Rama: A BUG reloaded

FOR those who regularly check www.rebelmouse.com/stagefive, you may already have come across that video made by Dave Spaulding and Ruger Firearms on how to reload a pocket semi-automatic. If you haven’t and are reading online, just click the link.

The placement of the site’s content shifts a lot because rebelmouse.com constantly aggregates content I share through @On_Stage_5. So, once you reach the site just hit the “Ctrl” and “F” keys then type Do you carry a BUG? That ought to bring you to the right spot.

If you are reading this via hard copy, then simply read on. Let me just prefix the rest of this article by saying I wish I had come across the video early last month, before the experience that “inspired” our issues last June 18 (http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/sports/2012/06/18/rama-when-bugs-draw-blo...) and June 20 (http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/sports/2012/06/20/rama-when-bugs-draw-blo...).

To continue, Dave Spaulding is definitely no newcomer to guns. He is a veteran American shooter, a firearms trainer and gun review writer. He’s the man behind Handgun Combatives, a firearms training course he designed and the same-titled companion reading material he published.

In 2010, the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA) named him law officer trainer of the year.

Spaulding believes that the chance an armed citizen fending off an attacker has to reload in the middle of a fight is nil.

The position is based on numerous actual self-defense shootings. Gun fights are likewise to happen within three yards, involve the firing of no more than three rounds and are generally over within three seconds.

As such, because the smallest pocket pistol has more than three rounds, there is no need for reload.

Still, Spaulding stresses, and I do mean stresses, being able to efficiently reload a pocket pistol when it goes empty remains a good skill to know.

The technique he shares is almost the same as the speed-reload technique he teaches as part of his Handgun Combatives training.

First, the spare magazine must already be drawn, properly gripped and indexed before empty magazine is released; following the release of the empty magazine, the gun is then slightly canted so the shooter can see the magazine well during the insertion of fresh magazine, and, the elbow of the hand holding the gun must touch the rib-cage.

There are only two variances.

The first is what Spaulding teaches about what to do with the pinkie finger, which – unless your hand is abnormally small – doesn’t get to touch the grip.

To get the pinkie finger out of the way during a reload, a shooter can “teacup” it – making it stand out like what a proper lady does when drinking tea from a teacup.

Spaulding advices against this because the finger could get snagged.

Instead, he suggests doubling it on top of the ring finger.

I can no longer recall if I had my pinkie in a teacup fashion or if I doubled it on top of my strong-hand ring finger that time I had my range incident. Suffice to say it wasn’t the problem because it wasn’t the finger I injured.

The second variance is the intensity of the reload process. After hitting the magazine release button, Spaulding quickly inserts the fresh magazine into the gun. But, instead of ramming it the rest of the way with the base of his support hand, as what is normally done in reloading large guns, he pushes the magazine home with his thumb until he hears the magazine latch click.

Wise.

(knrama@gmail.com, www.rebelmouse.com/stagefive or follow @On_Stage_5 via Twitter.)