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Speed Reloading the Revolver Concealed Carry
Flatten your right hand and swiftly strike the ejector rod one time with your palm. This accelerates the brass and tends to throw it clear of the cylinder, even with short ejector rods. Velocity is more important than force, and it’s important that you only strike the ejector rod one time. If there are any cases that fail to clear the cylinder, multiple ejections will not clear them but do significantly raise the risk of a case-under-extractor jam. This technique virtually eliminates the risk of such a jam. If there are cases that don’t clear, you can pick them out without danger of a jam.
One of the major criticisms of the double action revolver is that it’s hard to reload efficiently. With an autoloading pistol the empty magazine is ejected and the replacement rounds are contained in a large, easy to handle package that goes into the gun in one smooth motion. The revolver, on the other hand, has to be partially disassembled, the old cases ejected, the new rounds inserted into their individual holes, and then the gun reassembled. It’s a tedious task, of that there is no doubt!
It’s also a time-consuming job that requires a large amount of manual dexterity to perform. Reloading the revolver efficiently, especially under stress, is not the easiest task in the world. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, nor does it mean that it can’t be done efficiently. There are ways to make the revolver reload easier and faster, and that’s what this chapter is all about.
The worst case scenario for reloading the revolver in a timely manner has to be during self-defense. Since my personal shooting interest these days is primarily for self-defense, the reload techniques I use are optimized for the demands of that situation. Those demands are very different than those of pure competition; as you’ll see, more efficient does not always mean faster.
Circumstances that affect our technique
Why focus on the defensive reload? Because the self-defense incident is the most demanding of the very things that are required to get the wheelgun up and operating: fine motor skills. They are greatly hampered or diminished during a defensive encounter, and they make efficient revolver reloads more difficult.
Ideally we’d have a reload technique that doesn’t require any fine motor coordination at all, but that’s not a practical goal. The revolver by its very design requires close interaction with our fingers, just at a time when the strength, dexterity, and tactile sensation of those digits is compromised by the event. We can’t eliminate the requirement for fine motor skills because the demands of the gun’s design won’t let us.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t seek to minimize dependence on those fine skills as much as possible. The less we rely on small muscle groups and precise control, the more chances for error we eliminate. That’s why an ideal defensive reloading technique minimizes, to the greatest degree possible, the reliance on fine motor movements and dexterity. Again, we can’t eliminate them entirely because we still have to interact with a mechanical device, but the more we reduce our reliance on those skills the more efficient we’ll be.
Proponents of competition-based techniques aren’t fond of this approach, pointing out that operating the trigger is a fine motor skill as well – and we don’t worry about that! While largely true, the trigger finger action is still relatively primitive (a simple grasp) compared to the subtle manipulations required to put rounds into the cylinder’s chambers. It’s also something that we can’t work around.
We can work around the manipulations used in reloading. By focusing on large muscle groups and coarse motor movements whenever possible, we make the revolver reload more stress resistant, less prone to failure, and more efficient under the worst conditions.
The defensive reload is fast, but its main benefit is that it’s designed to work with the body’s natural reactions in a life-or-death struggle. By minimizing the need for fine motor control and dexterity, a good defensive reload makes it far less likely that the shooter is going to stall the reload and prolong his or her exposure to danger. It can certainly be used competitively, and many people do, me included.
A serious competition shooter, however, may desire a different technique optimized for that job. By relying more on fine motor skills and weak hand manipulation, it’s possible to make the reload process just a bit faster. Doing this means that the reload technique has a few more points of possible failure, but because competition doesn’t have the same deleterious effect on motor control and coordination as a violent attack, the reload technique can cut many corners and still be viable. If you flub a reload in a match, you’re out nothing but pride.
The reverse is not true, because the demands on motor control and concentration in a defensive encounter can lead to a botched reload, and a botched reload can lead to serious consequences. For this reason I recommend that you use the defense-oriented Universal Revolver Reload technique if you carry a revolver primarily for self-defense. If you’re primarily a competitor, and you have a properly equipped gun, you’ll be able to shave a few tenths of a second off your time by using the slightly faster Competition Reload.
The choice is yours, and I hope I’ve laid out the criteria for your decision.
In addition, I’ll show you a defensive reload technique for left-handed shooters. In a later chapter you’ll also see techniques for one-handed reloads, both strong and weak hand.
If you’ve been around the revolver world for very long, you’ve probably noticed that there is a wide range of opinion on, and variety in, revolver reload techniques. You can find people who will argue incessantly about the ‘best’ way to perform a reload. I respect other’s opinions, but I believe these techniques to be the ‘best in class’ for the reasons you’ll see.
Using the palm of your left hand, strike the ejector rod once only.
Defensive reloading: the Universal Revolver Reload
As I mentioned, it’s possible to mess up a revolver reload, particularly under threatening stress. There are a couple of points in the process where a reload can be significantly delayed or even completely stalled improper technique or ignorance of the dynamics involved. The Universal Revolver Reload, or URR, is designed to avoid those failure points to the greatest degree possible.
One failure point occurs during the ejection of spent casings. If the stroke of the ejector is longer than the case of the rounds being shot, it’s easy to end up with the dreaded case-under-extractor jam. Another failure point occurs during insertion of a speedloader, where it’s not uncommon for a live round to bind in the loader and prevent the cylinder from closing.
The URR is designed specifically to prevent both of these. By reducing the reliance on fine motor control, the URR minimizes these stress-induced failure points during the reloading process. It’s as fast as most other techniques, but I believe it to be more reliable when the hands experience the body’s natural reactions to a threat stimulus: lowered strength, flexibility, and feeling in the extremities.
As the cylinder unlatches, the fingers of your left hand will naturally apply pressure to open the cylinder. Remember that it’s the movement of the gun against your fingers that does the work. As the muzzle comes to the vertical position, just let the gun rotate onto the middle fingers of your left hand, thus pushing the cylinder fully open. Grasp