Speedload video

[wford]

Personally I find tactical reloads fun for gun games but until there is one, just one, case where a civilian needed the extra rounds he saved using a
TR I'm not going to give it much weight. I think you can have too many rounds. When the number becomes unreasonable then its too many. Of course we must
all decide for ourselves what is reasonable.

I think more about carrying a second gun now than I do about reloads.

Lastly Jerry M. sure can run a revolver !!!

[jsimmons]

I won't be carrying reloads. Twelve rounds should be enough to take out at least four bad guys.

[KD5NRH]

Personally I find tactical reloads fun for gun games but until there is one, just one, case where a civilian needed the extra rounds he saved using a TR I'm not going to give it much weight.

+1 If I'm wearing more than swim trunks, I'm carrying two reloads for whatever gun I have with me. (the exception being the PT-99, since it's already 17+1, so I only carry one spare in case of a mag failure) Unless I'm spraying and praying, that should be enough to deal with more targets than I would expect to be able to effectively stop before they can stop me.

Lastly Jerry M. sure can run a revolver !!!

Yep: I'm pretty sure that if I had four targets to deal with inside of 10 yards, one of them would be on me before I could stop the other three. He might well be able to reload and take a few more. Who needs an M249 when you can make a wheelgun do the same thing?

[Excaliber]

I won't be carrying reloads. Twelve rounds should be enough to take out at least four bad guys.

Everyone must decide what's best for him or her. Just be aware of the implicit assumptions here:

1. The magazine is fully inserted, locked, and stays in the gun when drawn. (Have you ever had an experience where it wasn't fully locked because accidental pressure on the mag release button while in the holster unlocked it and the mag dropped on the ground when the gun was drawn?). If your only magazine falls on the ground during a gunfight, it leaves you with the choices of scrabbling around on the ground after it while under fire, or proceeding with the fight while armed with a small club.

2. The magazine in the gun will feed correctly. I've had a magazine that fed perfectly for years cause a double feed after the first shot, and every shot after that. Investigation showed that one of the plastic follower legs had broken and effectively changed the feed angle to one that didn't work. This is not fixable in the field during a gunfight. If that had happened just before I needed it, I'd have wanted another magazine available right away.

3. 12 shots for 4 bad guys assumes a lot more fight stopping hits than most folks can count on. Latest NYPD statistics show a 34% intended target hit rate for their officers in gunfights. That would be 4 hits out of 12. If your hit rate is similar on moving targets that shoot back from unknown ranges in odd positions and from behind obstacles under very poor light conditions, you'd better be sure those 4 are central nervous system hits, because without a reload, there won't be any more from your gun that day.

I think more about carrying a second gun now than I do about reloads.

The "New York Reload" is a time honored and time proven technique originally developed to solve the problem of how to quickly get back in the action after emptying a 6 shot revolver. Officers there (and in lots of other places) carried a snub nose revolver that used the same ammo as the primary gun. It works with semiautos too if the second gun is in a position to be drawn in a second or so and it uses a fight stopping caliber, preferably the same as the primary gun and with interchangeable magazines. Keep in mind that backing up your .45 with a .22 won't give you the same results as a second magazine of .45 rounds would.

[KD5NRH]

Latest NYPD statistics show a 34% intended target hit rate for their officers in gunfights.

A 66% miss rate is not acceptable outside of a battlefield, where unintended targets behind the intended target are highly likely to also be hostile troops. Frankly, I'd rather lose the fight than fire a dozen or more shots with two thirds of them doing nothing but endangering innocent lives. You might as well advocate trading our handguns for hand grenades.

[Excaliber]

Latest NYPD statistics show a 34% intended target hit rate for their officers in gunfights.

A 66% miss rate is not acceptable outside of a battlefield, where unintended targets behind the intended target are highly likely to also be hostile troops. Frankly, I'd rather lose the fight than fire a dozen or more shots with two thirds of them doing nothing but endangering innocent lives. You might as well advocate trading our handguns for hand grenades.

Please don't misunderstand my post as saying that a 66% miss rate is a good thing. It clearly isn't, and the numbers vary from agency to agency. NYPD faces extraordinary training challenges with around 30,000 officers, many of whom never picked up a gun before they were hired and who only shoot when required and paid to do so during mandatory training and qualifications.

My point was that one can't count on a 100% hit rate in the few seconds of brutal chaos that gunfight conditions entail. With everyone moving (bad guys and good guy survivors don't stand still at these times), obstacles, noise, poor light, multiple aggressors at different angles and positioned in profile, crouched, or partially behind cover instead of full face on like a B27 target at the range, it's extremely difficult to not miss at all. Clearly we're still responsible for making certain that if a miss does occur, it doesn't do unacceptable damage, but few of us who have seen these situations would be willing to guarantee we could place every shot exactly where we want it to go every time.

