MAG-80 Lessons Learned, Pt. 3

Lesson Learned #3: Sometimes the little things mean a lot. 

MAG-80 includes training on weapons retention. This is hands-on training in the strictest sense of the term, I try to grab your gun, you keep me from doing so, and vice-versa. Instructions called for a training simulator (i.e. Rings Blue Gun) and a "sturdy pair of leather gloves" for this part of the class, which was 2-3 hours every day.

My yard work gloves are in good enough shape for yard work, but getting raggedy enough I went and bought a new pair of leather work gloves, to be precise, Wells  Lamont Cowhide Full Leather Adjustable Work Gloves model #1132. Good gloves, you can get them at pretty much any chain or big box hardware store. If you look at the photo you'll see that they have the common strap across the back to adjust size; I bought a size large, which fit snugly enough I paid little attention to it...

Wells  Lamont Cowhide Full Leather Adjustable Work Gloves model #1132

...until during the retention training I was experiencing sharp pains in my hands. I thought my training partners were applying some Vulcan nerve pinch I had missed in the descriptions. I thought my hand was broken. I thought... I don't know what I thought. 

But if you take another look at the photo of the glove again you'll what it was. That little bead at the end of the tension strap? Enough pressure exerted straight down on the back of the hand wearing it in just the right place is very distracting...

Great if your actual assailant is wearing the gloves, bad if it's a classmate... 

EDIT To add: In at least one of the videos on the subject Mas showed us one of the assistant instructors was wearing these same gloves, and did not seem to have any problems. So the gloves are fine.

MAG-80 Lessons Learned, Pt. 2

 Still on the shotgun, but without the fancy language this time.

Lessons Learned Part 2:

2A. If circumstances require you to fire your shotgun one handed, you should do so from cover, using said cover to brace said shotgun.
2B. If, when doing so the slide opens upon firing, do not assume that it has opened far enough to pick up the next shell, even if it has ejected the fired one.

Mas had said that the slide opening was a possibility, for Remington 870s, and  seemed surprised that it happened on a Mossberg. I guess that spray-can gun lube is better than I thought, or the action on my Mossy is smoother than usual. Or, I suppose it could have something to do with having replaced the stock fore-end with the Surefire replacement, with light. 

Anyway, the slide opened, ejected the spent shell, I slammed it shut, not realizing that it had not picked up the next shell, and the bolt was closed on an empty chamber. Since the chamber was empty I had to depress the Action Lock to chamber a shell. On the range doing a drill, this merely slows me (and potentially everyone else) down a second or two, but when the excrement hits the rotary air circulation device...

BTW, if anyone has been following these drivelings for years, I can say that the Surefire fore-end gave me no problem this time around, so possibly the issues I had during the FAS Defensive Shotgun class back in 2015 were due to the Magpul sling adapter.

I was also able to acquire a supply of Federal Low Recoil Tactical slugs, and Low Recoil 8 Pellet 00 Buckshot with the Flite Control wad, which may have also led to a less-punishing experience. 

The other issue I ran into with the 'scattergun was due to having the "Persuader" version of a Mossberg 500, with the 20" barrel and full length magazine. The barricade/cover positions for shotgun call for bracing the front of the mag' tube against the vertical or horizontal cover as a rest -- thus Part B of Lesson 2 above -- but that full length tube puts the muzzle right there, which is less than optimal. Fortunately I had added an after market clamp-on forward sling adapter which served OK as a brace. 

MAG-80 Lessons Learned, Pt. 1

Thou shalt take care when firing slugs from thy Shotgonne with rapidity, lest thy thumb slippeth out of position and ye giveth thyself a Fatte Lippe...

MAG-80 next week

 Yes, I'm stoked, balanced by not wanting to be "that guy".

Again...

(Actually, I don't think we had "that guy" in MAG-40.) (Uh-oh, we all know what that means...)

Odds and ends

So, over the last few weeks I've alluded to a friend who was going through a rough patch, most recently in Earworm, 06/14/2017.

Basically, her son went from a 5% chance of surviving, to full consciousness, coherent speech, and walking unassisted.

Apparently, it is possible for certain organs which have shut down to regenerate.

Somewhere in there, I wondered if this was going to turn into a Lifetime movie, or even in to a Hallmark Special.*

Then she told me that certain other aspects of her life were turning around, and now I suspect even Hallmark would turn the script down as too unrealistic...

***

...In the meantime, my wife has been listening to me obsess about the problems of a woman shes never met, and all she says is "What's the news? Is she  doing OK? She probably needs a break, why don't you see if we can take her to lunch or dinner?"

