Cali,
I don't think that anyone has been given a hard time at all, but perhaps I'm more hardened by time on more flame-prone boards
I would be interested to know
why someone would recommend this piece. As it happens, I am both MIL and LEO, and I've used an Aimpoint in both roles so I guess I have some practical background to base my low opinion of a killflash on.
The bottom line is that in a LEO scenario you may have the luxury of starting a situation in good light, but the odds are that at the very least you will have to deal with degraded light before it is all over either from the turning of day to night, or because you have to go indoors to search, or both. The killflash degrades what little light gathering an Aimpoint's objective lens can muster, so when the ambiant light goes away it gets impossible (at least for me) to see anything through the sight without either activating my weapon light (not good on perimeter) or NVGs (which my department --- let alone myself --- can't really afford). As an LEO you need to have a weapon that can go from good to bad light instantly in my opinion, and unscrewing a killflash to get your weapon up and running just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Especially when I'm at a loss to see what practical purpose the equipment could serve me to begin with.
Now, I'll admit that when I posted above that I kind of skimmed the topic first, and in doing so it escaped me that the person who recommended this item was also a retailer. Maybe in that context I can see how you may have interpreted responses to be "harsh" in your words, I don't know. My comments towards the killflash being a gimmick item to get coin from Uncle Sam weren't aimed at any retailers here, but believe me it does happen. You wouldn't believe some of the useless crap that gets pawned off on soldiers at RFI time. From shitty, shitty sidearm accoutrements, to worthless Camelbak knockoffs, to some of the crappiest BUIS set-ups I've ever encountered. Fortunately, there's a whole bunch of really good equipment as well (Aimpoint, Knights rail systems, Surefire tactical lights, etc.), but govt. rip-offs do occur any time there's a need to equip soldiers. The killflash is a prime example, and my opinion was overwhelmingly in the majority in my unit at least. Out of the 3700 soldiers in our BCT, perhaps 85% were equipped with Aimpoints at RFI. Each one got a killflash, but out of my year over in country I saw only a handful of them attached to rifles. And a couple of those were on wire-hugger rifles.
To get back on point, however, I'd like to know why it is that CS Gunworks recommends this product to it's MIL/LEO customers. I consider myself a fair man and I'll admit that there may be some issues I either didn't think of or didn't encounter. If this is the issue, please enlighten me. Failing that, I'll say that the killflash is better suited for someone who wants their rifle to look "Just like the ones issued to soldiers" instead of "Just like the ones
carried by soldiers.
Saleen