoot a gun.  They are not.  If you know how to shoot, they can be a lot of fun, but you aren't going to be any more likely to hit the target with a laser sight than with the iron sights if you don't know how to properly hold and handle a firearm.

The other thing I want to point out is that by definition, you have to focus your eyes on the target when using a laser sight, so that you can see the dot.  This means that laser sights are only usable at relatively short distances, and thus the sort of guns that are worth mounting them on are guns that are used at short distances, such as pistols, air guns, .22 rifles and submachineguns.  Unfortunately, pistols and submachineguns are banned in Britain, so that left me with airguns and .22 rifles to try the Beamshot lasers out on!

Beamshot sent me three lasers to try out, the first is the Beamshot 4000, designed for use on pistols:

Note in the picture above the intriguing way of powering the laser.  The laser sight comes with three switches, you can see the lithium battery cells in the middle of the wires on the left of the picture.  Rather than replace the batteries, you replace the entire wire.

For testing purposes, I decided to mount it on a Walther CP88 pistol, that is powered by compressed carbon dioxide:

Although the label on the box said the mount was intended for use on a SIG-Sauer P226, it mounted with no problems onto the trigger guard of the CP88.  The only thing I can say against the mount is that it involved a lot more screws than I thought were necessary.  Anyone familiar with Meccano should have no problem though!  The sight is easy to zero, simply by leaving one of the screws loose in the mount, and gently pushing the laser to the position you want.  The laser housing is spherical, and can be moved in any direction within the mount.  The only snag I found was that once you had the laser where you wanted it, tightening the screw to hold the laser in position knocked the zero off.  Eventually with some fiddling I got it where I wanted it!

In use the laser presented no problems, simply press the button (held on to the grip with a piece of elastic with velcro) point the gun where you want the pellet to go, and pull the trigger!  In short order I was knocking over pop cans rapidly, from the hip!

I've only got two things to say against it really, the first is that because it is quite far from the bore axis (and air pistols are used at very short range), elevation had to be adjusted on the laser every time the range was altered.  The other thing is that the wire that comes out of the back of the laser doesn't have much clearance from the front of the trigger guard, although it did have enough, barely.

The specification sheet says the laser will work for an hour before the batteries run out, that's actually probably conservative.  The sheet also says the laser has a range of 500 yards at night, well all I can say is, my pistol doesn't...  For any practical air pistol distance, you can see the dot.

While overseas I decided to try it out on a SIG-Sauer P226.  It worked, although I only fired a small amount of ammunition with the laser mounted.  I am therefore unable to comment on whether it would hold up to the pounding of the recoil of a real pistol, however, the Beamshot is so inexpensive I doubt that actually matters much.  Certainly at 25m on an indoor range I could see the dot.

And so, onto the Beamshot Super:

This is a more sophisticated piece of equipment than the 4000.  The box shows it mounted onto two airsoft pistols, however the version I received was designed for mounting on a rifle using a clamp.

The Super model has proper zeroing adjustment, namely grub screws that are adjusted with an allen key to move the laser diode in the appropriate direction.  It is also powered by a CR123A lithium camera battery, which gives it a 20-hour battery life, which essentially should be enough to last basically forever for most users, I suspect.

Although it is bulkier than the 4000, this is largely irrelevant given that it is intended to be used mainly on rifles, which are not intended to be concealable anyway.

To test the Super I bolted it onto a Ruger 10/22 and took it out on the range on a bright sunny day.  Even under these conditions I could see the dot at 20m, however, when the gun is fired the dot wobbles during recoil, and at 20m I had a hard time keeping track of it.  I decided therefore to move in closer, to 15m.  At this distance I could rapid fire off a magazine from the hip and get them all in the centre of the bullseye quite easily.  Does this type of shooting have any practical use?  Not really, but it is great fun!

Although it was initially a tad tricky to zero the sight, once I had it zeroed it kept the zero and appears to be a durable sight.  To really give it a good testing I suspect I need to bolt it onto an M16 or something similar and let rip at short range, alas, this is no longer legally possible in this country (or most others).

Having had prior experience with machineguns mounted with laser sights however, I can safely say that laser sights make guns such as the H&K MP5K and other stockless SMGs substantially easier to use, as it enables the gun to be fired from a much more stable position by "clamping" the gun into the hip.

Playing with the sight at night indicated that the dot was small enough for good precision at 100 yards or even further.  Bearing in mind of course that you probably cannot see the target distinctly at that distance.

One final point is that if you are thinking of buying one of these sights, be careful about which model clamp you get with it.  The one I received for review was designed for skinny rifle barrels, but there are various models of clamps and it is important to get the right one!

The final sight sent to me by Beamshot is a prototype sight specifically intended for airguns:

This sight works on similar principles to the Super sight, but it is more compact using three 1.5V SR44 batteries.  These don't have the same life as the CR123A, but they are smaller, so the sight is smaller.  Also the zeroing arrangement on this sight was the best of all three sights in my opinion.

The main snag was that I didn't have a mount for it.  I attempted to adapt the mount for the Super sight for it with limited success.  In the end I came to the conclusion I couldn't give it a fair test, although if I figure out a better mounting method in the future I may add it to this review.  All I can say is that the Beamshot sights seem to be getting better over time, so if you are thinking of buying one this may be the best choice, it appears to be at first glance.

More details on specifications, prices and so on are available at the Beamshot website.

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