MAG 40 10/19-10/22/17 Brooklyn MI

[octagon]

I won't do a complete review of the course as there are plenty out there and several here on PF. I will just give my hi and low points on the course and personal thoughts or experiences.

I used a CZ P10 C 9mm with 115 gr Sellior and Belliot ammo and 4 standard capacity factory mags. The holster I used was a Whitehat hybrid IWB at 3 o clock with a Magpul Tejas synthetic belt,jeans and a T shirt for concealment. Mag carriers were Kytex OWb at 9 o clock.

First the great stuff. I have always been a thorough researcher on legal and related topics since before becoming a police officer and throughout my career as I believe it helps to prevent or greatly reduce any hesitation or bad outcomes by knowing the law. I also have always been a big proponent of Massad Ayoob's techniques he uses and promotes and the reasoning behind them. I wanted to attend a LFI class in the past but never found the time,money location points aligning. This class worked out well. The classroom and lecture portion of the course was excellent and well worth the money and time. While I didn't personally learn huge amounts of new info it confirmed almost everything I had learned in many years of training,education and other courses. I have a different perspective than most of the other students and if I was asked by any new shooter who only had their CC permit training what course they should attend first this would be the course hands down.

The reasons for the high praise is Mas's depth of knowledge and experiences as a firearms trainer,competitive shooter,Police officer at various agencies part time,Police Prosecutor and expert witness in many cases in many different states and regions of the country. I believe this gives him the broad perspective that a local trainer or lawyer wouldn't have. I say this having 2 good friends to help compare the broadness perspective to Mas's. One was a lawyer who became a cop and the other was a cop who became a lawyer. I also have friends and former co workers who work in the prosecutors officer,legal dept, and Private investigations in MI which is more challenging than many states for licensing. None of these sources or together have relayed such quality information in such clear ways the big picture and details like this class did on all legal and civil aspects of self defense before during and after an incident. Mas has his act together and the years of refinement show.

I would highly recommend at a minimum the MAG 20 classroom portion just for the legal and training documentation aspects to any new CC permit holder and to newer LEOs too.

I was skeptical of the video for lecture portions but understand the benefits and most information was not dated so had direct relevance still with the newer cases such as Ferguson MO and the like with Mas filling in other info.

There always are things that could be improved and for the classroom portion I had a few things that were not perfect but minor complaints. The work through lunches and lack of anyplace close at all to get decent packable lunch foods or a quick bite made for less than optimal diet(junk food) made worse by a hotel stay. If I lived within driving distance to class each day from home this would have been a non issue nor would it have been if I had access to a fridge or kitchen where I stayed. Not a big deal but less pleasant.

Range/firearms portion.

This was good from both the perspective of confirming already known skills and techniques I use and have for many years as well as areas and techniques to try and learn or confirm that they are less efficient or effective for me personally. If I was new to shooting this would have been even more beneficial and I would have liked to see this in some of my early training courses and LEO programs for the same reasons but if was not done this way when I was new. I liked that Mas also gave credit to the Martial Arts and trainers where he developed the techniques from as well as noting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Nothing in the techniques was new or a revelation to me but I have almost all Mas's books and have followed his stuff for 25 years agreeing with much of it. Where I use different techniques the difference was not significant enough to cause a problem other than having to think into older techniques I haven't used in years like Weaver and Chapman and locked down thumbs grip kind of things. I appreciated that Mas was not demanding in every detail that we had to use the technique he said throughout the course.

The course had quite a few newer shooters including some that had little to no training beyond their CC permit class. This along with the same likely shooters having no military or police experience was evident but there were no real safety issues.no one injured and I believe everyone qualified and passed the written test.

Some issues I had with the range portion were the running of a cold range. While I can understand host range policy and the safety aspect as an adult learner, and having police and military experience and CC for 25+ years I feel much less comfortable with a cold range than a hot range and the artificiality is awkward. That said I adjust quickly and move on. What I had the biggest issue with was one safety officer's behavior. This SO was overzealous and aggressive in her actions and bordered on assaultive. If a male SO did the same things with female students that I saw I would have a serious corrective discussion at a minimum and remove the SO if it occurred more than once. The issue was not a significant safety issue like pointing the weapon in an unsafe direction,finger on trigger or violation of the 4 rules of firearm safety. It was failing to stand at parade rest fast enough, letting a muzzle rise toward the upper edge of the berm with a gun that had no magazine and the slide locked to the rear. The SO would physically grab hands and arms and force them behind with verbal chastising in a less than decent manner. Coming from military training and police I fully understand immediate and aggressive physical and verbal correction of any safety issue that violates the 4 rules or endangers others. In this case it was not the issue and made for uncomfortable day 1 and part of day 2. I felt for an older much less experienced shooter and other students who had no military experience or police and Parade rest was foreign to immediately adopt. No one in a learning environment should be treated so poorly especially when it is not a safety issue in itself. I addressed the issue with the main coordinator who corrected the issue by changing SO and I believe keeping a closer eye on the SO.

I can understand the difficulty in getting unpaid volunteers to assist with a 4 day 40 hr course so I place no blame on anyone other than the SO for lack of respectfulness and must say that every person at Brooklyn Sportsman club, the coordinator and everyone at MAG was courteous,reasonable,helpful and easy to work with.

The short version:


I highly recommend this course to anyone but most specifically to newer shooters before other courses. Everyone can get their value out of this course and it was worth the time,drive, and money for me even with military,police and 35 other firearms courses still a value. The days are long with homework on top of it and it is a true 40 hours with working lunches so plan accordingly and you will enjoy it and get the most out of it.


Equipment issues:

I forgot to note that there were more stoppages and pistol issues than I have seen in other classes and I had my first in the P10C since I owned it. My stoppage was a failure to feed that I didn't diagnose when it occurred I just had a dry fire and performed immediate action with no ejected cartridge and continued since it was a timed stage of fire. I went to the class with a gun that had 2 range sessions of dirtiness and the stoppage happened on day 3. That night I cleaned the gun and mags before shooting the final day qualification course. I found 2 of the 4 mags I was using has some oil residue and both these were caked with sand. The 2 mags that had no oil residue had some sand in them but significantly less and not on all parts or caked on the follower.

The range was all sand and loose stuff. I saw the shooter next to me have multiple stoppages with a Glock 19 but it was modified with extended mag button and slide release and the shooter had some physical impairments. One SO had a Springfield XD I believe in 45 and he had a couple issues and I heard several times SOs assisting or advising students to clear stoppages.