So, yeah, I think even Hallmark would say it was too hokey. 

Also, I love my incredible wife.

***

Also in the meantime, the NRA has relented on it's ban on 1911s and revolvers in the Carry Guard self-defensive shooting classes.  (Dear NRA: WTF is wrong with you?!)

I heard a lot of rationales why this rule made sense, but frankly, IMnsHO none of them stood scrutiny. If someone is paying $850 for a three day class, you should be a little more lenient about what gat they bring.

If Mas can design the shooting courses of MAG40 to accommodate single-stack pistols and 6 shooters, than by Friar Schwartz' ghost so can the NRA.

***

*Okay, so I have this theory that women's lives can be divided into one of three categories:

1. Hallmark Channel movies
2. Lifetime Channel movies
3. Oxygen Channel movies

depending on how horrible the tragedy is, how sordid the scandal is, and/or how many people die and/or go to prison.

There may be other categories, the woman I first developed this theory around turned out to need one of those pay-per-view channels, if you know what I mean, and I think you do...

(Edited to add that I was only "involved" wih this woman as a co-worker.)

I haven't yet heard a proposed equivalent for men's lives, although I suspect my life story will star Bruce Campbell...

Gun Skool (Pugetopolis Edition) Update

Realized a few days ago that, when I listed local shooting schools in the area (in post The Clue Meter: Gun Skool Thoughts, Part I -- Pugetopolis), I left one out.

Norpoint Shooting Center is far enough north that I forgot about it, but one of the owners was one of my instructors in the FAS Defensive Shotgun Class I took last year. Some co-workers (who have a simply insane commute) have taken multiple classes there and give it two trigger fingers up.

Looking at the course catalog, I may be enticed to make the trek up that way myself...

MAG 40 -- Thoughts

So, it's been just over two months since I took MAG40 at Firearms Academy of Seattle. Before I went, I had noticed that there seemed to be few reviews/AARs of the course on the Internet. I wasn’t sure why, perhaps Massad Ayoob discouraged such, lest proprietary information be revealed?

I am now prepared to state that it more likely that the “drinking from a fire hose” nature of the class makes it difficult, to say the least, to distill the lessons into a blog post.

“Drinking from a fire hose”: That’s the way someone, I think it was Ry Jones, described the class when, at dinner after Ray Carter’s funeral, I explained why I was staying in a motel in Centralia rather than make the hour and a half one way drive to FAS every day.

Anyway.

My notes from the classroom portion run over 30 pages, and I am not done¹ transcribing/editing them; I have no intention of trying to publish multiple uber-posts of the class, but that's what it would take, because I cannot distill the experience into a single post.

But here's an attempt:
(After the jump. It was kind of long...)

Gun Skool Thoughts, Part II

So, when talking to folks who have never been to formal training that did not involve everyone wearing the same clothes and addressing others as "Sergeant" or "Sir", I've found some... odd ideas.

When you are reading the course description, make sure you read the part that says what to being with you.

Yes, they expect you to provide your own ammunition.

• Some schools will provide it for you -- read "sell it to you" -- if you make prior arrangements, but usually the only ones that provide ammo are also providing guns. 
• Check the expected round count and take extra. 
• Try to figure out what works best on your gun(s), don't just go for the cheapest bulk pack. 
• Ask me how I know that last...

One colleague at work was outraged at the thought that he was paying all this money for a class and had to provide his own ammo. Of course, usually Uncle Sam had been providing his ammo...

There are several reasons for this:

Gun Skool Thoughts, Part I -- Pugetopolis

As word got out at work that I had attended MAG40, I started being queried about going to a shooting school. Not surprising, I guess.

One of the things I was asked (including online) was "Where can I go for classes?"

I have personal experience with two sources of instruction:

• The Firearms Academy of Seattle, Inc.. This is where I attended MAG40, and the Defensive Shotgun Course I took last October. Training here is excellent. If you are taking a multi-day class, unless you live very close you might want to stay in town. (They do have provisions for camping: "Set up camp over in that flat area under the trees.")
• Classes at  Federal Way Discount Guns. I took several classes here (Basic, "Progressive" or Intermediate, and "Urban Defensive Tactics"). At this time they only show two courses in the "catalog", Basic Handgun and "AR-15 Rifle Tactics." They also do private instruction by arrangement. 

I just received an email from Janice, the lady who was running training at FWDG which announced that her operation, Women and Guns, is now teaching in Olympia. Classes shown on that site are for women only.

