I was reading this article over at the USCCA website. The article itself is fine but secondary to the one thing that stood out to me. This picture and its caption:

It’s a picture of legendary instructor Ken Hackathorn performing a reload. The picture could come across contrary to the caption, but the picture is but a moment in time. The caption is really what you need to pay attention to:

Note he has the fresh magazine before he dumps the one in the gun.

This is so critical when reloading, at least in the context I care most about: self-defense.

First, you do carry a reload, right? If you do not, you should. In part it’s there because you may need more ammo. But it’s also there because the magazine is a fairly good point of failure in a semi-automatic handgun, and what are you going to do if that magazine fails in the middle of a fight for your life? Having a reload can help you remedy the situation and stay in the fight.

Second, there are many ways to reload a gun, but there’s really only one that matters in a gunfight: the speed reload. That is, you press the magazine release button on the gun, let the magazine drop out of the gun onto the ground (it doesn’t matter if it’s full, partially full, or empty), and insert a new magazine and keep going. This is the fastest way to get the gun back into action, and every moment matters. While looking for something else the other day, I came across an old article by Todd Louis Green about the “Tactical Reload” and his reasons against it.  There is a place for all the styles of reloading, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Now, in doing this reloading, order of execution is important. All too often people realize they need to reload and the first thing they do is hit the magazine release button. Sometime after that, they go for their spare magazine. Can you see a possible problem here? What if you don’t have the spare magazine? It could have fallen out. You may have already reloaded (yes, in the heat of the fight you won’t be able to keep track of all things). Chances are good that the magazine you dropped from the gun was a partially full magazine. So now you have a magazine on the ground, no magazine in your hand, and if you’re lucky, one shot left in the gun. Not good.

Because you may have a partially loaded gun when you choose to reload, don’t empty that gun until you KNOW you can reload it. For those wondering why you’d reload a gun that’s (partially) loaded, if there was a lull I’d like to get my gun topped off. I won’t know how many rounds I fired and thus have left. I don’t know if there might be a second fight (yes it can and does happen). Having a full tank serves me better. I can speed reload, minimize my downtime, and then once there’s enough time I can bend down and recover the partial magazine (if needed).

So when it’s time to reload, FIRST go for the magazine, confirm it’s there, THEN you can drop the existing magazine and continue with the reload. There’s really no time lost in doing things in this order. Or even if there is any time lost, you’ll lose a lot more time off your life if you ever find yourself standing around with a gun you just unloaded in the middle of the fight. The fractions of a second “saved” aren’t worth it.