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MacBroz Show 74 – Competing Smarter | Suppressors, Optics & Growing With Your Setup
10 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I tell you what, prices are getting high, but a fella still got to get his guns and ammo. We go hunting for all them good deals online every day. Go to pew.deals, that's P-E-W dot D-E-A-L-S, in your internet. Now back to your podcast. Deal bro, deal bro, saving you money, don't you know. Hey yo, it's your voice. And welcome back to another episode of the Mac Bros Show. This ain't a podcast.
This a movie you should binge it. Josh and Darius going Mac mode. Better listen. Best friends, but them bullets doing long distance. Pulling up with him. I know you missed this. They all in attendance. Trying to stack bands and inspire the children. I said stop playing with them. But y'all didn't listen to Mack Burrows. They back on a mission. Welcome, everybody.
This is Episode 74 of the Mac Bros Show. My name is Josh, also known as J-Web, joined by my co-host and co-founder and best friend, Darius Deas-Gaines. We're the Mac Bros. Today's show, we're going to be talking about Darius's competition experience that has been growing very quickly and some feedback on that. We're going to be talking about some mail that we got in.
We're going to be talking about our newest videos. And then we've got a question that came in about 2026 events. So if all that sounds good to you, then stay tuned. Otherwise. Skedaddle. Skedaddle. Kick rocks. That's right. Before we get into the meat of the show, Darius always brings us a fun fact of the day. So Darius, what is our fact for episode 74? All right. Episode 74.
What's up, Steel Team Splits? What's up, Dusky Queen? So our fun fact for today is everybody knows who Gaston Glock is, right? The creator of Glock. Yep. Yes. Yes. The creator of Glock. Glock everything, right? That's what we'll call it. Did you know that he was an Australian curtain rod manufacturer before he got into guns? Austrian. Yeah. Yeah, so that's what he did prior to guns.
You know, I don't know that. I knew they were recently or more recently like into horses and it's kind of getting weird. Like whatever they were doing with breeding their horses and stuff like that. But I've also heard rumor that a lot of the folks in that lineage are not really gun people. Yep. I've heard that too, but curtain rod manufacturer. Yeah. Don't look up her connection horses.
I definitely won't. I definitely won't do that. No, no, no. All right. Yeah. Yeah, man. That's what they were prior to that were a cotton rod manufacturers. Interesting. I'll be curious if anyone else knew that before hearing it today. There's a lot of folks that are new to guns or they've heard of Glock, and all they know is Glock from pop culture or movies or whatever.
But maybe they don't know the history, and I'm learning it too with you. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. That's your fun fact, guys, for episode 74. No, I appreciate that, man. It's awesome. Yeah. All right, well, we've got a lot of different things coming in. Before we get into new business, D, I wanted to address a question that came through during the Instagram request.
Every week we post a call for questions, and if you have questions you want to ask us to be considered as a topic, I want to also mention this question because I've personally been messaged a lot about this.
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Chapter 2: What insights do competition experiences provide for skill development?
What events are we going to this year in 2026? I think what people are asking is not necessarily like competitions, even though I know you've had a lot of questions about competitions. Dot Show is later this month in Vegas, as usual. And then there's GunCon this summer. There's Train and Learn. There's Arm 6. There's a lot of events going on, many that we don't even know about.
So I'll just go first and talk about what I'm planning to go to. And I'll caveat with, on Darius and I's behalf, we don't do this full time. We are not gun influencers, tubers, competitive shooters. We do this...
yeah we're not paid actors as good as we look um we just do this secondarily we're just very passionate about it and given our professional lives we don't do things half-assed so you're not going to get some half-assed product from us we're going to be dedicated to being educated and also skilled at what we're doing with that said we can't be everywhere and anywhere because we do have full-time jobs and families
a home life um if it wasn't if it was a possibility i personally would love to be all over the place everywhere um but it's not not an option so for me this year i like to attend two events i attended two last year um if i can't do two i'll do one and my priority is gun con i've got a lot of support for my guy john patton
and um what he's doing for the community and he's he's a friend so um i will definitely be at gun con i don't know if d will or others will that we know in squad drills but that is a priority um second priority would be train and learn because i went last year and thought it was great and i really have a lot of love for kevin dixie um so if i could attend that event great uh shot show um
Not in the cards for me. It's kind of pricey. It's a big expo. And I've been to expos professionally. And expo is just basically a big sales event. So as content creators, it'd be great to build networks and find out opportunities there. But we're one of many in a sea of people that are just asking for a gun. Yeah.
And I would rather build a relationship with some organizations that want me to be there, like Gideon Optics and others, Tag Precision. So my goal this year is to build a relationship with a brand and then go to GunCon representing them. And I know a lot of our friends in the industry have been doing that and continue to do that.
