This is more geared to my fellow LEO brethren but curious what everyone thinks. The old saying in law enforcement has always been the only two times you can carry too much ammo was if you were drowning or on fire. The "standard" for patrol was usually two spare mags on your duty belt or kit. A few years ago, it went to to three. I too carry three spare mags. I feel it's super adequate. Plenty enough to fight back to my long gun if need be. Side note, I've been carry a gun for a living for over 30 years and currently part of a cadre of firearms instructors for a large fed agency. As of late, I'm seeing guys starting to run 6, yes six, mags on their kit or belt. It's a topic of discussion and debate among the instructor cadre. Just for clarification, 6 factory high cap mags puts you at 148 rounds on your person. Thoughts?

If you want to carry 6 hi-cap mags, why not? As an "old guy", I carried 2 on my duty belt. With everything else, the belt weighed about 25 lbs. and was a large stress on my hips.

I say "carry as many as you can handle, but train with all on your belt so you can find them when it counts!"

Not an LEO, but here goes anyway:

My first thought was along the lines of the on fire or drowning comment. My second thought was what kind of back & knee issues are guys having? I could see excess weight being a negative from a long term health standpoint.

Beyond that, I would think the officer’s duties and duty station would make a difference. For the officer that works in a generally “safe” area, rarely does more than write traffic tickets to folks that don’t even complain seriously, three spares may be more than plenty. For the officers with more “sporty” assignments, operating in areas where one might be questioning the wisdom of going “outside the wire” in anything less than a bearcat, six may not feel like enough. I’d guess one’s confidence in their shot placement might have a bearing also.

This will be an interesting one to watch.

With my 3 spare mags plus the one in the weapon, I have a total of 69 rounds on me while on duty.

In any reasonable law enforcement scenario, 69 rounds will be more than enough.

6x mags is firmly in excessive territory, and I struggle to envision any LE scenario in which an officer would be expending 100+ rounds in one sitting. Suppressing fire isn't a thing in law enforcement, and you're not John Wick mowing your way through an entire city's worth of dozens of nameless mooks.


In fact, I spent the majority of my career carrying 3x mags total, for 52 total rounds.

I only recently added the extra spare magazine, because I started using a different belt setup with open top mag pouches but I realize that there's the potential for those mags to be lost. So since I also now have plenty of space on my belt, with a lot of the gear moved up on an external carrier, I added a third covered magazine on my belt just for worst case scenario purposes (like rolling down an embankment and losing my two open top mags).

We're talking pistol mags right? Just on their belt-line (1st line) or, on a chest-rig also?

There was a saying amongst patrol officers who had SWAT/EMS/specialist experience, that your pistol is simply there until you need to get to your rifle.

6 pistol mags is quite a lot, considering all the other items a LEO needs to carry for a standard patrol, they'll need to find a happy medium between necessary and excessive. Get into a foot pursuit or, hand-2-hand scenario and all that weight becomes a penalty. I get the comfort of having a lot of ammo but there's a lot of other items needed to do the job and most OIS end within a single-mag change.

Im guessing it’s coming from competition? I think 6 is required in USPSA, for production…. (Not sure if it’s required, but it’s considered “courteous” in steel challenge as well.)

I’m guessing the instructors are wearing their competition rigs - or are they actually suggesting 6 mags?

I think I misread - phone screens seem to be shrinking.

Did you mean the students are showing up with 6?

That seems bizarre, unless they are aping competitors.

If anything, 2 spares and 2 sidearms seems like a better use of weight and space.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by cajunmuscle:
Yeppers….. not really students as these agents are post academy and on the job. It’s a combo of on their kit and on their battle belt. Some all 5-6 on their kit. I’ve never see more than 3 on the actual belt. These dudes are def not competition shooters. It’s funny, I see a correlation with more mags = less physically fit. Hell you do do, just something I’ve noticed over the last year or two when they show up to qual/ train. We r lucky as we get tons of range time. 4x a year so maybe they are looking at their gear more .

Edit

I carried 5 mags total for my Sig 226 (.357 Sig). 61 rounds total. Before I retired, we switched to the 226 9mm. I carried 3 20 rounders on my belt and a standard in the gun.

In the dark ages of my revolver days, 4X speedloaders in a quad pouch. Once we switched to the .40 P229, I went to 3 magazines on my belt. A couple of extra loaded mags were in my war bag.

