I am curious, JohnKsa, how you do your speed reload.
When I'm on the range I keep the gun pointed toward the berm, not over it. So my practice, including my reload practice, keeps the gun pointed more or less toward the target and definitely toward the berm.
If you do it that way on the street, you'd be endangering everyone on said street.
First of all, if you try to keep the gun pointed in the general direction of the person you've already emptied your gun at, then you're not endangering anyone other than the people you already endangered in the process of emptying the gun.
Second, none of the people in those pictures were "on the street". They were at a range where bullets are supposed to end up in the berm and where guns are NOT supposed to be pointed over the berm. Even if you make an argument for that being a good technique "on the street", it still doesn't justify doing it at the range.
Like it or not, we don't get to break the gun safety rules during practice because we might have to on the street or because it might be expedient to do so on the street. That's how people get killed.
The gun is supposed to be held up at an angle like that.
No, they're not. The rules of gun safety say that you keep the muzzle pointed at a safe direction. At a range, that's the berm.
Even still, the bullet goes way up in the air, loses all of it's energy, then tumbles back to earth tail first without enough energy to really hurt anyone.
This is ABSOLUTELY false. A pistol bullet shot STRAIGHT UP into the air will probably descend tumbling, with very little energy. Rifle bullets can still be dangerous when shot straight up, because they have the potential to remain spin-stabilized and descend base first. The energy is much reduced but it could still be lethal in the worst case.
But a bullet (rifle or pistol) shot
at an angle into the air will certainly come down with enough energy to be lethal.
Keep in mind that the terminal velocity of a bullet dropped out of a planes window is far slower the the velocity of a bullet coming out of your barrel.
The terminal velocity of a bullet dropped out of a plane's window would be MUCH lower than the velocity of a descending bullet shot upwards at an angle. For one thing, the bullet falling from the plane will be tumbling which means it provides much more air resistance than a spin-stabilized bullet traveling nose first. For another, the bullet falling from the plane (or descending after being shot
straight upwards) has only the force of gravity providing velocity. The bullet fired at an angle has gravity bringing it down, but it also still retains some of the muzzle velocity. The total velocity is the vector sum and it is DEFINITELY sufficient to be lethal.
Odds that the gun lets one go on it's own while reloading like that are about the same as getting hit by lightning.
This thread is about a person having an unintentional discharge while reloading. I've seen a person have an unintentional discharge while reloading--fortunately he also kept his gun pointed at the berm and so there was no harm done in that case either. The point is that it does happen--and we're in the progress of discussing a case where it did and where good muzzle control kept the situation from being potentially deadly.
Besides, even if the odds are highly against it, that still doesn't provide justification. You don't break the rules of gun safety just because the odds of an injury are small.