If there is a brand out there that wants to work with us and have authentic content creation that's founded on trust and is professional, we're your guys. And I think that if we could go to SHOT Show next year, that would be killer, plus just a lot of opportunities.
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Chapter 3: How can mindset influence performance in shooting competitions?
And I don't know about you, but if we make it to SHOT Show, I'm going to find a way to make it out to Staccato, Vegas. So that's my plan for this year is GunCon is... plan one, plan two is train and learn. It's just they're backwards in schedule. And with my job, a lot of my work happens in the summer. So we'll see. What about you? What are you planning for?
Mine's a little bit trickier for you guys. I guess we're going to share and tell, right? So I work for a hospital. So you guys know hospitals run 24-7 all the time. So it's a little bit challenging as well, just like Jay said. My goal for this year going into 2026, I shared this with Josh. I shared this with a few other people. My goal is to train more.
I think I kind of dabbled in my own thing last year, the years before. The train and learn, it piqued my interest last year. I want to get into that this year. As far as the connections go, I like meeting people. But man, for some reason, since getting this, I've really fallen in love with like the aspect of shooting again. And, uh, I am like, I'm diving in deep as you, as you have said earlier.
So into the craft, into the craft, not just, yeah. I feel like I'm, I'm learning, relearning again, but I'm learning things that I knew before are heightened now. And I'm paying attention to things that, that I was kind of like, uh, and now it's all making sense. And I'm like, Oh boy, every competition is just getting easier and easier in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah.
So I'm feeling pretty positive on that, man. So I'm, I want to do a little more training sessions, gun con. I like gun con. Um, they definitely support us. If anything, I might just, I might, and I'm just saying, I might, I might have to root from, for the home team from home. Um, because I also like Archangel defense. I want to go, I want to ride out to Atlanta and see those guys.
Um, they asked me to come to their training, uh, rifle and pistol two day training. And I wanted to really do that. Um, So yeah, these are some good, these are some solid dudes, bro. Yeah, no, that's solid. I think what it sounds like is we're going to try to make it work, guys, but it might be divide and conquer because we're a two-man team and our schedules don't always align.
That's why you'll see me out shooting with Gavage and others and you'll see Darius competing when I'm not there. It's not always going to work out with me being injured. I haven't been able to compete yet this year, so... That's that's just the way it is. Again, that's because we have our own lives and families and stuff. But we sync up all the time. So we'll find a way to make it work.
So if I'm somewhere, you know, I'm he's nearby. I'm going to say these nearby or I'll put it like this. we are so tight that we are comfortable representing the other without even saying anything. Like if D talks to somebody at a competition or training and says, yep, my boy J can X, Y, Z, I'm like, yep, that sounds good to me.
And if I'm at an event and a vendor says, hey, we'd like you to try this thing, can you? I'm like, yep, I'll get D to help me work on it. And if it's something D's not interested in, That's OK. So it's always going to be divide and conquer. That's what's good about having a partner that you can trust, especially 20 plus years of friendship.
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Chapter 4: What gear updates were discussed in the recent mail call?
Go there, and you'll see the newest video that came out this week, which was our wrap-up of the United States Concealed Carrier League, showed the different stages, talked about how the league is ran. If you're curious about competition, because I had some people DM me, the best place to go is practice score.com P R A C T I S C O R E practice score.
Go there and you'll find competitions within a certain radius. If you know the name of your range, if you know the type of competition has all kinds of stuff there. It's also where you register, create an account. It's where they track all your stats. That's where you can see how you do throughout the past competitions. And, uh,
that's where your stats are stored too so when someone wants to see how well you're doing yeah or if you see your favorite shooter at a competition you can go look it up so yeah practice scores where you can go united states concealed carry league is starting up soon i believe in april this year so if you are in florida and you want to join us at united states concealed carry league look forward to come out on social media uh follow the united states concealed carry league
And check out the video. I thought it was really well done. Darius and I did really well that day. It was one of our best shooting days that we've had in a long time and just good momentum to the new year. I think that was the day that those were the two competitions. We actually stuck with one gun. I switched after the first stage, but yeah. Did you switch? Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Chapter 5: What events are planned for 2026 in the shooting community?
Because I had the staccato the first time, and then that was my... No, no. Yeah, that was the second time. That was your first time shooting the staccato. Was it? Oh, yeah. Concealed carry league, yeah. And looked like you ran really well. So check out the video. Comment on it, guys, what you like about it. What do you think about Dee's staccato running my MMP?
