With all the buzz about speed loaders going on out there around models like a UpLULA Loader, you may have been wondering to yourself if they work or if it’s worth it for you to get yourself one to make the shooting easier on yourself and maybe more enjoyable. We’ll take a look at a few scenarios before settling on an answer, as a UpLULA loader, just like other types of speedloaders, is most useful under certain circumstances.
Plinkers and Target Shooters
If you just go to the range to send a few rounds downrange to get your scope sighted in or iron sights adjusted, then a speedloader may not be for you. That also applies to shooters whose firearms feature tube mags or, well, anything other than a spring-actuated or box mag, really.
Many plinksters and target shooters go to the range with the express purpose of enjoying the time spent there burning brass. There is something very therapeutic about the enjoyment of plinking with a .22, dusting stationary clays or rows of spent shotshells. It’s fun, enjoyable, and helps you tailor very fine marksmanship skills with a cost-effective cartridge. In reality, it isn’t just fun, it can make you a better shooter in so many ways.
Even if you go target shooting recreationally with a pistol or a sporting rifle with larger and more expensive cartridges, you can still spend hours (and many brass cases) of fun punching paper or spinner targets or what have you. A UpLULA loader might be a very valuable asset to target shooters and plinksters alike, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, we’ll take a look at another category of shooters that a speedloader might benefit from before we dive into the benefits of a speedloader.
Competition Shooters
not all competition shooters are going to have an express need or use for a speedloader. Long-range shooters using lever guns and bolt action rifles don’t have much use for them, nor do shooters of muzzleloaders. You probably get the picture.
But let’s consider the circumstances under which other competition shooters operate. Think about three gun competitions, where a shooter won’t just have several firearms on him or her at once (see: three gun) but he or she will carry several loaded mags on the person for the duration of the course.
Three gun shooters and some other competition shooters are often working with semi-automatic platforms that enable them to fire off multiple rounds in succession, especially if time is a consideration in the scoring of the competition.
Think about a situation in which the shooter carries multiple mags that get emptied through the course of a matter of seconds. All of the important work of loading gets burned off in a mere fraction of the time that it took to load the mags. Proficient shooters can accurately and efficiently empty their magazines very quickly, which makes it necessary to carry several on them. On its surface, it might not appear that target shooters and plinksters who go to the range for fun have too much in common, circumstantially, with competition shooters, but in fact, they do.
The Middle Ground
What do competition shoters have in common with plinksters and casual target shooters, especially those who can make a whole day of range related activities? Obviously they both enjoy the shooting sports, but it goes a little bit deeper than this.
Long-range shooters and clay shooters partake in the shooting sports too, but for the most part, a UpLULA Loader wasn’t designed with these shooters in mind - it was designed for pistols, after all.
The common factor is the need to load a large volume of magazines, sometimes in a short window of time. Even if a target shooter spends several hours to go through a thousand rounds, that’s still a thousand rounds that will need to have been loading into a mag or a set of mags before they could be useful.
The point is, if you’re involved in one of the shooting sports where you’ll be going through a high volume of rounds, especially in a short period of time, then a speedloader like a UpLULA loader might be the ticket to make your shooting more enjoyable and more effective. No one wants to shoot for an hour if 45 minutes are spent loading magazines and only 15 minutes are spent shooting.
Great for When It’s Cold
Features of a specific UpLULA loader aside, speedloaders can be great for when it’s cold out even if the previous conditions of high volume shooting don’t apply to you. If you’ve ever been to the range on a day where the sun just won’t cooperate, you may know what we’re talking about firsthand.
Let’s say you’re an AR shooter and your rifle is chambered in .223 Remington. Those rounds are relatively easy enough to handle when you’re warm and the conditions cooperate. Change that up a little and let’s drop the temperature to about 10 degrees.
Suddenly, handling those rounds with bare hands isn’t quite as manageable as it once was. Add gloves or mittens to the mix and you’ve made it a whole lot harder to manipulate those rounds. It’s easy enough to mess with 12 gauge shells if you’re wearing gloves or mittens, but .223 rounds, not so much. Even with those pop-top mittens that are designed to keep your hands warm until your ready to shoot it can be tough. The point is not to expose your hands so the dexterity remains until it’s time to shoot. If you bleed off all of your warmth loading the mag before you even line up your sights then your fingers will be frozen.
