Basic pistol technique question

[RSA-OTC]

I'm not totally sold on any reloading technique that locates the weapon in front of your face and thus obscuring your vision of the threat. I have been playing with a lower position that allows me an un-obscured view of the threat area while still keeping my weapon in my peripheral vision to help with the reload. My gun arms right elbow makes contact with my torso thus stabilizing the gun hand and indexing the shooting arm and gun to the same place each time.

Also I stress to my students the need to scan for more threats and not fixate on the current target when not actually engaging that target. As Clint Smith is fond of saying "Wolves travel in packs".

[John_Wayne777]

I'm not totally sold on any reloading technique that locates the weapon in front of your face and thus obscuring your vision of the threat.

I would reframe the argument like this:

I'm not sold on any reload technique that locates the weapon away from the spot where you are most likely to successfully accomplish the reload.

As a means of explanation, consider the following:

In a fight, why are you performing a speed reload? Generally because you were trying to kill someone and your gun stopped going boom. That most likely means that there is still an ongoing threat to deal with. Given that we are at handgun distances, what is the most important task in the world for you at this particular moment?

My answer would be: Getting that gun up and running again.

Therefore I'm willing to trade a second of looking at the threat while my gun is empty to ensure that I can resume putting bullets into his anatomy as I feel that this a superior survival technique to staring him down with an empty gun that I'm struggling to reload.

[C4IGrant]

I'm not totally sold on any reloading technique that locates the weapon in front of your face and thus obscuring your vision of the threat. I have been playing with a lower position that allows me an un-obscured view of the threat area while still keeping my weapon in my peripheral vision to help with the reload. My gun arms right elbow makes contact with my torso thus stabilizing the gun hand and indexing the shooting arm and gun to the same place each time.

Also I stress to my students the need to scan for more threats and not fixate on the current target when not actually engaging that target. As Clint Smith is fond of saying "Wolves travel in packs".

You can see the threat through the triggerguard. The main reason though to keep your pistol about head high is because of the speed. If you think about it, you have your gun in front of your face, then you are going to bring it back and lower it. Reload and push the weapon back up and out. This is a waste of motion.

As far as being able to see the threat, I will go out on a limb and say that you are most likely MOVING for cover or offline as you are reloading.


C4

[Failure2Stop]

I'm not totally sold on any reloading technique that locates the weapon in front of your face and thus obscuring your vision of the threat. I have been playing with a lower position that allows me an un-obscured view of the threat area while still keeping my weapon in my peripheral vision to help with the reload. My gun arms right elbow makes contact with my torso thus stabilizing the gun hand and indexing the shooting arm and gun to the same place each time.

If you are blocking your vision, you are doing it wrong.
The gun does not need to be directly in front of your eyes, blocking your field of vision, rather, it is simply placed in the line of sight with the threat/threat area. Placing the gun there allows you to momentarily shift vision from the threat/threat area to the magwell as the magazine is inserted, while still keeping the threat in close peripheral vision. The eye shift lasts for less than 1/2 second and movement will still be apparent. It keeps the head up and eyes forward.

Let's look at the disadvantages of dropping the gun:
The gun will be pointed, unaimed at normal human height.
If something goes wrong with the reload, focus will bring the head down, and vision will tunnelize on the gun and ground, away from the threat area.
The movement from belt to magwell will be inefficient and awkward, especially at combat relevant speed.

Just my experience.

[RWK]

It's apparent that modern doctrine supports the use of an isosceles style. For those who use that style, when you drive the pistol forward, do you fully straighten both arms outward or leave them 'bent'?

On your reloads, do you keep the gun up and on target, or pull back slightly into a 'workspace'?

I extend my arms without locking them. While reloading, I bring the gun back to an index position in front of, and slightly below the level of my chin.

Do you also change your visual focus to your weapon during the reload, or use your peripheral vision while keeping your eyes on the target?

My focus goes to the pistol during the insertion of the magazine into the well.

When drawing your pistol, who favors driving the pistol straight towards the target( a-la Jeff Cooper), and who rotates it up and pointed at the target, and then drives it forward (a-la Clint Smith)?

I bring it up, just below the level of my chin and under my dominant eye, then press it forward.

If you are blocking your vision, you are doing it wrong.
The gun does not need to be directly in front of your eyes, blocking your field of vision, rather, it is simply placed in the line of sight with the threat/threat area. Placing the gun there allows you to momentarily shift vision from the threat/threat area to the magwell as the magazine is inserted, while still keeping the threat in close peripheral vision. The eye shift lasts for less than 1/2 second and movement will still be apparent. It keeps the head up and eyes forward.

