Clocks fall back in two weeks. Your commute, your parking lot, and your front door all move into the dark overnight.
On Saturday, October 31, the sun sets in Denver at 5:58 PM.
On Sunday, November 1, it sets at 4:57 PM.
One night. One hour. And by 5:25 PM, the last useful twilight is gone.
That’s the drive home. The grocery store parking lot. The walk from your car to your front door. Picking the kids up from practice. All of it, starting that Monday, happens in the dark.
Almost nobody practices for that.
Where the shooting actually happens
Most people who train do it on a lit range, in the middle of the day. Bright lights overhead, a white target, and all the time in the world to see the front sight.
That’s not when trouble shows up.
Researchers at Loyola University Chicago studied officer-involved shootings in Dallas from 2003 to 2017. About two-thirds of them happened in the evening or overnight. And the shootings that happened in daylight were significantly more likely to hit the person the officer was shooting at.
Across the whole study, about 35 percent of the rounds fired hit their target. These are trained officers with their lives on the line. And the dark made it worse.
If it happens to you, odds are it happens after sunset. And starting November 1, sunset is before most people get off work.
What changes when the light goes
I’ve spent 32+ years teaching people to shoot and 25+ years in law enforcement. Low light doesn’t change the fundamentals. It changes how many of them you can actually see.
You can’t see your sights. Black sights on a dark target simply disappear. Night sights, a bright front sight, or a red dot help, but only if you’ve practiced with them in the dark. If you’ve only ever seen your sights under range lights, you don’t know what they look like at 5:30 in a parking lot.
You can’t identify what you’re looking at. A phone in someone’s hand and a gun in someone’s hand look the same in the dark. So do a neighbor and a stranger. You cannot shoot what you have not identified, and you cannot identify what you cannot see.
Your eyes don’t adjust when you need them to. Walk out of a bright store into a dark lot and your eyes need time to adjust. That’s exactly when you’re loading groceries, head down, keys in hand.
Other people see you first. Under a parking lot light, you’re lit. The person standing between two cars isn’t.
One thing that we always train for in the Marine Corps and in law enforcement is low light/no light situations. Civilians typically overlook this area, and it isn’t taught until you reach advanced concealed carry training and other advanced courses I teach. It is not because I don’t want to train for this scenario; it is a time constraint. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most common CCW situations you will find yourself in.
What to do before November 1
1. Carry a light every day. Not in the car. On you. A small, bright handheld flashlight weighs almost nothing and gets used every single day: finding your keys, checking the back seat, lighting up the space between two parked cars. The more you use it for ordinary things, the more natural it is when it matters.
2. Look at your sights in the dark. Unload your pistol, verify it’s empty, and take it outside at dusk. Look at the sights against a dark background. Can you see them? If you can’t, that’s worth knowing now, not later.
3. Dry practice with the light in your hand. Same rules: unloaded, verified, ammunition in another room. Practice getting the light on target and the gun on target together, slowly, until it stops feeling awkward. Light first. Identify. Then decide.
4. Change the parking lot routine. Park under a light, as close to the entrance as you can. Look at your car before you walk to it. Have your keys out before you leave the store, not at the car door. Put the bags in and get in. The trunk can wait until you’re home.
5. Light up your own front door. A porch light on a timer or a motion sensor costs very little. Your front walk is the last place you want to be fumbling for keys in the dark, with your back to the street.
6. Find a low-light class or range night. Most ranges are lit like an operating room. Some offer reduced-light sessions. If yours does, use it this winter. A few strings in the dark will teach you things the lit range never will.
The standard
Daylight saving doesn’t make anyone more dangerous. It just moves the part of your day when you’re most exposed into the dark, all at once, overnight.
You can’t change when the sun goes down. You can change whether the first time you try to see your sights, find your target, and use a light is the night you need to.
Train in the light you’ll actually live in.
John Rader
Colorado Tactics, LLC
Slow is smooth… Smooth is FAST!
720-464-SHOT | 720-464-7468
Sources
- timeanddate.com, “Sunrise and sunset times in Denver, November 2026” (sunset 4:57 PM and civil twilight end 5:25 PM on Nov 1; daylight saving time ends) — timeanddate.com
- timeanddate.com, “Sunrise and sunset times in Denver, October 2026” (sunset 5:58 PM on Oct 31) — timeanddate.com
- Police1, “New study on shooting accuracy: How does your agency stack up?” December 3, 2018, on Donner & Popovich, “Hitting (or missing) the mark,” Policing: An International Journal (Dallas PD, 2003–2017) — police1.com