Magpul Dynamics / Dynamic Handgun 1
June 5-7th / Douglas Ridge Rifle Club (Portland, OR)
This marks my third class with the Magpul Dynamics’ crew, and despite how much more I love shooting carbine over handgun I would rank this specific class as my most favorite thus far. I won’t try to summarize the whole course, as the other AARs do a great job of that already. Right up front I want to thank Chris Costa, Anson Beck, the RSOs and Douglas Ridge, and the students for making this class go off so well. As the host it’s my job to do my best to make sure the stage is set to let MD help us get our learnin’ on, and by all accounts we had a hell of a class.
Primer
I’m going to interject a personal opinion here when I say that I used to really dislike shooting handgun do to a lack of skill and appreciation for what is one of the most important weapon systems we can have. When we sat down at the end of Carbine 1 to figure out which classes we were going to bring out to Oregon, Handgun 1 was the first on the list. This was prior to Art of the Dynamic Handgun being released, and I’m sure in its wake the demand for handgun classes will increase dramatically.
Our instructors for the weekend were Chris Costa, and Anson “Hollywood” Beck. This is the third class with Chris, and first with Anson, and again I nor my fellow students were disappointed. Chris brings a world class level of shooting talent, followed by a real knack for motivating and educating students. This was my first class with Anson, and just from this class I can tell you that I hope to see him at future classes. Besides being a great shooter, he brings a level of instruction and personability that lends itself to teaching by method of carrot and not stick.
The whole of the class can be best described as a steady ramping up of skill sets and the building upon of each drill that came before it. So when you get time to run the final drills of the day it’s a culmination of all the skill building that’s come before. This is consistent with every other class I’ve taken with the MD crew, whereupon they’re giving you a set of experiences to quickly reference when presented with a situation that requires quick and improvised problem solving. That at it’s core is what these classes are about, being able to not panic and fumble under dynamic stress, but on the fly be able to adapt your shooting position, mechanics, and mindset to overcome an unforeseen problem or situation.
Gear / Students
The total class count was 21 students. All from varied backgrounds, we had national guard, an USAF airman, LEOs, competition shooters, and regular civilians. I was also extremely pleased to have 2 women in our class, as I’ve long been eager to see ladies get the opportunity to build these skill sets. And to everyone’s credit people rocked the shit out of this course. Everyone started with varying levels of skill set, some guys could hit the center green every single time, whereas some of us had to work a lot harder at it. Chris had a saying that “we don’t train you to the lowest common denominator!” And that sums it up well, the slowest shooter doesn’t set the curve. There was no curve. Simple as that.
The majority of students were using glocks, 19s, 17s, etc. We had a few 1911s, about 5-6 SIGs, 1 XD, a couple of USPs, and 1 M&P. Seriously, only ONE M&P handgun. I was really surprised as I was that lone M&P shooter. More on that in a bit.
Holsters ran the spectrum of 5-6 Raven Phantoms, a few Galcos, a few Serpas, safarilands, bladetechs, etc. I personally used Comptac mag pouches with my RCS holster, in combination with an ARES Gear Ranger belt. I have a few equipment issues I’ll talk about on Day 3.
Day 1
Prior to TD1 Portland had experience 21 consecutive days of rain. As the host I’ll be honest and say the week leading up to the class I think the most common webpage I visited was weather.com …nervously… There was a low fog the morning of when we went in for the initial meet and greet. By the time we walked out the weather was glorious, absolutely stunning. Costa and Beck imported some great weather with ‘em.
Due to a reshuffling in the morning agenda that prevented us from live fire before 0900, Chris decided to begin the Combat Mindset portion (normally reserved for lunch on Day 2) . This was actually a positive as it allowed Chris and Anson to use it as a touch stone for how our brains, eyes, and body were working when we fumbled or worked to execute a drill. This also opened up the following lunch time periods to a lot of discussions and demonstrations.
Day 1 can best be summed up as learning to crawl before you can run. We started the day out on simple dot drills just to get a baseline for how were were shooting at 3-5yds. For some of us that was a sobering gut check to see how much we had to improve. Chris then dove in to the fundamentals of grip, sight picture, and trigger control. Specifically how you can lose one of those 3 key fundamental groups and be able to be effective for a short period, but ultimately how they tie in to make a complete process.
To demonstrate trigger pull and reset we practiced ball and dummy drills with partners. The most interesting drill of the day was one that is absolutely simple to do with a shooting partner. We unloaded our firearms, and had a partner put an empty casing on the front sight of the pistol, while the shooter remains steady they pull the trigger. The object being to keep the casing balanced. If you jerk the trigger it’s an obvious indicator you did it wrong by the casing falling off.
Just because it’s handgun 1 it doesn’t mean that the big toys don’t come out. Because Leupold is located in the Portland area we had the chance to demo the new 1.1-8x CQBSS optic. Simply put it’s amazing, absolutely amazing. We put this on my KAC SR-25 EMC and did some impromptu demos with it. Chris also had a new .308 on hand he wanted to get some time on (JP .308).
We then rounded out the day by working on the process of the draw, admin reloads, tac reloads, speed reloads, and different shooting positions such as dynamic kneeling.
Day 2
Now when I said the weather was great on day 1, well it was, ‘was’ being the operative word. As I woke up for day 2 I was greeted by the familiar sound of pouring rain. As I drove to the range I hoped that things would ease up in the 20 miles between Portland Metro and Eagle Creek. Suffice it to say it was varying between heavy rain, sprinkles, fog, and some sun, all day. This did force a change in curriculum by Chris and Anson. And to their credit we didn’t slow down at all during the bad weather periods.
In fact most students really enjoyed shooting in the rain. As natives of the pacific northwest it rains here a lot, and I mean a LOT! So learning to shoot with a jacket on is a powerful skill set. Normally TD3 is where a lot of the concealed work is handled, but we had to move prone and urban prone to day 3 so that students were wallowing around in the mud. I was easily in the muddiest part of the range and yet still enjoyed the hell out of that experience. When speed reloading my mags would disappear in to syrupy pools of mud. I remember crouching down, pulling a mag put, upending it, and having what looked like Hershey’s chocolate syrup come streaming out. I turned around, and Chris just looked at that and smiled. Good day to see what you and your gun could continue doing.
We spent day 2 working on the beginnings of moving and shooting, specifically learning to turn to face a target, the 180 degree, and one handed shooting. A lot of us from day 1 to day 2 back slid on our groups, so Chris and Anson had us tape up our front and rear sights to practice instinctive shooting. Learning when to use the sights, and when not to do so. For many of us we shot better with no sights, or no rear sights. In fact only when we took the tape off did our accuracy go down. It was a dramatic demonstration of how our eyes actually can work against us. We then moved on to malfunctions and how to properly identify, and rectify them. Again not just text book, “if it feels like this do that,” but understanding what’s happening and the fundamentals of how to problem solve quickly.
Day 2 ended on the El Presidente drill. I’ve done this drill many times before, but what made this one unique was standing in front of 20 other students, 2 instructors, 4-6 RSOs, and still making your hits. I didn’t see anyone come away from that drill who wasn’t amped up and with shaking hands afterwards. There’s something about standing in front of your peers, and instructors that makes what is normally a routine drill in to a different beast. It created a sense of “I can’t screw this up.” Some students slowed down under the pressure, some sped up, we had a 1911 shooter with a out of battery issue who immediately smacked the back of his slide to get the gun up and running again. Again calling back to those skill sets that we were learning only hours before.
