Just wondering. What are your views?

Depends on the laser, your objective and your environment.

Mostly worthless/handguard candy (IMO).

Pretty much what I figured.

No, an IR laser is invaluable tool, both for aiming and illumination.

In the civilian world.  It's interesting to see how much the (especially hog) hunters are able to employ them.

Military:  not so much.  More of a pointer for hey, the bad guys are somewhere over there.

The two problems for precision shooting are a) hard to get the LASER exactly sighted in and b) light travels in a straight line, projectiles do not.

Visible lasers have their place in situations where the operator cannot achieve
a proper cheek-weld to aim using the sights/optic. This would be a situation where a laser would be good.
The thing is, however, about the only time this would be valid is when wearing a protective mask.

How often is a civvy gonna be doing that?

Idk.. Snap shooting my ar it's unreal how much faster you can get rounds on target with a super powerful laser. Indoors the smoke makes it into a beam and it's just instant. With nv I have to use my laser.. Its hard to use optics with a huge brick hanging in front of your face.

Are you asking about VIS or IR lasers?

IR lasers are often used for aiming while using night vision, and can be extremely useful and effective in that capacity.  They can also be used for marking/designating, and other roles when "your team" has NV, and the "other team" doesn't.  

Visible lasers can also be useful under some circumstances, but these tend to be rare, and visible-only lasers are most often gimmicks on civilian weapons.  Slaved VIS/IR lasers can make zeroing your IR laser easier than IR-only lasers, and most high-end IR Laser Aiming Modules (LAM) come with slaved lasers.  

~Augee

I am not asking about infrared. Just the cheaper ones out there. I live in a colder state so Green would be out of the question. Red would be it.

Yeah, a beam that helps you point your rifle but also points the BG back at you, precisely.

A better solution for sighting with suboptimal cheek weld is a red dot or other parallax free optic that doesn't scream "here I am," especially when you are an army of one.

IR lasers are useful when you are using NODs, but even then, their application is limited due to the inherent "shooter is here" issue.

I personally think a visable laser plays a great role on a home defense AR.  It adds a psychological factor that your weapon alone can't demonstrate without being fired.  If a intruder breaks in during the dead of night, realistically your jumping out of bed, heart racing, vision blurred, it's pitch black, and your groggy, it's gonna feel reassuring flipping on your laser.  CQB, lasers are point and shot.  Aiming around doors with dots is not the easiest thing to do, especially if this prick has intent to kill you and you trading lead.

Shooting with your none dominant side around a entry way in CQB, a laser dramatically lessons the awkwardness.  

In my humble opinion, having fire superiority is most advantageous, but being able to place the lead on target in cqb with minimal body exposure is just as important.

I know lights are great too.  But in the dead of night, a sure fire will momentarily blind you too.  Try it out.

Secondly, my wife can not aim for the life of her, but she can hit paper with a laser and she knows how to operate an AR.  

And if for whatever reason, your not able to shoulder your weapon, you can still place effective rounds with a laser.

This video chimes in a lot of what I just said.  Watch it and make your own decision.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlrGfhErqlg

This man knows what he's talking about, amiright?  It's like racking the slide on your 12 gauge pump, instant pants-shitting by the "perp."  

Problem is, lasers don't work that way, it's not "point and shoot," especially not with a long gun.  What's really going to happen is you're going to be searching for the dot "somewhere out there."  Do that in a dark house with light coming in through windows, blinking lights from appliances, when you're "jumping out of bed, heart racing, vision blurred, it's pitch black, and your groggy."  

Lasers on pistols became popular because there weren't many effective ways to mount a sight on a pistol without a whole lot of downsides, which is why you only really ever saw them on race guns on frame mounts.  Modern miniature RDS and industry momentum is beginning to make these concerns far less of an issue, and frame mounted MRDs are becoming increasingly more popular.  Ask yourself, if a laser was faster, why don't race shooters use them on their game guns, and why haven't they pushed the market to make ever more powerful visible lasers that can be used during matches?  They drove the red dot market for years before militaries really got on board, why didn't the same thing happen with lasers?  

Visible lasers are great for escalation of force when you're trying to convince someone not to do something stupid.  On an infil when you're trying to sneak up on someone else and you run into someone who you need to subdue but don't necessarily want shoot yet, a nice laser can convince them to calm the down and shut up.  A dumb kid who joined an insurgency because their family was starving and the insurgents paid better than any other work that was available may think twice when you paint him with a visible laser.  

If someone has already broken into your house, I would think they've already crossed the "do something stupid" threshold, are EOF procedures really what you're going to rely on?  The whole "hostile act/hostile intent" thing--breaking into a house certainly qualifies.  I'm not advocating that one should simply blast anyone/anything that comes into the house (more on that later).  Not only are you letting them know exactly where you are if they choose fight instead of flight, the bigger danger is that the "psychological factor" affects you more than it does the intruder, giving you a false sense of security and complacency about your ability to de-escalate the situation.  Situation dependent, certainly, attempt to de-escalate if you can, but whether or not you're conscious of it, relying on a "psychological factor" in your defensive plan means you're training yourself to think that your laser can solve the problem for you, meaning that if the "psychological factor" doesn't work, you're going to fumble for that extra half-second while you try to figure out what to do next once your "Plan A" shit the bed.  

You say "a sure fire [sic] will momentarily blind you," so... what's your plan then?  Shoot at a floating red dot in the air without having any idea what you're shooting at?  Shoot at that vague human-like form in the ether?  