That’s all good and well with a cartridge as small as a .223 or a .556. Let’s up the ante a bit. Every plinkster has a .22 in his arsenal or at least has used one. The same conditions apply, 10 degrees and we’ll even add in a brisk wind. Handling .22LR cartridges with cold, stiff fingers or gloves is a nightmare. You might as well be trying to stuff pills into the mag or thread a needle. The little cartridges are tough enough to manipulate when conditions favor the occasion. Drop the temps and make the weather worse and it will be such a pain you might as well wait for spring - or you could check out a speedloader like a UpLULA loader to make it easier - but more on that shortly.
The fact is that conditions don’t need to be limited to the temperature. If it’s raining or snowing that can make brass a lot more slippery and difficult to handle. On top of that, you shouldn’t be loading wet ammo into a firearm anyway, so the less time that it’s exposed the better. A speedloader can minimize the time that ammo is exposed to the environment, which can be especially helpful at an outdoor range, particularly one without an overhang or shelter.
Great for The Sheer Convenience
By the same token that a speedloader will make it easier for you to manage adverse environmental conditions, they will just plain save you time whenever you are doing a lot of shooting.
Think about how long it takes to empty the magazine from a semi-automatic pistol or rifl
of the fact that it will save you time and enhance your enjoyment at the range. Some speedloaders are designed to load rounds in a way that does not wear the magazine feed lips, which can occur when you are manually loading the rounds yourself.
Loading the rounds singly into a stacked magazine can increase the wear on the magazine feed lips which will shorten the usable lifespan of the magazine, and we don’t need to waste breath telling you what will happen when your mag won’t feed. You already know.
The point is, you can avoid that by using an UpLULA loader which has been specially created to minimize wear to magazines as part of its design. With a speedloader like a UpLULA you can load faster, more efficiently, experience less pain and frustration and even extend the life of your magazines. There are some good reasons for you to invest in a speedloader. All you need to do is find one that meets your needs as a shooter.
Check Out Some of Our Speedloaders
Consider a model like the MagLULA UpLULA Universal Pistol Magazine Loader we offer right here on our site - the one at that link is the black version, though we offer many more. This particular loader is designed to single-handedly manage a suite of pistol calibers including but not limited to 9mm Luger, .357 Sig, 10mm, and .45 ACP, and it also loads most .380ACP. It is also compatible with a range of magazines - you can check the specifications at the link to see if that magazine works with your pistol. It can handle single and double stack mags, including the 1911 mags of all manufacturers. It’s also pocket-sized so you can easily bring it with you to the range and requires no inserts, spacers or adjustments - one size fits all. Best of all, this model can increase your loading rate significantly, up to one round per second. You can also pick up a MagLULA .22LR-380 BabyUpLULA magazine loader and unloader if you shoot smaller rounds like some rimfires.
If you are a rifle shooter, we offer plenty of mag loaders including models from MagLULA designed to handle the larger calibers that rifles fire. As we spoke earlier in this article about the rapid rate of fire that some shooters might practice and the need for ready mags, you might want to consider some of our loaders for rifle rounds.
Give Us A Call
Whether you pick up a UpLULA loader for your high volume pistol shooting or some other speedloader to handle another caliber that you use more frequently, you can shop our site with confidence. We have one of the most comprehensive inventories for shooting accessories that you’ll find on the web. Take a look through our collection to find what’s right for you after you’ve decided which style of speedloader suits you best. We offer all of the shooting supplies you could need and plenty of accessories, whether you need a case for bringing your pistol to the range, cleaner for when you get home, and just about everything in between.
Better yet, contact us and let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find it. You can easily reach us at sales@whiteknightsupply.com and we’d be glad to help you. One more thing - while you’re shopping, remember, shipping from White Knight Supply isn’t just fast, it’s free!