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| Training to Fail The "Mag-Flick" |
by Richard A. Nable
It is important for police officers to be students of human behavior. Watching how
people behave and learning their patterns is not only how we become adept at
catching bad guys, but it is also how we structure our training to address real life
issues. Not long ago, I used this approach to develop a program which I called,
“Training to Fail”. Now before you get all upset, the point of the program was not to
teach people how to fail, it was to address many of the deficiencies common in
current Law Enforcement training that do in fact train people to fail.
One of those issues is what I call the “Mag-Flick”. Recently at a conference I
attended with firearms instructors from all over the state, I was amazed at the
number of instructors who see nothing wrong with teaching the mag-flick. What’s
the mag-flick you ask? It’s where you do like the TV and movie heroes or the
competition shooters and you combat reload by hitting the magazine release and
“flicking” the gun to get the magazine to drop out. It’s a great technique when it
works, (I guess) but it presents a veritable cornucopia of potential problems for the
average police officer.
Law enforcement has an inherent amount of risk. It is our job as trainers to help
our officers reduce those risks whenever possible. As a rule, we train in gross
motor skills and straight-line motions. We train (or should I say we should train) in
tactics that work as close to 100% of the time as is humanly possible. Why train in
something that only works most of the time when you have the option to train in
something that works all the time (or darn near). We also need to remember to
keep it simple. Why train in three or four completely different movements for
completely different situations, when one basic movement will work for all of those
situations?
My department, like nearly 75% of departments in America, uses a variant of the
Glock pistol. Anyone who has experience with Glock pistols knows that even
though the magazines are touted as “drop-free”, every now and then they don’t.
Many other pistol brands suffer the same affliction. If you train to expect that
magazine to drop free every time, then what happens that one time when it doesn’
t? I see it in training and qualifications quite regularly. The officer who has been
using (and thereby training himself subconsciously) the mag-flick is in the middle of
shooting a course of fire when the mag-flick fails to cause the magazine to fall out
of the gun. The reaction side hand (non-weapon, or support hand) already has the
next magazine in it and cannot be used to facilitate the removal of the empty
magazine so the officer is stuck with a problem to solve. Most of the time, they
freeze and do nothing while the targets quietly turn away. I could not expect that
they would do anything differently in an actual gunfight.
The potential for a “drop-free” magazine to stick in a magazine well can be
increased exponentially by environmental factors. Dirt in the magazine well, for
example, can cause it to stick. Dirt can accumulate there not just from negligent
maintenance, but what about when you fall on soft ground. We have had several
officers over the years fall in a variety of circumstances, not the least of which is a
fight with a bad guy. (Hopefully I don’t have to remind folks that most fights end up
on the ground one way or another.) When your pistol hits the ground, you risk
having dirt jammed up the magazine well. You also risk damaging the magazine
base plate or the weapon itself in ways that can prevent a magazine from
“dropping free”. All of these things have happened to our officers in the past. To
ignore their potential to happen again in the future is sheer stupidity.
We all should know that when you are under stress, your problem solving skills
diminish considerably, and for some officers those skills disappear entirely. Add to
that the fact that you are required to override your training with conscious thought
in the middle of a gunfight and you begin to see how difficult the mag-flick can
make things. In competition, or even in qualification, if you lose a second or two (or
twelve), it is really no big deal. In a gunfight, which is what we train for as police
officers, that one or two seconds could very well mean your life. Remember Murphy’
s 1st Law – Whatever can go wrong will; and at the worst possible time. Train with
that in mind.
So what’s the answer? As long as your support hand is on the gun, use that hand
to rip the magazine out. The weapon-hand thumb activates the magazine release
(or some other finger if you are left handed and shooting a right handed weapon)
and the support hand rips the magazine out. If something happens to incapacitate
the support hand, then you are still using the weapon-hand thumb to release the
magazine. No new movements are required, thus no conscious thought is required.
The second problem caused by the mag-flick is malfunction clearance. We all
should know that the fastest malfunction clearance is a new gun but there are way
too many officers out there who haven’t figured out that a back-up gun is as
necessary as a primary. If they have to think their way through a malfunction
clearance in a gunfight they will likely end up dead. The next fastest way to clear
the malfunction is to rip out the magazine, work the slide, and insert the new
magazine. Again, no new series of motions has to be thought of and only one new
motion is added to the equation; that is ‘working the slide’. What about “TAP,
ROLL, RACK, READY?” you ask. That is something that requires time and thought
to diagnose the malfunction and determine which drill to use to clear it. Time and
conscious thought are at a premium in a gunfight. If you are one of the ones who
are familiar enough with your weapon and you practice with it, you may be able to
diagnose the malfunction and clear it correctly – but then again, if you’re that good
you probably have a back-up weapon. Trainers have to account for the lowest
common denominator. The ugly truth is that most officers don’t practice and if they
do, they only practice one thing.
