Twice in my life I’ve been faced with an injury that seriously affected concealed carry. In the first, a careless moment with a jointer-planer required a skin graft and two surgeries on my right index and trigger finger. At the time I was still employed in federal law enforcement. I had previously developed my weak hand shooting skills and had no difficulty qualifying, reloading or carrying weak-handed once the dressing was removed.. This lasted about two months as I recall. During the month or so my right hand was wrapped, reloading would have been difficult but not impossible as my index and middle fingers were wrapped together. The revolver proved to be an easy gun with which to accommodate a hand injury provided I didn’t waste the first six rounds.

Well, on April 1st, and lending credence to my wife’s assertion that my brains are up my backside, I managed to fall down an entire flight of stairs at my son’s new home in North Carolina, scrambling my alleged brains and breaking my left clavicle or collarbone, requiring an ambulance ride to the hospital. The damage would have been greater had the staircase not been carpeted.

I had not qualified under HR 218, therefore, I could not carry a handgun while visiting NC. Once I realized I had survived the tumble, my next realization was that I had virtually no use of my left arm. The pain was too great and I didn’t need a semi-auto in my hands to know that racking the slide by any conventional means was out of the question. It would be some time before I could replenish a magazine or rack a slide.

There are a number of techniques for single-handedly racking the slide including against the holster itself. Of course, we don’t think about these things in advance. While single-stack handguns have finally returned to their rightful place in concealed carry and most gun battles are resolved in about four rounds, a spare magazine is still needed to replace a lost or dropped magazine or perhaps to clear a stoppage.

I would suggest that you try some one-handed reloading drills with your EDC using dummy ammunition just to prove to yourself that you can do it if needed. I checked on you tube and a number of different techniques are covered. These drills assume you were whole at the outset and were wounded in an exchange of gunfire. A handicap is a handicap, whether you suddenly acquired it or brought it with you.

One-handed reloading is sometimes taught in police training as a collateral issue but I’m not aware of any particular method being widely taught in the law enforcement community. Some training or tactical concepts are named for the instructors who pioneered them such as the Lindell Method or Tueller Principle. There are no named, one-handed reloading drills I'm aware of. Having the skill adds to your resourcefulness as well as your options when things don’t go as planned and the angel of bad luck has found you.