Bringing the pistol close to the face.

Bringing the pistol close to the face. 

If you run out of ammunition, you want to reload your pistol.  This is simple logic.  There are various ways to accomplish this task but they all require that you hold the pistol somewhere while you manipulate your spare ammunition in some fashion.  Since it’s a good idea in a fight to keep your problem in view, most martial trainers teach a reload that keeps the pistol in or near the line of sight during manipulations.  Some trainers recommend bringing the pistol rather close to the face while reloading but I disagree with this.  I would prefer to keep the pistol at or near arm’s length.    

Take a 3X5” card in each hand.  Hold one at arm’s length and bring the other about halfway toward your face.  If you compare them you’ll see that the closer card appears about twice as long as the farther.  However, the apparent surface area has increased four times over the farther card.  The same is true of your pistol.  If you bring your pistol halfway toward your face, you are covering up four times as much of your visual field as if you were to hold it at arm’s length.  If you bring it in closer, the problem gets worse.  Decrease the distance to one third and you’ve increased the visual blockage by a factor of nine. 

There’s another problem with the way our eyes focus.  Take a look at the adjustable objective on a target scope.  The closer ranges require more movement of the objective to bring them into focus.  As the range increases, it requires less movement of the objective to cover more range.  Eventually, you hit the infinity mark and the scope will essentially focused from that point out to infinity without any further adjustment of the objective.  Your eyes work the same way. 

As you focus on closer objects, you lose depth of field with the effect getting proportionally worse the closer you get.  Focus on your finger very close to your face.  Without changing that focus, try to make out objects at a distance.  Now, slowly move your finger away from your eye but maintain your focus on the finger.  See how much clearer the distant objects get as you move your finger.  At arm’s length it is much easier to focus on both near and far objects than it is just two feet closer to your eye. 

Ideally, of course, you’ll train until you don’t have to look at your weapon to reload it.  After all, you may have to do it in the dark.  But if something hangs up during a reload, it’s very likely you’ll look at your pistol.