There are many, many ways to carry a readily available handgun for personal protection. There are just as many ways today to carry extra ammunition including speedstrips and speedloaders for revolvers and spare magazines for your EDC semi-auto. However, this has not always been the case and that fact led to the rise of a tactic known as the New York Reload.
What is it?
To put it country-simple, the New York Reload is a second (or third, or fourth) loaded handgun, ready to fire as soon as it is presented. If the first handgun is empty, jammed, or stripped away, the second one can be rotated forward like a shark’s teeth and brought into action. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a solid tactic with a solid history.
Origins of the NYR
Gunslingers, soldiers, law officers, and those who just wanted to make it home alive have long carried multiple weapons and trained to transition back and forth between them. Back in the 1970s, the hardest hitting unit on the streets of New York was the New York Police Department’s Street Crime Unit. Better known as SCU, the 60 or so members of the unit used advanced tactics for the first time including disguised officers trolling for muggers, and plainclothes intelligence units covertly shadowing suspects. The officers of this unit made as many as 8,000 arrests per year in some of the most dangerous circumstances imaginable.
The standard issue firearm of the day was the Smith & Wesson Model 10 for uniformed officers and J-frame snubbies for detectives. With modern revolver speedloaders not being common issue until the end of the decade, most officers carried their reloads in loops or dump pouches. This made reloading a revolver in a high stress situation a very slow, dicey, and by no means guaranteed proposition. If the officer was in plain clothes and carrying loose rounds in their pocket, the prospect of a reload was even more daunting.
The simple answer of course was just carry to multiple revolvers. A second handgun cold be produced and fired from a holster in 2-seconds or less by a trained shooter. This was much faster than kicking open the cylinder of a Smith K-frame, ejecting six spent rounds, and reloading six fresh ones from your pocket or belt one at a time. Hence, the New York Reload was born
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