About Extra Ammo

How many rounds do you carry? A lot of officers I know feel pretty safe with their high capacity autos and a couple of extra mags on the belt. Let's face it, on the surface it would seem like a really bad day to burn through 3 fully loaded Glock 17 mags, 51 rounds.  It has become popular these days to have 3 pistol mags, even better if you can do it. How about the long gun? A couple of 30 round mags, even down loaded by a few rounds, that is well over 50 rounds of high quality firepower. 

A quick search on the web will easily reveal countless situations where LEs have faced long lasting shootouts.  The recent incident in Stockton, CA is a good example.  Thankfully, facing gang members armed with AKs with extra mags taped to their bodies is not a common thing, but it happened. I am sure none of those officers started their normal day shift thinking they would face a violent 45 minute ordeal ending in hundreds of rounds exchanged, 15 police vehicles knocked out by gunfire including an armored SWAT unit, but it happened. 

I recently purchased a smaller bag from Maxpedition to carry with me on patrol, I'll be putting up a quick show and tell on it soon. It is much smaller than my current bag for convenience sake, hopefully allowing me to keep it handy. 

I don't think carrying extra ammo means throwing a box or 2 in your BOB or wherever, it's not going to work like that. You need to have loaded mags, ready to go, easy to carry and completely accessible from the drivers seat.  The bag or other method you choose to carry these items needs to be easy to manage, move with, tested and practiced with. 

Just a thought.