And yeah, I've got some lofty goals for that for us for the league coming up.
um all right next thing uh i mentioned it in a reel i did get some mail from the folks at o-site so i won a giveaway on instagram they gave away five of these and o-site x i figured i'd do an unboxing because this is really nice packaging dude and i don't know about you like an iphone it looks like an iphone so if you're okay with it i'll do an unboxing right now and we'll see so the first thing is
It has this, like, do not accept the seal is broken. So, you know, if it's counterfeit or not. So we're going to do the seal. You better make this into a YouTube long form. And then, let's see, how does this open up? Does it do accordion style? Yep, so it's going to open up. Oh, it's magnetic. It's a magnetic box. And it's going to open. Bro, that's rich. This is rich.
So I will say the folks at O-Site know packaging. Yeah, I need to know what an SRO comes in. Yeah, an SRO just comes in a big plastic box. So on this side, you've got all your different cables and connections. It's all labeled. It looks very iPhone-ish. And then on the right side where the optic is at, it's got this message. It says, thank you for being part of the OSI family.
Your support is the reason why we are here. Enjoy. So then we take that off. Take that off. We've got the optic and the charger. So this is a rechargeable optic. I have not tried this out before. That's the one that I want to try. Yeah. So it's a big square optic. Yeah. Does it have any charge? Whoa, that's bright. Holy crap. Okay. Okay. Turn that down. All right, so this is a green. Ooh.
Let's see. Bro, you might have to put that on one of your MPs. All right, so let's see. I'm going to show you how bright it was when I turned it on. Oh, yeah, that's bright. That's super-duper bright. It looks like a lightsaber. But then it has this rechargeable thing that you kind of just put on top of the optic, like so. And then it's got an LED. Now, the only thing I've heard...
as a negative, is that if you don't have the recharger, your SOL, because that's the only way you can charge this is with the rechargeable cover case thing. It seems like it's magnetic, so I'll show that again. They have another one of those where it does come with a battery tray. Yeah, they do make them. So basically, all you have to do is charge the battery charger
It's USB-C, which everything is nowadays. It's got a button on the side here that lets you turn on the indicator. So it's at like 25%, I think. Battery left. And then this is charged. So we'll check it out. This is a multiradical. So it's really bright and big because it's currently the circle dot. And I'll dim it down. All right. Good. Let's do it. Say again? What's the MOA on it?
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Chapter 6: What are the pros and cons of different optics for shooters?
1, a little rough. But also it was a good opportunity to kind of see how stages can be prepped in the way you can do angles and so forth. So are you what's what's next? We'll wrap up with this. What's next for you? So I have competition wise running gun competition this Sunday coming up. So I'll be able to run the staccato some more. So you're doing another USPSA? Yeah, it's USPSA.
It's unsanctioned USPSA. So USPSA rules, but it's not a USPSA. It's like a WWE cage match. Yes, yes. Unsanctioned. It's local, so I'm going to get to see another variety array of targets. And that's not at Gun Craft? No, it's not. It's in Brooksville. I forget where the location is. Oh, yeah. Sensei says it's an outlaw match. Yeah, outlaw. Yeah, it's an outlaw match. Yep.
And they call it run and gun. There's a lot more running involved. So the sort of dynamic, there's actually like housing, the fake houses and stuff. You're shooting through like house windows, right?
so yeah and there's more I want to hear about this when you're done yeah bro there's more like I saw one of the stages where like you shoot an array of targets and then you jet back and go around the corner and then you shoot another array of targets kind of like they were doing for the two gun matches at uh Gun Craft um
You saw them shoot rifle on one side, then they run to the other side and they shoot their pistol. This run is that same aspect. You shoot targets, you run to the other side, you shoot another array of targets. The conditioning better be high, bro. Don't screw it up for us for that pink and black jersey. That's right. I'll be rocking that jersey, man. I'm accustomed to it now.
I think that's a good way to end it. I'm excited. Next week, we'll talk about what Darius did. His competition is Outlaw Competition. If you guys are curious to see, I know Darius will drop shorts of the various stages. If he can't, I don't know if he's going to be there. They can film you. I won't be there, unfortunately.
Um, but, uh, we'll talk to D about how that competition went and if he still wants to compete or if he's done with it or if the staccato is going in the shelf or you never know with us, you know, it might change, but, um, and you never know what happens with me. Maybe we might get a new sponsor and we might get some more stuff in the mail, um, or I might go out and get some training.
Um, it's going to be kind of rough for me still. I'm still working through the shoulder situation. Yeah. Um, and just on a, as we, as we close out, um, on a short personal note, um, hug and kiss your loved ones. You don't know when that, that could be, uh, could be gone. So we lost someone close to my family this week, younger than me. Um, someone very close to my family and, um, it's tough.
So please the ones in your lives, tell them you love them and, um, appreciate your time with them. Cause you don't know what's going to be over. So D, um, I appreciate our time together like this. Um, it's a good time to connect. I know we're just shooting the shit and people are watching us just chit chat, but, um, it's a highlight of my week every time.
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