it, and remove your right hand from the grip. The gun will now be hanging vertically on the left hand fingers. Up to this point you’ve used primarily large muscle groups and gross motor movements, which are very resistant to degradation during the body’s natural response to a threat.
Truly universal
It’s called “universal” because it’s usable with no modification, or even conscious thought, on all major types of revolvers: Smith & Wesson, Ruger, and Colt. It even works with the oddball Dan Wesson revolver!
Because of the different ways in which these brands unlatch their cylinders, you can find reload techniques that will work well with one but require modification (and a mind-set change) for use on other guns. The URR works without change; if you own more than one brand of revolver, the URR is tailor made for you.
Let’s take a look at the procedure.
Safety first: Always practice reloading with dummy ammunition, like the primer-less rounds shown here. DO NOT PRACTICE WITH LIVE AMMUNITION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Save the live rounds for the actual shooting application on the range!
The basis of the URR is a common, large-muscle-group motor movement, one you’ve no doubt done many times in your life. Pretend you’re holding a basketball in your hands, left hand on the bottom and right hand on the top. How do you reverse the position of your hands without removing them from the ball?
Simple - you just rotate your wrists and let the ball rotate in your hands. It’s a simple, gross motor movement primarily involving the large muscles of the forearm. This action is the basis of the Universal Revolver Reload.
The URR uses the weak (left) hand to simply hold the gun, while the more dextrous strong hand performs the tasks that require fine motor control. There are those who suggest that it’s more efficient to keep the revolver in the shooting hand while reloading, but they ignore the real effects of the body’s natural reactions in a lethal encounter.
If you’re like most people you have a strong hand and a weak hand. Your weak hand is probably significantly less able to do precise work than your strong hand. Even those whose hands are very close in ability find that when they need the precision, they use their strong hand. We know that fine motor control degrades under stress, and asking your weak hand to do a fine task under such conditions is probably not the best way to get it done efficiently. A reload technique that has the strongest, most experienced hand relegated to merely cradling the empty gun while delegating the most delicate parts of the operation to the hand least suited to doing them is probably not a recipe for success!
This is why the URR has the weak hand doing the simple tasks and the strong hand doing the complex ones.
Remember to let the gun do the work by rotating into your hands. You don’t have to consciously search for the release catch or forcibly push the cylinder open or stick your fingers into the frame window. The natural movement of the gun in your hands will do that for you.
Speedloader technique
A speedloader is the most efficient way to recharge your revolver, but poor technique can slow the reload significantly.
I recommend that you carry only four rounds in your strips, starting at the tab end and loading two rounds, a space, and two more rounds, with the leftover space at the other end. This gives you a handling tab at each end and one in the middle.
Once the strip has been retrieved, insert two rounds into adjacent chambers and ‘peel’ the strip off the case heads, allowing them to drop into the cylinder.
SpeedStrip technique
The SpeedStrip (and the other similar products) are convenient to carry, but slower and more dependent on fine motor skills in use. To compensate I have a specific way of configuring and using them.
Now drop the strip and close the cylinder. Back in business!
Controversy?
There is an argument made for changing the SpeedStrip reload technique so that the left hand does the actual recharge of the cylinder. The premise is that it’s faster to load two rounds from a strip and immediately start shooting again, and using the left hand to do this allows you to retain the unused ammunition for the next reload. Taken at its face this appears to be a valid argument.
As the rounds enter the chambers, release them by whatever method your speedloader brand requires. If you’re using a Safariland or SL Variant, simply push the body of the speedloader toward the cylinder and the rounds will release.
My position goes back to the body’s natural reactions – the reduction in blood flow to the extremities, which makes our hands weaker, less flexible, and with less tactile sensation. Asking the weak hand, the one least suited to performing a fine motor skill, to do so under those conditions and with the least efficient tool is not ideal.
Yes, it’s slightly faster to load two rounds and get back in the fight. If that’s what you need to do, load two rounds and drop the strip. Of course you’re now left with only two rounds in the gun and the rest of your spare ammo on the ground. The solution?
Carry two strips! Two are as easy to carry as one and give you double the ammo load. In my mind it makes no sense to sacrifice overall efficiency to accommodate one minor occurrence that’s easily dealt with in other ways. That’s why I continue to advocate for reloading with the strong hand, no matter how momentarily fashionable other techniques may be.
Left-handed defensive reload
Most of my left-handed students have found the following to be workable. Like the right-handed URR, it uses the most experienced hand to do the important tasks and leaves the weak hand holding the gun. As noted, I believe this is the rational way to do things.
You’ll notice the commonalities with the Universal Revolver Reload: using large muscle groups to the greatest degree, using the most agile hand to do the critical job of charging the cylinder, and letting the gun do the work wherever possible. Like the URR, this method is designed to avoid the critical stall points in the reload process and make the reload more efficient in critical situations.
Carrying ammunition in a pocket, either with a speedloader or a Speed Strip, can wear bullet noses and cause hollowpoints to close, making them ineffective.
Ammunition carriers
Speedloaders, SpeedStrips, and other ammunition carry/reload products all have pluses and minuses. Some are easier to carry while others are more efficient to use. I’ve found uses for all of them.
The speedloader
The speedloader is distinguished by its shape: it is cylindrical (or nearly so), so that the pattern of the rounds that it carries matches the cylinder it fits. The speedloader holds a full charge of ammunition for the cylinder, and inserts all of the rounds at one time into their chambers. There is some method of retaining the rounds in the loader that can be released or defeated so that the rounds are free to drop completely into their chambers.
The origin of the speedloader is still a bit murky. The earliest speedloaders that were workable (actually produced and sold) came to market in the first decade of the twentieth century. Originally made for the innovative Webley break-top revolvers, the Prideaux and Watson speedloaders appear to be the first of the modern loading devices.
Despite their long history, speedloaders didn’t come into widespread use until American police agencies started