MAG Defensive Pistol AAR
In October, I had the opportunity to attend the newly formed Massad Ayoob Group Defensive Pistol class. The class was taught by David Maglio, the head of the MAG Instructor Program and hosted by Bill “The Godfather” Long.
David Maglio teaching the nuance of the Figure 7 Draw
The class is designed to take the lessons learned in MAG-20 Live Fire, such as The 5-point Checklist, The Exemplar Drill, Blind Swordsman, etc. and apply them to a variety of defensively relevant shooting challenges.
Day 1 began with a safety briefing, then discussing the reasoning behind how the drills will be performed.
The shooting portion of the class began with raw shooting skills. We started out with a slow fire tune up, then we moved on to shooting on a variety of cadences.
A particularly useful drill was on multiple targets changing pace in consideration of the target difficulty.
The change of pace shooting was particularly relevant to me as I was shooting a GSSF match the following weekend, and this is exactly the skillset needed to do well at the “Five to Glock” stage (5 targets at distances varying from 5 to 25 yards).
We worked on strong and weak hand only shooting, then we began an intense study of the draw. Exceptional detail was given to the breakdown of the draw steps, then the class practiced the draw without ammo. Once everyone had an opportunity to get the draw procedure correct, we began a live fire exercise to hone our draw to first shot skills.
I’ve spent 240+hrs and 15,000 rounds under David Maglio’s direct supervision, and it shows.
Day 1 ended with a qualification consisting of the skills practiced during the day.
Day 2 began shooting drills of varying target difficulty forcing the shooter to adjust the pace accordingly. We shot the qualification again.
Using the Rangemaster Casino Drill target, and at 7 yards instead of the typical 5 yards, we shot the target in varying orders according to the number presented, reloading as we went. This forces the shooter to make decisions while under the pressure to shoot for time. Then we shot it for score.
We shot a 3x5 target from concealment 5 yards, 5 rounds in 5 seconds. Quite often, this type of drill will be in the guise of a playing card, the joke here being that Private Joker from Full Metal Jacket was the best of all jokers.
Instead of a joker from a deck of cards, we have the best joker… Private Joker, from Full Metal Jacket
We had a series of reaction times that were documented per student. The value in this is to force people to consider improving.
We shot the qualification one last time. The round count was a touch under 500 rds.
I used my actual carry rig- a stock Glock 34 Gen 5 MOS with a Holosun SCS optic, a Surefire X300, a Dark Star Gear AIWB holster and a variety of mag pouches.
I was nursing a nagging injury to my strong hand, so I felt a touch off my top performance, but my scores showed as exceptional. To me, this highlighted that after 500 hours training in the Massad Ayoob Group system, performance under adversity is a very welcome outcome.