The third problem is the tactical reload. In an informal query into shootings in our
area, we could not find one single example of a patrol officer who performed a
tactical reload at any time under street conditions. That was amazing to me since I
know that every department in our area at some point trains in the tactical reload.
When we work tactical reloads into our semi-annual qualification course, we find
that officers who regularly use the mag-flick are incapable of performing a tactical
reload. They have so conditioned themselves to flick the magazine out and get rid
of it that it is the only thing they know. On the other hand, officers who train to
remove the magazine with the support hand, generally have little or no difficulty
performing a tactical reload. This is true even for officers who do not practice
tactical reloads. For officers who train themselves to use the support hand to
remove the magazine, only one small modification to their basic reloading
movement is required, which is placing the magazine in a pocket (or similar) rather
than throwing it down. Again, the general reloading motion does not change and
only one small addition to that movement is necessary as opposed to consciously
thinking of an entirely different set of motions.
I didn’t sit in an office thinking this stuff up. For 17 years I worked the street. I
watched officers and studied real life behavior for years before I realized what
should have been obvious all along. The KISS principle (Keep it Simple Stupid)
seems to show up in training regularly so let’s apply it to basic firearms as well. Use
the same, basic, simple, gross-motor skills and straight line motions to solve as
many problems as you can. As I like to say, “Train for the Real World – not the
Ideal World.”
people behave and learning their patterns is not only how we become adept at
catching bad guys, but it is also how we structure our training to address real life
issues. Not long ago, I used this approach to develop a program which I called,
“Training to Fail”. Now before you get all upset, the point of the program was not to
teach people how to fail, it was to address many of the deficiencies common in
current Law Enforcement training that do in fact train people to fail.
One of those issues is what I call the “Mag-Flick”. Recently at a conference I
attended with firearms instructors from all over the state, I was amazed at the
number of instructors who see nothing wrong with teaching the mag-flick. What’s
the mag-flick you ask? It’s where you do like the TV and movie heroes or the
competition shooters and you combat reload by hitting the magazine release and
“flicking” the gun to get the magazine to drop out. It’s a great technique when it
works, (I guess) but it presents a veritable cornucopia of potential problems for the
average police officer.
Law enforcement has an inherent amount of risk. It is our job as trainers to help
our officers reduce those risks whenever possible. As a rule, we train in gross
motor skills and straight-line motions. We train (or should I say we should train) in
tactics that work as close to 100% of the time as is humanly possible. Why train in
something that only works most of the time when you have the option to train in
something that works all the time (or darn near). We also need to remember to
keep it simple. Why train in three or four completely different movements for
completely different situations, when one basic movement will work for all of those
situations?
My department, like nearly 75% of departments in America, uses a variant of the
Glock pistol. Anyone who has experience with Glock pistols knows that even
though the magazines are touted as “drop-free”, every now and then they don’t.
Many other pistol brands suffer the same affliction. If you train to expect that
magazine to drop free every time, then what happens that one time when it doesn’
t? I see it in training and qualifications quite regularly. The officer who has been
using (and thereby training himself subconsciously) the mag-flick is in the middle of
shooting a course of fire when the mag-flick fails to cause the magazine to fall out
of the gun. The reaction side hand (non-weapon, or support hand) already has the
next magazine in it and cannot be used to facilitate the removal of the empty
magazine so the officer is stuck with a problem to solve. Most of the time, they
freeze and do nothing while the targets quietly turn away. I could not expect that
they would do anything differently in an actual gunfight.
The potential for a “drop-free” magazine to stick in a magazine well can be
increased exponentially by environmental factors. Dirt in the magazine well, for
example, can cause it to stick. Dirt can accumulate there not just from negligent
maintenance, but what about when you fall on soft ground. We have had several
officers over the years fall in a variety of circumstances, not the least of which is a
fight with a bad guy. (Hopefully I don’t have to remind folks that most fights end up
on the ground one way or another.) When your pistol hits the ground, you risk
having dirt jammed up the magazine well. You also risk damaging the magazine
base plate or the weapon itself in ways that can prevent a magazine from
“dropping free”. All of these things have happened to our officers in the past. To
ignore their potential to happen again in the future is sheer stupidity.
We all should know that when you are under stress, your problem solving skills
diminish considerably, and for some officers those skills disappear entirely. Add to
that the fact that you are required to override your training with conscious thought
in the middle of a gunfight and you begin to see how difficult the mag-flick can
make things. In competition, or even in qualification, if you lose a second or two (or
twelve), it is really no big deal. In a gunfight, which is what we train for as police
officers, that one or two seconds could very well mean your life. Remember Murphy’
s 1st Law – Whatever can go wrong will; and at the worst possible time. Train with
that in mind.