The whole fighting to my rifle thing is a nice idea, but unless I know I'm going to a gun call and deploy out of my vehicle with it, I'm not under any aspirations that I'm going to be able to fight my way back to it mid gunfight. If I can, great, but I'm probably going to have to work with what I've got on my belt. For your basic LE patrolman, the handgun is your primary weapon because that's what you're going to have immediately accessible when shit kicks off.

That said, I'm not carrying six handgun mags on duty. That's a lot of weight and vest/belt real-estate, and pretty much guaranteed to give me Sciatica, while the likelihood of actually needing that many rounds ever is so remote as to be almost non-existent. I carry 3 17-rounders on my belt, and another in the gun for a total of 69. Plus 5 more in a J-Frame in my pocket. If I can't get it done with that, I'm probably dead anyway.

All that extra weight puts you at a disadvantage in a foot pursuit, too, although it's great for squishing people after you catch them and put them on the ground. And if you're young and dumb and go in the water after a kid who fell through the ice without first taking all that shit off, you're gonna sink like a rock. Remove your belt, boots, and vest first (which is another good argument for outer carriers). This is not just theory...learn from my mistakes so you don't have to learn from your own, lol.

My gun and mags are still on my belt. For the past year I have been carrying three spares on my belt because the open top mag pouch i got from Zero9 holds three. So four mags + 1 in the chamber of my issued Glock 45, I have 73 rounds (using MecGar 18rd mags)

quote:

Originally posted by Jaycat:
I carried 5 mags total for my Sig 226 (.357 Sig). 61 rounds total. Before I retired, we switched to the 226 9mm. I carried 3 20 rounders on my belt and a standard in the gun.

when I carried a gun for money, This was my thinking, it was total number of rounds not mags.

My last duty gun was a Sig P220, 45 acp. 8+1 with two spare 8 round mags. Prior to that it was a P226 9mm, carried 14+1 with two spare 14 round mags. Before that it was a Beretta 92 FC with 12+1 and two spare 12 round mags. (I have always downloaded my double column mags by one to insure more positive insertion, started doing it back in the 80s with my Hi Power...)

Always carried a 5 shot j frame for a BUG and had a speed strip in a pocket. We had AR-15s with two 20 round mags in a Redi-Mag set up in our cars. Our department had us only load 18 in the AR mags per policy.

Some of the guys carrying P220s went with quad mag pouches, for 4 extra 8 round mags.

quote:

Originally posted by Orive 8:
Some of the guys carrying P220s went with quad mag pouches, for 4 extra 8 round mags.

One of the police departments that uses the regional police academy where I taught is Berryville, Arkansas.

Home of Wilson Combat.

Their duty guns are - you guessed it - Wilson Combat 1911s.

They have dual triple magazine carriers, since they're using single stack 8 round magazines.



Gives them a fighting load of 57 rounds, with a total of 7 mags. About the same as someone with a Glock 17 and two spare mags.


So it's not the carrying of 6 spare mags in and of itself that is excessive... But 148 rounds is well beyond any reasonable law enforcement scenario (and many unreasonable law enforcement scenarios).

Never been in law enforcement, but during my deployment to Iraq I carried 6 total beretta mags. I was one of those guys per MTOE only issued a pistol. I felt comfortable enough with that amount, as every where I went I was pretty much surrounded by my brothers loaded out with M4’s, 249 Saws etc. at first I was issued an M16A4, but with all the other stuff my job required I carry, turned it in after some time.

Cop here.

I have a spare on the belt and two on my vest carrier. I've thought about dumping the second one from the vest. I don't mind if a guy wants to carry three spares, but I've reached the point where I think more about the weight and space. The magazine on the belt is nonnegotiable for me because it's on me when the vest is off for some reason and is consistent with my match belt, training belts, and AIWB holsters.

Can you carry too much? Sure. I work with a guy that at least was carrying two spare 21 round magazines on his vest and two more in his pants pocket. I am certain that the weight and mobility penalties are not worth the tactical wet dream he is "prepared" for.

Not LEO,
but I'd add rooftop-running to swimming and spontaneously combusting.

I started out in patrol with a 1911 and 2 spare 8 round mags, 25 total. It has never been an issue.

Nobody is going this way, but the vast majority of officers would be well served with only 1 spare mag for a high cap pistol, and that is really only for malfunctions (my jobs policy requires 2 in uniform).

I also consider carrying a spare rifle magazine on your belt (when issued a plate carrier with a mag pouch as standard equipment) to be just dumb.