[bitwize]

Reloading typically involves disengaging and removing the empty magazine, sliding in a fresh magazine, and then pulling back on the gun's slide to chamber a round.

If you shoot real guns a lot, it's probably second nature. But it's a fairly involved motor process that's cumbersome to implement in VR. Furthermore, different guns in FPS games can have different (often creative) reload animations; Reaper from Overwatch for instance, simply discards his twin short-barrel shotguns and pulls out two new ones. Will these different reload animations necessitate different VR gestures?

Going for realism in VR or any video game is fraught with these kinds of problems. "The more you get specific about situations analogous to reality, the more you have to stipulate on." --Egoraptor

(There's a YouTube channel of a guy who makes different "reload animations" of himself wielding various objects (smoke detectors, caulk guns, toasters, Furbies, etc.) as "guns" with a different, unique way of reloading each: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHi-xECyGTU )