MAC 1950: Tactical Shooting Competition 

I have used this gun very often while I was in the French Air Force. The best way to reload when the slide is locked in the open position is to drop the empty magazine, slide in the full magazine, then you release the slide by pressing down on the locking mechanism with your thumb. This way you won't engage the safety each time you fast reload. Try it! Of course, it only works if you are right hand shooter.

This was strangely musical, and made it very enjoyable

very beautiful finish on the pistol copperish gold i like it

Did the full Hyneman for this one huh? Gotta say... not a bad look for you.

Great video! Tim Mullin experienced the same issue with the safety being applied when He racked the slide while testing the MAC 50 for "The 100 Greatest Combat Pistols" (Paladin Press). Mullin speculated that this safety design was intentional, and was a good feature,

Always enjoy and learn from your video. You are one of the rare Francophile weapons experts. Therefore I myself have been exposed and learned about some interesting French weapons. Thank you.

Great channel and reviews ! This guy is pretty much the only american honest toward french weaponary and military history ! Thanks for that + all historical/technical information you provide us ! Best Regards from the french army (and no ... I never surrender without a fight XD), TONY

Nice to see that pistol I carried some years ago. Obviously, due to its safety, it seems not to be the best pistol for that kind of shooting. But it remains a very accurate pistol.

You did a great job. The single stack low capacity mag is definitely a drawback from today's pistols. Great job with what you had.

Your "french pronunciation" is pretty good! Thank you for your work on Forgotten Weapons by the way. A french follower.

Stop....Hammer Bite!

It looks like in case of this pistol, right handed people could totally go without rocking the slide like you, as we could drop it with a thumb instead. Not a left-friendly gun it seems. Still I bet that the same thing happened to someone out there in the line of duty when he'd was in a pinch... :/

On a positive note, at least you know the safety does work! Lol. Great video as always.

This was the gun we had during our French military service in 1990. We called it P.A. Thanks for the 2 videos.

Nice run, good to see another “lefty” who likes vintage guns. Thanks for posting!👍🏼

Nice. I used to shoot club matches years ago at a club in Mariposa, CA. About 3 hrs away. I preferred the run and gun style to the Steel Challenge, because therw was more variety.I was in LE for 20 years, so i strived for accuracy over speed, especially with the hostage targets. I started with my duty P229 and branched out from there. I used a diff gun every month for awhile, including revolvers, then mostly settled on the Para Ord single stack i bought new in '06 just for the competitions. Made me a better shooter and i learned a lot. Any shortcomings in the gun, holster, pouches etc quickly became apparent, as did any sight issues. The Hi-Power was another favorite. Putting 250-300 rounds through a gun in 1 day, in all diff situations and distances, is a great way to wring it out and build your skills (some stop plates were as far as 30 yards). I orided myself on using stock guns with iron sights, and regular holsters, where many of the guys had full race guns with optics and competition holsters. I usually placed in the top third of iron sight shooters because i didn't worry about speed much, only accuracy, due to my job. Try competition, either IDPA or club matches. You will like it

nice job Ian that pistol looks very shootable and I thought you shot well great video thank you for sharing! I really like your competition shooting videos with these old guns and I hope you do more of them

This is one of my fav. type of vids you do. Watching you run these older pistols in matches shows us just how good or bad these really were.

nice french pronunciation! :)

Has anyone ever tried tuning steel targets? ... This has to have been done before, right? Watching this has randomly made me really want to hear a few shooters playing Christmas music or something 'on bells'...

That cool looking finish makes up for some of its short comings. I really like that.

I would love to see one of these competitions where you use a Luger with snail drum magazines

This looks like loads of fun. I wish were able to do this kind of shooting here in England.

The plum coloration of the slide is beautiful.

It was awesome to see the gun not just in a historical context but in a real world application!!!!!! Would give more likes if I could!!!!!

do more of these tactical shooting vids if you can ! they're awesome !!

I must say good sir, that beret works magnificently.

