is gunfight reloading a necessary skill?

[Jrob24]

From what I've gathered many CCW'ers have an extra magazine or speedloader and practice reloading as part of drills. Of all the gunfight's I've read about, I can't remember any where a good guy civilian had to reload. So is this really a practical skill?

 

[Arc-Lite]

polishing a skill, dose not mean you need it, just wise enough to learn it....this one, you SHOULD learn well.

 

[logical]

I can't think of a good reason why knowing how to reload would be a bad thing. Needing extra shots beyond a full mag is not the only reason you might have to reload. You could unintentionally drop the mag, maybe even in clearing a jam.

Odds are you'll never even draw the thing but that's no reason to not know how to shoot it.

Now, that being said, I don't happen to carry extra ammo but have been trained and practice reloads because it's all part of knowing how to handle a firearm and someday I may find myself in a situation feeling a need to carry a half dozen extra mags.

 

[c_yeager]

The bigger concern if regarding magazine malfunction. The single most likely component in a semi auto to fail is the magazine. SInce spares are cheap and easy to carry it makes sense to have an extra. The additional ammo is just a nifty perk.

WIth that said I usually dont bother carrying spares. The only time i carry extra ammo is when I am carrying a snubbie, then i have a speed strip in a pocket. Five shots isnt a lot and speed strips are so easy to carry that there isnt really a good reason not to have one.

 

[Coronach]

Well, look at it this way...

Chances are you will go through your entire well-armed life without ever having to even draw your weapon, so why bother practicing shooting?

I admit that at some point the usefulness of practicing obscure tactical maneuvers becomes very small...but how to efficiently reload my weapon under various conditions is certainly on my "things I should reasonably know how to do" list.

Mike

 

[Imaginos]

Simple Answer

From the Movie "Unforgiven":

Deputy 1 "You carry three pistols, but you only have have one arm."

Deputy 2 "I don't want to get killed for lack of shooting back."

 

[MikeIsaj]

"Practical?"

If the standard of practical is how often you use it, then the whole concept of carrying is impractical. The overwhelming vast majority of us that carry will never draw, let alone fire. Does that mean we are being impractical? If you are in the small minority of people who will actually use their weapon in self defense, you may just as well be in the smaller group that needs to reload. Would you rather have that skill and not need it, or wish you practiced more while you grope around in the dark looking for the dropped mag?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

In Water's book, "The Best Defense," there is a great example of a civilian in a gunfight, saving a downed officer, and doing several reloads including having to manually load rounds into his mags after he used up all of his mags. The guy was going to the range for the first time since having heart surgery several months prior. He didn't have full power or mobility, but the doctor had given the okay for him to get back into shooting. The cop had pulled over a car with something like 2-4 bad guys who opened up on the officer who went down. This samaritan took action. Realizing that his skills were horrible and that he wasn't having much luck hitting the bad guys, he concentrated his rounds on shooting opposite sides of the bad guys' car, effectively keeping them pinned down and unable to finish off the officer. The fight was so long, that while reloading mags, a woman drove up and offered him her revolver. Also, an off duty LEO joined him in the fight as well. While the bad guys did escape (captured later that day), the samaritan was credited with saving the officer's life.

While there may not be a lot of published accounts about non-LEOs needing multiple mags, that is hardly justification for not carrying one or more spares and knowing how to reload during a fight. While it doesn't happen a lot during a fight for non-LEOs, the facts remain that they odds are hugely stacked against you needing to draw your gun on an actual would-be attacker, stacked against you needing to discharge it, stacked against you needing to shoot more than 3 rounds, and stacked against you actually hitting your intended bad guy with every round you fire. So, why would you bother carrying a gun, carrying a loaded gun with more than 3 rounds, and why would you waste money and time on practicing gun skills when the odds are stacked against you needing to use them?

The answer is simple. While the odds are against you needing any of these skills, should you need them, you want to be able to implement them as best as possible. Aside from the time and expense, there isn't much downside to practice and having skills you never need, but there is a huge downside to not having the skills you need should a situation arise where you need them.

