SureFire, LLC had a display in their booth area that would definitely be of interest to all you gear folks out there and even more interestingly I discovered that the company had to go to a few specific gear collectors in order to make the display actually happen. I didn’t get them in the picture on account of not finding out until after the event, but the 90s SWAT Cop for example was sporting some immaculate German Adidas GSG9 boots supplied by Ho-Tac Tactical, with the BHD styled SF operator in the centre being dressed by Spartan117GW.
I also wanted to briefly mention a certain revolver that was on display. You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s an optic on top of the gun if you’re not familiar with the company called Laser Products that actually preceded SureFire. If you can recall the laser pointer than Arnie was rocking on his long slide 1911 in Terminator 2 however you might know the sort of thing we’re talking about here. The mounts on this particular example do include a set of iron sights, but some other similar guns did not have usable irons and the idea was to just point and shoot entirely using the laser.
Unlike the modern wonders of picatinny of course, actually fitting something like this to a firearm in the 70s was no small endeavour. It seems probable that the top of the pistol had machine work and thread tapping done for the mount rings and the grips have been replaced with ones that allow for routing of the oddly thick cable that runs from the rear of the laser to down to the huge hanging battery that’s attached to the base of the grip. You will also note that the traditional tail on the hammer has been replaced with a wide, sweeping knurled surface that just about protrudes from either side of the laser unit as the original hammer would have been unreachable in this configuration (if it even fit under there at all).
When you look at SureFire’s latest all-IR XC2 that packs an IR laser and illuminator in to a rail mounted unit that’s barely bigger than a pair of AAs you really get some perspective on how far things have come.
Leave a Reply