Why do guns reload differently when they are completely out of ammo?
In: Engineering
It’s the nature of the design. Most contemporary firearms either have a slide that locks back after the last round has been fired or a bolt that locks back for the same reason.
The magazine for each firearm can be uniquely different because of the specific bullet that the gun fires. For example, most modern sporting rifles have a slight current in their magazines (depending on capacity) to ensure reliable cartridge feeding into the firearm. The magazine is generally regarded as the weakest point of a firearm prone to be the most likely part that fails in the event of a failure.
Ergonomics also comes into play in how a firearm is reloaded. Some gun designs are more ergonomic than others. More contemporary guns tend to be more ergonomic and facilitate a faster reload speed for the average shooter.
Automatic and semi-automatic weapons will extract a round out of the magazine and chamber it, readying it for being fired the next time. If there is no round in the magazine then they would be closing the chamber while empty which isn’t helpful. Instead they can be designed to lock open until the user inserts a new magazine where a round can again be chambered.
If they didn’t do this then when the new magazine is inserted the user would need to pull a slide or lever against a spring to chamber the first round. The automatic locking action stores the energy from the previous round saving that effort and time of the user.
This is a function on some automatic and semi-automatic weapons. After you fire the gun will automatically eject the empty cartridge and reload a new cartridge from the magazine. However if the magazine is empty closing the action would do nothing. In fact it would just make it harder to reload as after you replace the magazine you then have to cycle the gun manually to reload the next cartridge. So it is common for guns to detect if the magazine is empty and then stop the automatic reload cycle before loading a cartridge from the empty magazine. When you replace the magazine the gun will either automatically or with a simple button press continue the reloading process. This shortens the time you need to reload a magazine when you are empty. An added benefit is that it is much easier to see that you are out of cartridges in the magazine.
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