FYI, one of the reasons why you haven't come across many stories where good guy civilians needed to reload is because they could not reload. In many of the stories, the bad guys took the empty gun of the good guy as a chance to efffect an escape. You will find a lot of stories where people shot until their guns ran empty. No doubt if they would have had spare mags or speedloaders, they would have reloaded and continued the fight.

 

[8830]

I guess you don't read much if you haven't read about someone using their spare ammo. Practicing to survive a shooting is very necessary.

 

[yorec]

So is this really a practical skill?

The same could be asked of malfunction clearance drills or CCW at all - you're not likely to need it...

I just don't trust my life to Mr. Murphy.

Prepare as best you can for what you can't control...

 

[centac]

"The single most likely component in a semi auto to fail is the magazine."

Point of clarification: IMHO the single most likely component to fail is the operator.

Spare mags enable up to make up misses (if that is actually possible) and fix malfunctions. I wouldnt leave home without'em, but then I carry a spare tire and keep my gas tank above half full as much as possible anyway.

 

[Relayer]

Two possibilities:

1) Have and not need it

2) Need it and not have it.

Which one do you choose?

 

[doofus]

Two possibilities:

1) Have and not need it

2) Need it and not have it.

Which one do you choose?

That's fallacious logic. You also have:
3. Need it and have it.
4. Not need it and not have it.

Not every situation has a black and white answer.

 

[DarkKnight01]

I believe in carrying spare magazines for the same reason I practice shooting my weapon, and for the same reason I train in self defense, Because you just never know when you might just need that extra skill.

Preparation = Life

^^ While not necessarily 100% of the time, but it sure helps

 

[Control Group]

No one ever lost a gunfight because he had too much ammo.

 

[444]

Train hard. Train for a worst case senario. And hopefully, if you ever need to use your weapon, it will be a walk in the park.
But, if it isn't, you are prepared.

We frequently have threads on this board about what distance should you practice defensive pistol shooting. A number of people will chime in that the average gun fight takes place at "X" yards (7 ?), so that is the distance to practice at.
Ok, there is a certain logic in that. But what happens if your gun fight doesn't take place at that range. What if you are the only guy in the history of the world to have a different senario develop ? Maybe something you never even imagined ? Something that beforehand sounded ridiculous ? All the rest of the gun fights used to compile those statistics don't matter at all because your life is on the line, not theirs. Are you prepared for it ?
Almost everyone knows what Murphy's law is. The reason everyone knows what it means is because it is a constant nagging factor every single day of our life. Why would anyone think that a gun fight would be any different ? Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Nothing that you trained for will happen, it will all be different. The typical senario will not apply. How do I know ? Because of Murphy's Law.
I used to hate my Dad for this, but now as a middle aged adult I find myself doing the same thing that he always did. ANYTIME I start to do something, I imagine everything that could possibly go wrong and never even entertain the idea that it might turn out OK. If it happens to be that one time that everything is OK, then I am having a good day.


I have read of both criminals and good guys reloading in gunfights.

 

[Nio]

How long do you want to be able to fight?

That's the important question. I can fire four rounds a second. That means my .45 goes empty in 2.25 seconds. With two spares I can fight for 6.25 seconds. My Glock 19 goes empty in 4 seconds, but since it takes G17 magazines with +2 floorplates, that give me an extra 9.5 seconds, for a total of 13.5 seconds (not counting the ~2 seconds it takes me to reload.)

How long do you want to be able to fight?

Nio

 

[Zak Smith]

The combat triad is: mindset, gun handling, and marksmanship.

Reloading falls under gun handling.

Enough said.

 

[Bulldozer]

practice reloads with both hands, as well as shooting the weapon with your dominant and weak hand -- one handed.

you'll never know when that drill will be necessary.

 

[GRB]

Jrob24,

Of all the gunfight's I've read about, I can't remember any where a good guy civilian had to reload. So is this really a practical skill?

You have not read about many gunfights or, certainly not about enough of them. There are many people who have been involved in gunfights that have needed to reload in order to assure that they would be the winner.