Another local source of training which is  highly reputable but which I personally have no experience with is InSights Training Center, which conducts it's classes locally at West Coast Armory and West Coast Armory North.

A training operation which markets itself heavily (they have a booth at the state fair!!!) but whose instruction I have no experience with is Friday Harbor Gun Runners.
(Not gonna lie: I hate the name, and I hate the pirate logo. But if their marketing is successful, I guess my personal taste counts for nothing.)
(OTOH, their training operation is actually and formally Northwest Safety First with an Eagle-and-Flag logo, which is nice and responsible sounding, but I had to research this post to learn it...)

Most or all of the local indoor ranges and clubs have classes of some sort. Other than my "local" noted above, I cannot speak to the nature of the training.
Indoor Ranges:

• The Marksman, Puyallup, WA
• Champion Arms, Kent, Washington

Clubs usually have members who are NRA Certified Instructors and teach the NRA classes.
Listed in no particular order:

• Paul Bunyan Rifle and Sportsman's Club Home Page
• Tacoma Rifle and Revolver Club
• Tacoma Sportsmen's Club
• Renton Fish and Game Club (Only lists Hunter's Education; they have a heavy match schedule.)
• Snoqualmie Valley Rifle Club. No classes currently scheduled, which is a shame, I helped run a couple of classes there.
• Kenmore Shooting Range. 
• Cascade Shooting Facilities (FKA Cascade Rifle & Pistol Club.) Currently only lists a woman's handgun course. Pretty extensive range facility, out in the country far enough that they should have a few years before they feel urban sprawls encroachments, unlike most of the other clubs listed.

Generally speaking, the NRA courses could be considered to be of the "Guns 101" types of thing; they have more advanced classes, but Personal Protection In The Home needs two days, and Personal Protection Outside The Home requires PPITH as a prerequisite, and another two (or more) days. And no one is willing to pay much for an NRA class; which is fine from most instructors points of view, we don't teach these to make money, but if it ties up range facilities for days....

By the way, Microsoft and Boeing both have active gun clubs for employees; Boeing used to have a corporate indoor pistol range, the backstop of which it gave to the club ("Get this out of our storage or we'll sell it for scrap!") , which donated it to a new indoor range in exchange for membership privileges.

Since I had at least one query for "My brother lives in the Puget Sound region and he wants to know where to go for training", I welcome any additions to this list that others may have. Leave a comment or shoot me an email at the address over there on the left side of your screen and I'll add it. Thanks!

EDIT TO ADD: I suspect the paucity of classes listed at the clubs is due to the effects of Initiative I-594 a couple of years ago, which made it illegal to hand a gun  to someone not your relative without a background check. The training exemption makes it legal to do so if the gun remains at the range full-time. Not a lot of help...
Note this well, you who live in states considering similar "common sense regulations."

Mr. Bad Example

So, what spare time I've had the last week or two had mostly been spent transcribing my notes from MAG40. I think I'll pass on posting a day-by-day AAR and just post the outstanding things from it.

When I'm ready.

In the meantime... I often pass on posting about things in the news, because others post about them so much better. But sometimes...

As seen on View From The Porch: See this? Don't do this?

Man, 20, killed by shotgun blast outside northeast Raleigh home | News & Observer

This. This right here is why we can't have nice things.

(And actually ties in with some of the things covered in MAG40.)

Acknowledging that the press almost always leaves important details out, and that events as described by friends and family of the deceased are biased and not to be trusted...

A bunch of young males in their late teens and early twenties at, or leaving, a party two doors down does not sound like "hoodlums and vandals."

The part that really caused me to face palm so hard I almost gave myself a concussion was this:

I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law.

Not only is there no legal requirement to fire a warning shot, but police are generally prohibited from firing warning shots. 

And, sweet Jesus, if you HAVE to fire a warning shot, shoot into the ground!

The 911 calls include this:

12:50 a.m. “We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here. I’m locked and loaded, and I’m going outside to secure my neighborhood. You need to send PD as quickly as possible.”

and

“You need to send PD as quickly as possible, I’m on neighborhood watch. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me. There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, um, there’s some vandalism.”

and

12:57 a.m. “We have a lot of people outside our house, yelling and shouting profanities. I yelled at them, ‘Please leave the premises.’ They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and, uh, we got somebody that got hit.”

at which the dispatcher asked (reasonably enough)

“Someone was shot?” the operator asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, ma’am,” he told her. “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law. They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family.”
The operator asked who had come to his house.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “There’s frigging black males outside my frigging house with firearms. Please send PD.”

