I've found that if you initiate a reload, switch weapons, then switch back to the original weapon, it skips a reload. Is this a glitch, and is it even faster than just reloading normally?

its a glitch and much faster that reloading. as long as you leave one bullet as well, you skip the pullout animation which is really efficient for speedruns.

its a bug that became a feature it has been in the gaem for a year with the devs knowing of its existance also when i was mod in their discord server i suggested some code to fix it but htye just ignored it so yea its a bug but its fr a feature by now as its a year in the game and they never fixed it