A proactive reload is when you replace the partially empty magazine in your pistol with a full magazine. This would occur at some point in a fight where the initial threats are no longer extant and you see no other possible threats, or if you have reached some position where you are shielded from incoming fire from the bad guys. The proactive reload process was considered an absolute rule for years, since it was thought that you just wouldn’t run a gun out of ammunition. You would keep track of the shots fired so you could reload before you needed to do so, and there would really be no need to use all of your ammunition unless you happened to be using some caliber of ammunition that would not do the job in the first place.

If that is true, then we can look at some possible outcomes based on those ideas. If we grasp the highly revered view that the 45 ACP cartridge is at least twice as powerful as the smaller 9mm Luger cartridge, then it should only take half as many shots with the 45 to stop a threat. The most common 45 ACP pistol holds a total of nine rounds. One of the most common 9mm pistols holds 16 rounds. You have one or the other and three threats. Many training venues teach firing two shots into each target. It’s a 45, so two should easily do it, leaving three rounds in the pistol. You’ve got enough for a spare bad guy or one head shot into each that you already engaged – but you can’t do that because the gun would be empty, and you’re taught not to run the gun dry. Using the 9mm, which (theoretically) is only half as powerful, we’ll decide to hit each threat four times. That’s 12 outbound, leaving four more, enough for one extra bad guy, putting yourself in the same position. It’s time for a proactive reload.

That sounds so easy I have almost convinced myself it’s true. The problem comes when life doesn’t quite work out like you anticipated. In order to do a proactive reload, the situation you’re in must pose minimal or no threat to you. Otherwise you’ll be dumping partially full magazines on the ground and trying to get a full magazine in the gun while some new threat or one of the ventilated threats decides to come back to life. It also depends on you to keep track of rounds expended. Maybe you can do that in a fight. If so, you’re quite a rare individual. For the rest of us, when a fight starts, we’ll shoot until the pistol isn’t going bang anymore and then doing whatever it takes to get that gun back in the fight. If the first threat doesn’t fall down after two hits, do you stop and watch? Note that the other two won’t be standing there just watching you.

Winning a fight means literally pouring fire into all the bad guys. Keep moving and keep shooting. You may go through a couple of magazines just winning the fight. Then, after you are sure you’ve won and you’ve checked behind you, go ahead and get a full magazine into your gun. If you’re practice consists of standing in one place, drawing, aiming and putting two shots into the villain target and then assessing damage, you may well end up damaged yourself. First, win the fight. Move and shoot a lot. You are fighting, not shooting at a target. Once you find that you’re the one not dead, get your gun full of ammunition – that’s a good time for a proactive reload – and keep looking around. Threats tend to have friends.