Okay, so...

• Neighborhood Watch is no more a license to kill than a concealed carry permit. 
• The evidence as presented in this article makes it sound like no one got further than a few feet onto the idiot's property. 
• At this point, we only have the idiot's word that anyone had anything resembling a firearm besides him.
• And since the evidence makes it sound like he fired from inside the garage, through a window, it hard to see what made him feel he or his family were in such danger that discharging a shotgun was necessary.

The bad part, aside from all the people who have been writing and training about these things for years having apparently done so in a giant exercise in futility, is that there are people out there who will read this little screed of mine, and similar ones by others who are more experienced, have taken more training, and have more exposure, and excoriate us for "abandoning" this guy. (Not to mention NRA, SAF, etc.)

Make no mistake: There may be evidence to come that will change this to another "Good Guy With A Gun" story, but at this point this moron is a moron who deserves to be locked up, and only trotted out when a Bad Example is needed.

Someone else took pichurs!

Photos of MAG40 class Onalaska, WA Firearms Academy of Seattle 2016 | Flickr

Earworm, MAG-40 edition

Still going over my notes, going to start transcribing them in a few days, and will start working on the AAR at that time.

The short version is, if you own a gun for self-defense take MAG-40 if you have to manufacture the chance to do so.

In the meantime...


(The Andy Sanford version is what was played in class, and is preferred for many reasons, but the YouTube recording has so much background noise I went with this one instead.)

I was too busy lernin' to take pichures...

...'cuz I was takin' a class from Mas at FAS. 

But I got a couple.

Me and Mas.
Note to self: Take the hat off. This is after adjusting lighting...

The bandanna came out of the pocket and was applied to the back of my neck after the hot brass issue mentioned in the previous post.
Come to think of it, it's as old as the Colt and Pachmeyr magazines mentioned in the previous post.

Marty Hayes and I.
Marty (in case you didn't know) is the Chief Executive of FAS, and of the
Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network

Well, that escalated quickly...

In my previous post, as I was lamenting the fact that I had discovered by day three of MAG-40 that the three "generic" stainless steel magazines for my 1911s were crap, and the feed lips had spread to the point where, not only would they not lock back the slide when empty, but I couldn't even get one of them in the mag well, I added as an aside

the blued ones actually marked as GI mags seem to be working OK.

By the time we had finished shooting the last drills and were about to shoot the qualification several of my blued steel mags were also failing to lock back the slide.

I suppose the "COLT" marked ones have an excuse, since they came with my Combat Commander, which I purchased almost exactly 30 years ago.

Annoying, but nowhere near as annoying as getting that hot brass down my back from the Marine shooting his Ruger LC9S S&W Shield next to me was. ("Mas! The blogger is doing Saint Vitus' Dance!""Is his muzzle pointed in a safe direction...?")

That and it made the Glockenspielers even more insufferable.

Note to self...

Dear Self:
Remember writing this post? 

Turns out that when you said

• On the one hand, my habit of buying 1911 magazines over the last year or two seems like a good one.
• On the other hand, buying the cheap ones marked and packaged as GI 1911 mags may not have been so smart.

the twinge you felt when typing the first bullet was not just your bursitis acting up at the self-back-patting, it was foreshadowing.

Bullet two OTOH, was prescient. (Except the blued ones actually marked as GI mags seem to be working OK.)

Day three of MAG 40 and I now have three fewer 1911 magazines than I came with. Turns out those "generic" stainless steel magazines simply marked ".45 ACP" weren't even worth the sawbuck each they cost me.

In mitigation, I would like to point out I bought the things strictly for use in training.

Too bad they won't even go into the mag well easily enough to use them to practice reloads.

Any landing you walk away from...

Seen at Pistol Forums.com: Two Live Oak men involved in helicopter crash in St. Lucie County » Local News » Suwannee Democrat

Live Oak — Two Live Oak men were involved in a helicopter crash in St. Lucie County around 9 a.m. Saturday morning, according to the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office.

Jonathan Strayer, 46, and Massad Ayoob, 64, were treated and released at Raulerson Memorial Hospital in Okeechobee, as was the pilot, William Harward, 55, Miami.

Apparently, Mas posted elsewhere that they were out hunting feral hogs, which is often done from a helicopter, as it is a recognized and effective means of controlling the population of an invasive species which is devastating to agriculture. (The fact that it's fun is a bonus.) Mr Ayoob also posted that the pilot's skill prevented the accident from being worse. There's a reason rotary-wing pilots practice auto-rotation. (I hated auto-rotation practice...)