Awesome t-shirt. Merci pour cette video :) Love from France

Nice to see a historical video followed by practical video on the same gun. Really helps tie everything together. Personally 'd be tempted to remove the safety for matches. I never trust a safety anyway. I'd rather just unload and show clear etc. Keep up the great work :)

You are right. The hammer bites. It happened to me many times.

great video

Sir you are a great shooter !

So much fun!

nice shooting, that looked like fun

I ran into that reddish blue when refinishing some rifles, particularly the P-14 and M1917 rifle actions. My fellow gunsmith explained it had to do with the type of steel as well as the heat treatment of the steel when the firearm was built. I built 3 different calibers on P14 actions, mainly because of their ability to take magnum calibers and their strength, all had the same red-blue color when I blued them up.

I never realized before this that Ian was a lefty I'd like to see this re-done with someone that was right-handed to see if they encountered the same problems with that frame mounted safety

That's why I prefer using the slide stop to go back to fire after a fresh mag. Hand goes nowhere near the safety.

J'ai possédé personnellement un mac50 pour faire du tir sportif pendant plusieurs années et l'ai aussi utiliser en tant que militaire, ce n'est pas un mauvais pistolet mais cette sûreté à toujours été un énorme problème surtout en situation de stress.

Merci, Mon Capitan!

Your french is perfect ;) ! merci pour la video !

In the 1950s 9 shot magazines were considered adequate as most had used 6 shot revolvers before then.

Nice shirt with "les devises de la France , à savoir , liberté , égalité, fraternité" ;)

very nice gun

Like how you end up checking the safety after the mag changes!!!

Bravo, l'arme à feu Jésus! On another note, that pistol seems to seriously pull to the right. Comme c'est terrible! La morsure du marteau!

Amazing shooting! Shame about the safety being engaged when you rack the slide. You would of thought that would have been highlighted during its use.

Magnifique t-shirt.

Thanks for the video ! Btw, nice t-shirt :) Cheers from France

I really like that kind of bronze-y finish on the slide

Nice french pronunciation Ian, enjoying these vids as always ! :)

Ian has a flinch? Suddenly I don't feel so bad about mine.

stil, love that pistol! le mac 50.

Hickok 45 complains about the same issue with the IWI CZ75 when the safety is mounted on the rack. That's a great pistol but give me a Belgium Browning Hi-Power P35 any day for a combat pistol. Maybe a CZ 75B or T33 without that rack mounted safety.

Use the slider release after reloading, this way you won't have problems with the safety (for right handed shooter)

hey Gun Jesus, nice C&Rsenal tshirt. :)

i love that burnt bronze look an the slide how is it finished

I've had the same sort of issue accidentally engaging the safety on other pistols where the lever is mounted on the slide (3'rd gen S&W autoloaders, and the Beretta 92) When dropping the slide manually. Those pistols all tend to have huge slide locks, so I make use of them.

2nd time I watch this video because it's very nice to see french gun! And such a shame they are not findable in french market... Or at crazy prices. Like 1500€?! How much in USA for this gun?

Suggestions: Reload while moving. See 1:10 Barney up at the start of the stage. See 3:44-3:51 Don't shoot the pistol empty. See 4:54

The first time I shot with the MAC50, I had the same issue with the safety. It's really a desing flaw. That said, I am from today, the happy owner of a nice MAC50. These are damn hard to get here in France.

nice video Ian. Kinda remind me of some tactical trainings i made in the army some years ago in Kabul. The safety issue you had was mostly because you're a lefty i'm sorry for you. Righty will use slide release lever and it is how we were trained with this pistol. Lefty were trained to use weak hand to release slide not to rack it.

Ce maillot avec notre devise française! Ahaha J'adore !

In some shooting schools, you are thought to drop the slide after the mag change by running the slide, completely ignoring the slide release-it is supposed to get you more "positive" grip and better way of operating the gun during the reload. That was my first notion watching the previous video - the safety is veery awkwardly placed. Add to it the choice of safe position and - congrats, you've surpassed awkwardness of berreta's safety switch... I am "glad" to see My assumption was correct.

hey Ian, nice C&Rsonal t-shirt!

