It’s a good idea to carry spare ammo. How and where you place that ammo on your belt can mean the difference between a quick and smooth reload and a time-consuming disaster when you suddenly need ammo the most.

Personally, I always carry my spare ammo with the bullets facing my belt buckle. Whether I am carrying a double mag pouch on duty or a single mag carried concealed under my shirt, the bullets are pointing to my belt buckle so that when I grab for a magazine, it always comes into my hand and therefore goes into my gun the same way.

With bullets forward in the mag pouch, reach for the magazine by driving your thumb between the magazine and your body, allowing your index finger to rest on the front of the magazine. As you pull the magazine up and out, simply rotate your hand to align the magazine to the magazine well and insert it. Viola! More rounds. Rack the slide and get back in the fight.

Why Did I Say Rack the Slide?

Why indeed? If you are shooting, and you stop shooting and decide to put a full magazine into your gun, people call that an “in-battery” reload. (Sometimes they call it a “tactical reload.”) There is, as far as you know, a round in the chamber and now you have a fully loaded magazine in the gun.

But is there a round in the chamber? Are you sure? Several things could have gone wrong. Did the slide really push another round into that chamber? Are you willing to bet your life on it? I’m not. After I insert a fully-loaded magazine into the gun, I rack the slide to make sure the gun is ready to fight with.

Yep, sometimes I dump a live round on the ground. But that live round is the price I pay for KNOWING there is a round in the chamber.

Do you do something different? Let us know.

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