Speed loaders should be considered as essential for revolvers as magazines are for autoloaders for those who carry revolvers as their primary street, and especially field carry weapon.
A lot of people look at using speed loaders for large cartridges as some sort of joke, when in fact, the larger the cartridge, the more you NEED to have the reload in a speed loader!
I have four quality speed loaders for my S&W M500 4 inch. They make loading much faster and more sure than handling the big shells the old fashioned way. With such large cartridges you can't just hold them all in your hand the way people often to with 38s and 357s, because they're just too big. So that means grabbing them two by two, then one to be sure - or, using a speed loader and plopping all five in at once!
What is even better are Moon clips. Back when the only revolvers that used Moon clips were considered odd ducks, like the M25 in 45 ACP, but now, more and more revolvers are coming from the factory set up for Moon clips and it makes sense, as they are even faster to employ and make the gun more reliable during the reload! With "clips" you drop the entire "bloc" of rounds in, bang away until empty, open the cylinder, muzzle up and the mass of all the shells connected by the Moon clip makes them usually drop free with little to no ejector deployment. Also, for those less skilled in the art of the wheel gun who often point the thing muzzle DOWN when preparing to eject empties, having all the shells connected prevents a botched ejection where the cases are lifted to the extent of the ejector, and one or more teeter out, then drop right back in, UNDER the ejector star! That's a death sentence on the street, and possibly in the field as well. Moon clips prevent it.
As I see it "speed strips" are last century tech and require precision manual dexterity right when the normal human fight or flight response is PREVENTING just such motor coordination.
Speed loaders are much better because they hold all the rounds in the proper circle to drop right in, but then require a twist, or a push to release - if it can be bobbled under stress, it HAS been, and will be again.
Moon clips are as good as it gets for revolvers. They are more compact that speed loaders, and require the least fine motor coordination of all - get the cylinder open and clear, then drop them in. Clearly ammo with a rounded nose profile is better.
While few people can perform a speed reload as fast and as sure as Jerry Miculek, the take-away is that EVERYONE can do a speed reload with Moon clips faster and better than they can with any other device, and LIGHT YEARS faster than single-loading.
To paraphrase the "great" gun philosopher Massad Ayoob who made famous the statement, "No matter how well you can shoot a 44 magnum, you will shoot a 9mm faster and better..." (not a true word for word quote, but close enough to use quotes in an informal post where we aren't listing peer reviewed resource material). "No matter how fast you can reload using any other method, you will ALWAYS do so faster and better with Moon clips!"
Even if your gun did not come with Moons, you can have the cylinder and ejector star machined by TK Customs (and I'm sure others) for a very reasonable cost. If my M25-15 was high on my list for field carry I'd have it done.
Last edited by Bill Lear; 06-01-2019 at 11:21 PM.
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