Take it this is pretty much why you don't see anyone else (as I recall) using a similar safety. Not exactly a gun expert myself but I can see why that would be a..bit of a issue.

Ian gets better at shooting. That is good. And on the third day GOD said that it was good. And, Ian is OK and shooting not so bad.

Respect. Pistols are difficult to shoot I'm still trying to get good 400 rounds in seeing a little improvement but I'll get there one day

For it's nice pronunciation and outfit i give 10 points to the house of Mccollum XD

ahah génial le T-shirt ;)

I can't wait for those to be released to civilian market here in France, definitely getting myself one when they do. Believe it or not, those are hard to come by for us too. Nice work on the pronounciation ! La france te salut

Ian - making forgotten weapons tacticool. ☺ -Jen

One day Ian i would like to see a video where you show all your hats :)

Your french pronunciation is so lovely ^^ cheers

Magnum GI returns!!!!

Interesting issues. It be cool to see you do a video on the Claridge Hi Tec S9, pretty unique and there's not a lot of information out there on them

That safety is incredibly crazy, far too easy to engage with the customary methods of slide manipulation

I wish they made an ambidextrous one just for Ian

If you're intending to imitate a French parachutist, your beret is on the wrong side ;)

I would like you to see you shoot this course and compare times of MAC 50, SIG P210, and Browning HP. I would love to hear your evaluations of these pistols.

I need a video about Ian talking about pistol shooting and things he learned from bullseye.

I feel like the safety being knocked on may have been an intended feature.

I had the same safety problem when I shot this gun in my Corporal formation (stage caporal en français, or FGE) : disengage the safety before loading the mag put and rengage it when I racked the slide

What you did is actually the same as what can happen with the Beretta 92F , thats why the French did not adopt the F version of the 92 but the G version .

"that was bad." "that was very bad." ...

Ian, you know the solution for the safety problem is to not be 'wrong' handed, and use the slide release.

I hope with France ordering all those Glock pistols we can get more of these MAC 1950s and G1s over here.

Engaging the safety when manipulating the slide is common with pistols with slide mounted safeties the berreta 92s/m9 have that same problem ive also seen it happen on ruger p95 need to use the slide release or switch the safety to decoder only so even if u engage it u can still fire in double action but that wouldn't apply to this pistol

...And now here's Ian wearing the Mauve beret by OMG and the orange earplugs by DAMN and the Blue shirt from WTF.. Just kidding..some told me he has a gun.

Gun Jesus is a good shot!

*Nice shirt.*

Well the safety looks like a possible pain, but compared to most of the French weapons showcased on this channel it still ranks pretty high in that it ACTUALLY HAS ONE. Besides, it's not a true French gun without a few strange features.

Neat gun, even at the time with a 9 round mag and that safety issue is there any reason to use this over say, a Hi Power?

If it were my gun, I'd probably paint the bottom of the safety lever bright orange or something just to get used to dropping that safety if it gets flipped when racking the slide.Nothing too permanent, but something to get me into the habit.

1:52 Man I thought Beretta 92 kind of slide mounted safeties might got pushed down into safe when doing the overhand charge (but it also allows you to grab those "ears" and make loading easier), this gun's safety definitely takes the cake as the crappiest I've seen :)

Hum, okay I hate the safety....I still love this pistol though and would love to have one I can call my own. I can deal with the bad safety.

I feel like a right-hander would find it easier to sweep the safety with the thumb if it got knocked into SAFE. Additionally, I think they would be less likely to engage the safety in the first place when racking the slide. Basically, the gun doesn't like left-handed shooters.

WE want to see a MAT 49 pretty please

It looks like the temporary work around for him was just not running it empty causing a slide lock open

I think the safety wouldn't be a problem for a right handed shooter using the left hand to rack the slide

Can't be 100%, but I've fired a C96 where the hammer dropped but no mark was made on the primer. I'm not sure if the safety on that does the same sort of thing (i.e. allow hammer fall but lock the firing from moving) but there wasn't even a dink on the percussion cap.