Some of the reasons you reload are as follows:

1. You run out of ammunition and the bad guy(s) is (are) still shooting. Think about that 5 shot revolver and a situation where there are 3 or 4 guys trying to kill you; think every shot will be a kill shot??? Now think about a 9mm that holds 16 rounds and think about your pucker factor trying to stave off a big warm load in your pants and, the shakes and, adrenalin, and multiple moving assailants and, ...

2. You fire several shots at an assailant, there is a break in the action, you are behind cover scanning the area, then you think you fired 5 times, no it was 8, no maybe it was 10 - heck just reload if it is safe to do so. Do not depend on your shot count to be correct under the extreme stress of a shootout. It is called a tactical reload, the old mag is retained for later. It gets done even when you are dead certain you only fired 5 or 6 shots and you KNOW you have another 10 in the gun. KNOWING the gun is loaded is much the same as KNOWING the gun isn't loaded, see my point.

3. Your pistol jams and; the tap, rack, re-engage does not clear it so you have to drop the magazine (tactically) and reload. (Bad magazines are one of the top reasons for failure to feed.)

4. You draw your firearm, fire one round (this is assuming you don't have a magazine safety) and then there is noting else as you try to fire again. As you go to tap/rack/re-engage, you realize the magazine is not in the gun. This happens either because when you loaded the gun at home earlier in the day and took out the mag to top it off, you forgot to put the mag back into the gun (due to brain fart or momentary distraction) or; it can happen because somehow you inadvertently hit the mag release and the mag fell out back at Dunkin Donuts.

5. You are in close quarters combat, the bad guy starts to draw within arms reach of you. You do a push off, or maybe a weapons arm grab, draw your weapon keeping it in very close and fire at point blank range, the bad guy is hit, he drops his weapon, yet he reaches out and grabs for your gun and tries to wrestle it from you. As you do all you can to retain the firearm, you PURPOSEFULLY hit the mag release to drop the magazine (yes I said purposefully - an especially good move if you have a magazine safety, and not so bad even if you do not because it will leave only one round in the gun and if the bad guy gets it from you that is better than 12 or 15 rounds when you have been disarmed). He does not get the gun, you are able to back off, you immediately reload as you are backing off and seeking distance and cover. If he finds his weapon you are ready. Of course it could just as easily have been that the mag release button was inadvertently hit by you or that the bad guy pushed it on purpose while grappling. Does not matter which caused it, it happens.

I usually carry at least two spare pistol magazines, fully loaded but, I have already carried as many as 5 spares.

Just some things to think about.

Best regards,
Glenn B

 

[Edmond]

Not only should you practice reloading.

You should practice one handed reloading, off hand reloaded and off hand one handed reloading.

You should also practice racking the slide with something else besides your off hand in case that hand is disabled for whatever reason. Use the ground, your pants, the bottom of your shoe, etc...

Also practice unloading rounds from a magazine and loading them into your magazine.

 

[Zeke Menuar]

When I retired my LW Commander from IPSC/IDPA, I left on the mag funnel and kept using the mags that had the bump stops. One mag is flat, the rest are ex-competition mags with bump pads. I have made thousands of hurry-up mag changes so I know the stuff works.

Murphy's reverse law says that if you have it, you'll never need it. So I left the stuff on.

This funnel doesn't look gaudy like some of the ones I've seen. Works fine.

ZM

 

[Joejojoba111]

c_yeager what are speed strips?

 

[GEM]

Since most DGUs have no shots fired, I suggest that folks carry an unloaded gun as that would work in most cases and then you can't shoot yourself or an innocent.

Sorry - but I am cranky after shooting intensively this week at the NTI. Most folks think about the single cranky mugger scenario. Probably don't have to reload for that. However, it may be low probability but if you get into a multiple attacker scenario - having more rounds and knowing how to get them into a gun seems a good thing.

I am continually surprised by folks who love techybabble but don't care about how to run the gun and use it with some skill.

 

[GRB]

it may be low probability but if you get into a multiple attacker scenario

Multiple assailantsor at least multiple bad guys have are more likely the rule not the exception.Sure there are lots of one assailant situations out there but, most bad guys are rather cowardly and work in groups. The thing is you do not always know the other guy is, or other guys are, there until they get the jump on you when you react to the first guy. This is a prime examply of why to carry extra ammo.
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