So what’s the answer? As long as your support hand is on the gun, use that hand
to rip the magazine out. The weapon-hand thumb activates the magazine release
(or some other finger if you are left handed and shooting a right handed weapon)
and the support hand rips the magazine out. If something happens to incapacitate
the support hand, then you are still using the weapon-hand thumb to release the
magazine. No new movements are required, thus no conscious thought is required.
The second problem caused by the mag-flick is malfunction clearance. We all
should know that the fastest malfunction clearance is a new gun but there are way
too many officers out there who haven’t figured out that a back-up gun is as
necessary as a primary. If they have to think their way through a malfunction
clearance in a gunfight they will likely end up dead. The next fastest way to clear
the malfunction is to rip out the magazine, work the slide, and insert the new
magazine. Again, no new series of motions has to be thought of and only one new
motion is added to the equation; that is ‘working the slide’. What about “TAP,
ROLL, RACK, READY?” you ask. That is something that requires time and thought
to diagnose the malfunction and determine which drill to use to clear it. Time and
conscious thought are at a premium in a gunfight. If you are one of the ones who
are familiar enough with your weapon and you practice with it, you may be able to
diagnose the malfunction and clear it correctly – but then again, if you’re that good
you probably have a back-up weapon. Trainers have to account for the lowest
common denominator. The ugly truth is that most officers don’t practice and if they
do, they only practice one thing.
The third problem is the tactical reload. In an informal query into shootings in our
area, we could not find one single example of a patrol officer who performed a
tactical reload at any time under street conditions. That was amazing to me since I
know that every department in our area at some point trains in the tactical reload.
When we work tactical reloads into our semi-annual qualification course, we find
that officers who regularly use the mag-flick are incapable of performing a tactical
reload. They have so conditioned themselves to flick the magazine out and get rid
of it that it is the only thing they know. On the other hand, officers who train to
remove the magazine with the support hand, generally have little or no difficulty
performing a tactical reload. This is true even for officers who do not practice
tactical reloads. For officers who train themselves to use the support hand to
remove the magazine, only one small modification to their basic reloading
movement is required, which is placing the magazine in a pocket (or similar) rather
than throwing it down. Again, the general reloading motion does not change and
only one small addition to that movement is necessary as opposed to consciously
thinking of an entirely different set of motions.
I didn’t sit in an office thinking this stuff up. For 17 years I worked the street. I
watched officers and studied real life behavior for years before I realized what
should have been obvious all along. The KISS principle (Keep it Simple Stupid)
seems to show up in training regularly so let’s apply it to basic firearms as well. Use
the same, basic, simple, gross-motor skills and straight line motions to solve as
many problems as you can. As I like to say, “Train for the Real World – not the
Ideal World.”
Author of Searching for Evil
...and the perfect donut
Sgt. Nable is a
certified firearms
instructor and
general weapons
enthusiast and is
SWAT certified. He
is an internationally
certified driving
certified firearms
instructor and
general weapons
enthusiast and is
SWAT certified. He
is an internationally
certified driving
instructor and teaches basic defensive driving as
well as high speed and pursuit driving. Sgt. Nable
is considered an expert on a broad range of topics
related to law enforcement such as gun control,
profiling, immigration, use of force and much
more. He has appeared on Fox News Channel
several times and on WXIA TV in Atlanta as well
as radio media.
well as high speed and pursuit driving. Sgt. Nable
is considered an expert on a broad range of topics
related to law enforcement such as gun control,
profiling, immigration, use of force and much
more. He has appeared on Fox News Channel
several times and on WXIA TV in Atlanta as well
as radio media.
| Training to Fail The "Mag-Flick" |
| By Sgt. Richard A. Nable |
Richard Nable is a sergeant with the Fulton County Police Department, Alanta, GA
Today the Fulton County Police Department consists of over 400 employees of which
304 are sworn police officers. Also employed by the police department are more than
150 civilians who provide support in all divisions: Administration; Communications; North
Uniform Patrol; South Uniform Patrol; Major Case Division and Special Services Section.
304 are sworn police officers. Also employed by the police department are more than
150 civilians who provide support in all divisions: Administration; Communications; North
Uniform Patrol; South Uniform Patrol; Major Case Division and Special Services Section.
Fulton County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat is Atlanta,
the principal city of the Atlanta metropolitan area. As of the 2000 census, the
population was 816,006. The 2006 Census Estimate placed the population at 960,009.
Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and is included in the
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area.
the principal city of the Atlanta metropolitan area. As of the 2000 census, the
population was 816,006. The 2006 Census Estimate placed the population at 960,009.
Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and is included in the
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area.