THE MACBROZ BLOG

For years, if you wanted to build an audience with video, the answer was pretty simple: YouTube. And honestly, YouTube is still an incredible platform. The audience is massive. Search is powerful. People already know how to use it. If someone wants a review of a new pistol, optic, holster, or piece of gear, there’s a pretty good chance YouTube is one of the first places they’re going to look. But if you create firearms content, the relationship can feel a little more complica

At this point, I’ve somehow ended up owning five different 2011-style / double-stack 1911 pistols, and spending time with all of them has changed the way I look at the platform. They’re not all the same. They don’t all serve the same purpose. And most importantly, spending more money doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting the pistol that’s going to work best for you. My collection has included guns from different manufacturers, different price points, different sizes, and

I first connected with the team at Tisas USA at GunCon, and we immediately hit it off. I’ve spent a lot of time around the 1911DS/2011-style platform over the last few years, so naturally the Tisas DS9 Comp 4.25” was one of the guns I wanted to get my hands on. Now that I have one, my first impression is simple: Tisas is offering a lot of gun for the money. I want to be clear up front that this isn’t a long-term review yet. I haven’t put thousands—or even hundreds and hundred

Ported and compensated pistols are everywhere right now. What used to be something you primarily saw on custom competition guns has moved firmly into the mainstream. Manufacturers are offering more factory-compensated and ported options, while aftermarket companies continue pushing increasingly aggressive and creative designs. That creates a good problem for shooters: There are a lot of choices. But not every porting job is created equal, and choosing one based entirely on ho

There’s always something new. A new Glock generation. A new optics-ready pistol. A new compensated model. A new double-stack 1911. A new carry gun that promises better capacity, better ergonomics, better recoil control, and somehow a completely different shooting experience than everything that came before it. And every year, the firearms industry does a very good job of convincing shooters that what they already own is suddenly outdated. I’m guilty of buying new guns too. Pa

The Glock Gen 6 hasn’t been out long, but the aftermarket is already starting to catch up. One of the products that immediately caught my attention is the new Gideon Optics Valor Mini Gen 6. Instead of taking an existing optic and relying on one of Glock’s included adapter plates, Gideon built this version of the Valor Mini specifically around the new Glock Gen 6 Optic Ready System (ORS). The optic mounts directly to double-stack Gen 6 models including the Glock 17, Glock 19,

The Glock 19 is one of those pistols that almost every handgun gets compared to eventually. It doesn’t matter if the new gun is polymer-framed, metal-framed, hammer-fired, striker-fired, optics-ready, compensated, compact, or somewhere in between. At some point, somebody is going to ask: How does it compare to a Glock 19? That says a lot. You don’t have to believe the Glock 19 is the best handgun ever made. You don’t even have to particularly like Glocks. But it’s difficult t

I’ve been shooting ported pistols for almost 10 years now. That still feels strange to say, mostly because for a long time, porting was not normal. It was something you saw on competition guns, custom builds, or pistols that had been sent off to a specialty shop for machining. If you had ports cut into your slide and barrel years ago, people noticed. It was different. It was usually something you had intentionally gone out of your way to have done. Fast forward to today and m

There was a time when putting a red dot on a handgun still felt like something reserved for competition shooters, heavily modified pistols, or people who simply wanted the newest piece of gear. That time is gone. Today, walk into almost any gun store and it feels like every new pistol is either optics-ready or available in an optics-ready version. Even guns designed specifically for concealed carry now routinely come cut from the factory for a red dot. Somewhere along the way