I'll give you an example. A good friend of mine in the agency I worked for was involved in a foot chase with a bad check suspect in his mid forties. As they crossed a dark and empty parking lot, my buddy's spidey sense kicked in because he figured something not good was going on with a guy that age running that hard when facing a simple bad check complaint. The officer slowed down to create a bit of distance. At a range of about 20 yards, the suspect yelled, "OK, OK, I give up," but drew a revolver from his waistband, turned and fired. As the suspect turned to engage, the officer placed his left arm across his chest as he had been taught to minimize damage to vital organs under these circumstances, and dropped to the ground since there was no cover available. The bad guy apparently thought he'd scored a hit, and ran to the rear edge of the parking lot.

The suspect then climbed an embankment and began scaling a cyclone fence behind a small tree, which concealed him from the officer's view. The officer was thoroughly familiar with the area, and knew that beyond the tree and fence lay an apartment building's brick wall without windows. The officer, who was the son of one of the most prominent NYPD firearms instructors and was a firearms instructor and expert combat shooter himself, fired a pattern of 5 rounds through the tree's foliage where he thought the suspect was. He scored 3 hits on an unseen target, a 60% hit rate, which got the job done with no unacceptable damage. A couple of hollowpoints splattered on the brick wall beyond. No one was upset about that.

The real world is a rough place, and things don't always go as we'd like. Intended target hit ratios that would be really poor on the range are often as good as it gets out there. Be sure that a miss won't harm an innocent before you fire, but I wouldn't advise planning one's ammo load around an assumption of 100% hits.

[Excaliber]

Here's a surveillance camera video of a recent civilian gunfight in a bar room. Note the movement, positions, and distances are a bit different than what you see at the pistol range. There are at least 3 people shooting at each other, with a large number of shots fired in a medium sized room.

Reportedly there were zero hits on any of the intended targets, and lots of hits on unintended ones which fortunately did not include any people.

Is one magazine in the pistol enough? You decide.

[CompVest]

Excellent posts, Excaliber and well said.

[Excaliber]

Excellent posts, Excaliber and well said.

Thanks, CompVest!

[wford]

Actually no mags would be appropriate since I wouldnt have gun in a bar. Then again I dont go to bars.
Good examples of spray and pray and running out the back looked viable. And as others have said I really liked the side to side hip hop of the guy out in front. :)

Here's a surveillance camera video of a recent civilian gunfight in a bar room. Note the movement, positions, and distances are a bit different than what you see at the pistol range. There are at least 3 people shooting at each other, with a large number of shots fired in a medium sized room.

Reportedly there were zero hits on any of the intended targets, and lots of hits on unintended ones which fortunately did not include any people.

Is one magazine in the pistol enough? You decide.

[Liberty]

Cilivilian self defense is different Police. We civilians have a better percentage than most Police agencys. Mostly because we use our guns in limited situations. Our goal is only about survival.

How much ammo we carry, can depend on a lot of factors. One major concideration is the particular guns your carrying. A 1911 toter may well consider bringing a couple extra Mags withon them with their limmited load capacity. Others may figure a New York reload. I usually carry a spare mag, but don't practice tactical reloads much, One just has to spend ones practice and training time on what is most important. I figure I'll never empty a 15 round mag in combat. Where 1 or 2 seconds extra involved in changing the mag will ever make a difference. I might feel different if I were carrying a limited capacity mags. While I think skills like finding cover, and shooting under pressure might have a more benefit for some people.

[jbirds1210]

One is none.

[hangfour]

I could use some advice ... I'm new to this forum (awaiting background check for my license). I plan to carry a S&W 637 (2" snub .38 special). The speedloader I have (HKS 36) barely works on my pistol. Apparently the problem is that the factory grip on the 637 interferers with the speedloader. To check out this theory,I took the grip off the revolver and the HKS 36 works like a dream.

Does anyone know of a aftermarket grip for the S&W 637 (airweight) that will resolve this difficulty?

Thanks,
bob

[gregthehand]

Something I learned recently in training was to not dump your cylinder at your feet. Instead you can kind of turn your body and eject the cases out to where they land behind and to the right of you. It adds no time to the reload and you don't have to worry about stepping on a shell casing and it rolling your legs out from under you (tripping).

[slinco]

Funny, I used to load my revolver that way every time I went to qualify. The Rangemasters would have a fit and demand I do it as instructed. I had to explain every time that i am Left handed but shoot right handed, that style of reload just felt comfortable to me. It would remind me of the Nun in grade school constantly grabbing the pencil out of my left hand and putting it in my right-that did'nt work either. Do whats natural and comfortable for you.