Let's look at the disadvantages of dropping the gun:
The gun will be pointed, unaimed at normal human height.
If something goes wrong with the reload, focus will bring the head down, and vision will tunnelize on the gun and ground, away from the threat area.
The movement from belt to magwell will be inefficient and awkward, especially at combat relevant speed.

Just my experience.

What he said...

[NCPatrolAR]

If you are blocking your vision, you are doing it wrong.
The gun does not need to be directly in front of your eyes, blocking your field of vision, rather, it is simply placed in the line of sight with the threat/threat area. Placing the gun there allows you to momentarily shift vision from the threat/threat area to the magwell as the magazine is inserted, while still keeping the threat in close peripheral vision. The eye shift lasts for less than 1/2 second and movement will still be apparent. It keeps the head up and eyes forward.

Let's look at the disadvantages of dropping the gun:
The gun will be pointed, unaimed at normal human height.
If something goes wrong with the reload, focus will bring the head down, and vision will tunnelize on the gun and ground, away from the threat area.
The movement from belt to magwell will be inefficient and awkward, especially at combat relevant speed.

Just my experience.

You just saved me a great deal of typing.

[RSA-OTC]

If you are blocking your vision, you are doing it wrong.
The gun does not need to be directly in front of your eyes, blocking your field of vision, rather, it is simply placed in the line of sight with the threat/threat area. Placing the gun there allows you to momentarily shift vision from the threat/threat area to the magwell as the magazine is inserted, while still keeping the threat in close peripheral vision. The eye shift lasts for less than 1/2 second and movement will still be apparent. It keeps the head up and eyes forward.

Let's look at the disadvantages of dropping the gun:
The gun will be pointed, unaimed at normal human height.
If something goes wrong with the reload, focus will bring the head down, and vision will tunnelize on the gun and ground, away from the threat area.
The movement from belt to magwell will be inefficient and awkward, especially at combat relevant speed.

Just my experience.

Maybe I did not describe my position in the best manner.

My gun is still pointed up as if I was looking through the trigger guard, but it is positioned lower just below my direct line of vision (low peripheral so to speak), my gun arm elbow is braced against my body to stabilize the weapon and I have a total 180 degree view of the threat area. If I fumble the reload I am training myself to bring the weapon up to my eyes rather than dropping my eyes from the threat area to the gun. The amount of distance I need to bring the weapon upward is maybe 2 inches max. My movement from the mag pouches to the weapon is very similar the other techniques offered here. Maybe I can get away with this compared to others since I have a 37 inch sleeve.

But bringing the gun up so that I am looking at the threat through the trigger guard allows the gun and my hand to obscure a good portion of my view. If I could be assured I was only dealing with a single threat that I can see through my trigger guard I could accept this. Unfortunately experience shows that more often than not we will be dealing with more than one threat. My gun and hand may obscure that additional threat whose actions may move them to being a higher priority target than the first threat. I can't be so focused on the first threat that I don't see the second threat coming.

[NCPatrolAR]

My gun arms right elbow makes contact with my torso thus stabilizing the gun hand and indexing the shooting arm and gun to the same place each time.

Bringing the arm in this far is wasted motion. By bringing the gun in this far, you are spending more time bringing the gun in to your reference point and then back out to your shooting position. It is better to bring the gun into your workspace, keeping it about 8" in front of your face. This position is just as repeatable as the torso touch and is faster to move in and out of.

[RSA-OTC]

Bringing the arm in this far is wasted motion. By bringing the gun in this far, you are spending more time bringing the gun in to your reference point and then back out to your shooting position. It is better to bring the gun into your workspace, keeping it about 8" in front of your face. This position is just as repeatable as the torso touch and is faster to move in and out of.

May be it is because I have such long arms this works for me. For my build you are not talking that much more additional motion and only fractions of a second added. What I feel I gain in situational awareness I think it is a far trade off. Just like the trade off made during the press out of a draw. The shortest distance & least motion is directly from the holster to target, but to gain better sight acquisition folks are moving from the holster to at least chest height and then pressing out from there. So instead of traveling in a straight line they now have a ninety degree angle.

[G_M]

Reading these last few posts. I feel like driving down the interstate at cruising speeds while fumbling with your drink or looking at your GPS has a lot of things in common with reloading Same "workspace" and same pitfalls, especially F2S's thing about something going wrong.

Could just be me though.