About the only semi-reasonable argument you have is that your wife can hit with it, but can't hit with an optic, which, fine, being able to hit is always better than not being able to hit, but there's a lot of limitations, and the better option may be to figure out why she can't use the sights properly.  

Also, please be aware of your surroundings--not just what's in front of you, but what's behind that.  Your talk of fire superiority and shooting blindly at a laser into the dark for "home defense" does not give me confidence that you've taken this into proper consideration.  

~Augee

Target designator for laser-guided fur missile.  

~Augee

I have a couple of IR lasers for NODS.  I have a green laser on my hog hunting 6.8 with a thermal scope.  Always used at night in fields.  When we open up on a group of them, they start running and as often as not, some run right at you.  Since everyone is running thermal scopes, we can pop a light on and use the green lasers for when they're a lot closer than we want them to be.  I almost never use a laser for shots more than 50'.  It's hard to get the thermal scope lined up while the pig is charging, and I'm moving.  The grren beam comes in handy when it is called for.

Well, I wondered the same, and bought a $24 green laser sight (amazon) with mounts and remote switch. Dang thing is awesome bright. At first I thought it was crud because it didn't hold zero, but using some blue loctite has made it solid. It's held zero through hundreds of rounds over 4-5 range trips, so I'm quite satisfied with the cost/performance.

Someone mentioned cold weather needs a red laser. I'll put mine in the freezer and see if temperature is what he's referring to. Green is a color the eyes pick up very well and this cheapo green laser is way easier to spot on a church steeple about 300 yards away than my 5mw Spectraphysics HeNe laser. I can see the spot in the leaves of trees a ways off even in daylight.

Might be worth the outlay to find out if it's a tool or a gimmick. If nothing else, you can mess with pets a long ways away!

I have lots of guns that have visible lasers because I use some form of IR laser from Steiner. The only time I ever use the visible laser is to sight in the IR laser. The visible laser is only visible in the best of low light conditions, such as dawn or dusk.

Unless using an IR laser, I'd say skip a laser on a long gun.

To each there own, but please don't misconstrue what I said, which is a the benefit of visible laser on a home defense ar.  Going into the fact militaries and 3 gunners don't run them is apparent for all obvious reason.

And I agree with you, being aware of your surroundings.  I assume, that anyone willing to protect their property with force would already know their surroundings in their own home.  It's a level of responsibility I automatically presume has been considered.  much like a lot of ar handling courses, it's assumed the shooter knows the basics of weapon safety.

None the less, I don't load fmj in my bedside ar for stated reason.  I've personally ran a penetration test on my range building 12- 2x2  framed section of walls using fire rated this 5/8" sheet rock and r13 insulation.  Fmj punched clean through 11 sections and came to rest in a frame member on the last.  

Hollow point went through two sheets (eqvalent of a single interio wall)before expanding and loosing energy.

Just food for thought when considering your surroundings.

I wasn't thinking about my rifle just my pistol.

Except most military combat rifles, at least those used by U.S. military combat arms types have on-board visible lasers.  It’s not that visible lasers have no uses, it’s that the applicability of those uses to civilian “home defense” are limited to the point of irrelevance, or to use the language of this thread, “a gimmick.”  I bring up 3 gunners, because one of the primary justifications used by people who use lasers for "HD" use "speed" as a justification, yet, 3 gunners, people for whom speed is the primary concern, and who spend thousands of dollars on every sort of modification to their weapons to be faster, have not taken up visible lasers.

Beyond that, I've long been a proponent of the fact that a visible laser can be an excellent tool within a narrow range of needs/uses.  The fact that most duty-grade IR laser aiming modules have an on-board laser further makes it moot--even many folks who say "gimmick" have visible lasers on their weapons.  ncorry gives an example of an actual use where a visible laser works, a situation that’s not necessarily unrealistic for the given circumstance.  Use of a thermal or clip-on night vision device or even a conventional scope that would obviate the use of a red-dot or fast 1x optic could call for a secondary sighting device that can be used at close ranges quickly.  Even then, many users choose to use piggy-backed or offset miniature red dots for this application, but not everyone wants/can afford to mount an expensive optic in a wholly secondary/emergency role, especially given the aforementioned on-board, slaved visible lasers in IR LAMs that can be effective in that capacity.  

However, if you’re talking about civilian “home defense,” the question is, why aren’t you simply using the right tool for the job?  If you’ve only got one rifle, instead of buying a duty-grade laser, why not buy an RDS on a QD, RTZ mount, instead of trying to use a scoped gun and using a visible laser?  

Nevertheless, the issue is not necessarily that you think it’s worthwhile to have a visible laser on your “HD” weapon, it’s your reasoning and justifications for it, which betray a number of wrong or poor assumptions, along with a number of statements that would indicate that you and your wife would both benefit from more training, rather than on lasers.  

Having a plan is better than having no plan, but having is a bad plan isn’t good.  Having a visible laser be the cornerstone of your “HD” plan (or at least your HD weapon) is a bad plan.  

Also, IMHO, an AR pistol isn’t the greatest thing for “HD,” either, personally, if I wasn’t using a suppressed SBR, I would rather use a 14.5” (pinned to 16”) carbine than an AR pistol.  That’s neither here nor there, though, and has no bearing on my opinions about visible lasers as an AR pistol is simply a less stable SBR.  

~Augee