Basics 12 Reloads

I touched on this before but I want to amplify this.

Empty gun bad……loaded gun good…..

That’s pretty much it, but let me elaborate at bit more.

Engaging Cardboard Targets As The Sun Sets

  I recently shot a simple tactical CoF for rifle and pistol.  Eleven targets placed over 30 yards of travel, the farthest shooting distance 20 yards.  The trick was to load only 7 rounds in your rifle magazine to force reloads and transitions to your sidearm.  Everyone ran it several times each time improvising different scenarios.

 The best take-away from the night was to never leave cover with an empty gun.  The CoF forced you to practice reloads and transition from rifle to handgun, but I noted a number of people leaving cover while reloading.

 When you are shooting fixed paper targets it can be very fast to reload on the move giving you better time and score.  In a true fight or die situation moving from cover with an empty gun without an exceptionally good reason is stupid.  Your reason must be of the level of the ground opening up and your cover is tipping over into the maw of Hell.

 Moving with an empty gun makes you an arcade game for anyone with a round or two.

 Never leave cover without the largest number of rounds in the gun you can manage at the moment.  No, don’t think I mean stop and strip rounds out to refill another magazine.  If you check your magazine and find two rounds in it, swap it out for an earlier change holding three rounds.

 One excuse is “I’m moving from this cover to another cover and I am invisible to the deadlies.”  If the paper targets were alive, would they stand there while you shot at one of them?  No, they would be changing their positions, finding their own cover and advantage.  When you stepped out from cover reloading as you move you could be shot at from one in a position you never expected.

 But let’s take a reality check.  As an armed citizen if you shot 28 rounds from an AR magazine and then emptied your 10 round handgun and you are still in a fight, something is very wrong and you should have started extracting yourself from the situation after the first 10 rounds.