The Hill has the story. It’s the magazine ban I think we’re going to have the toughest time with, because I see a lot of reasonable people on the center-right suggesting that maybe that’s reasonable, and we’ll have to give. Granted, I don’t think they are helping, but it’s out there and has to be dealt with. The arguments are thus:
- Criminals will have no difficulty obtaining magazines of any capacity on the black market. There are too many of them out there already, and it will have zero impact on crime or gun violence.
- I agree with John Richardson that these are not “high-capacity.” My Glock was designed to hold 15 rounds. That’s the standard capacity. What McCarthy and DeGette are proposing is a ban on all but reduced capacity magazines. I call it the magazine ban. “High-capacity,” is just allowing the anti-gun people to set the agenda with inflammatory terminology.
- Magazine size is not a critical factor in mass shootings. Most mass shooters plan their assault, bring multiple firearms, and have plenty of time for magazine changes. The shooter in Newtown had a full 20 minutes before the police response. In that amount of time, it matters little if you change a ten round magazine 6 times or a 30 round magazine twice. It would also encourage mass shooters to, at best, substitute deadlier weapons like shotguns.
- Nearly all pistols and rifles today contain more than 10 rounds, and they are overwhelmingly chosen for self defense. Why? Same reason police choose them. For someone being attacked, who doesn’t get to choose the time and manner of his act of self-defense, having more rounds in a magazine stacks the deck in the defenders favor. Magazine capacity is much less meaningful to attackers, who get to choose and plane when and where they attack. If we’re reduced to 10 rounds, I would carry a larger caliber pistol and a magazine change, whereas now I just carry the magazine in the pistol most of the time.
- There are too many magazines out there for meaningful regulation. They are not serial numbered or carefully tracked. The potential to land good people in jail is very high with restrictive laws.
A lot of people who are not shooters are treating this like it’s no big deal. Personally, it’s worse, I think, and affects more gun owners than a straight-up renewal of the federal assault weapons ban. If you communicate with lawmakers on this issue, and you should, feel free to use some of these arguments. They need to understand that magazines which hold more than 10 rounds are the norm these days, rather than the exception. When most people think “high-capacity” they think extended magazines like the Tucson nutjob used (which caused his gun to jam because they are unwieldy) and that the Aurora shooter used (which caused his gun to jam, because the drum mags for ARs are jam-o-matics).
We have a lot of work to do on the magazine issue. Most people, at this point, even pundits and elites, know the “assault weapons” issue is a crock of shit. The magazine issue is a different story.
UPDATE: Thanks to the reader who shared this piece by Massad Ayoob.
If the 10 rnd ban gets passed the next thing will be “why the hell does anyone NEED 6 ten rnd mags?! Then we’ll have a mag possesion ban gettin pushed by the rats! That is why I won’t guve these evil bastards 1”.
Thank you for the good talking points on the magazine ban. I think the two biggest points is that it affects popular handguns (Glocks, etc) and that having more rounds because you don’t get to choose the time and place of an attack is really powerful.
So what do you think That One in the WH,and his fellow travelers,will do if hundreds of thousands of honest,taxpaying,voting legal guns owner refuse to comply. The “gun collectors” will have to go down each and every street and into each and every house. If guns have been hidden,the search will get more complicated. Or,we can do as those girleymen in England did,and meekly hand over everything. If we did that we could no longer call ourselves American Citizens and we will be just like those English serfs.
They’ll arrest you as they find you. Have a heart attack and call 911? Police come into the house and see a magazine? Felony rap. On the way to the range? Pulled over? Felony rap. Get into a bad relationship situation and wifey or girlfriend blab to the cops about your magazine? Felony rap.
It’s not going to be door to door, they’ll get us one by one, making examples of the people they catch. You’ll be compelled by your common sense of decency and law abiding nature to turn them in, so it won’t be you. Slowly the culture’s defiance will be worn down.
This is why we can’t let it come to pass.
That’s only if you play the game by their rules.
And under your scenario, how long before someone figures they’ve now got nothing to lose and starts ventilating LEO’s?
Massad Ayoob’s got a great piece on why “laymen” need standard-capacity mags. Great knowledge to (figuratively) arm ourselves with in the coming debate.
Sebastian – what should one do if one lives in Rep. McCarthy’s district? Is it still worth reaching out to her office?
Yeah. Let her know you’re out there.
It will possibly irritate her, but she’s otherwise so committed to this cause I wonder what good “letting her know you’re out there” will do? I.e. I’d expect more utility in contacting the office of Schumer, except of course that your voice is comparatively smaller in preposition in such a populous state.
Let’s not forget to leverage David Gregory as well. He gave us a lot of ammunition with which to fight a magazine ban.
Hmmm; assuming nothing ever happens to him, this blatant inaction by the Federal government provides us, depending on your system for this sort of thing, little to no moral obligation to follow any possession restrictions in new Federal laws WRT magazines.
Yup, and there are a great many more ways we can use his situation to our advantage. His defenders have even resorted to using our talking points, ie. what he did was harmless, and it’s wrong to send someone to jail for a harmless act.
Just a point about the Aurora Colorado shooting. I have looked into the claims that the shooter used a drum magazine during his attack and can find NOTHING that substantiates the claim other then the official claim he did. There is only a single crime scene photo publicly out there that I am aware of and it is of the AR rifle lying on the sidewalk outside the emergency exit door, surrounded by crime scene markers and quite clearly loaded with a standard 30 round box magazine. I called the Aurora PD spokesperson about this in my capacity as an independent journalist and got nothing more then essentially a ” no comment ” brush off. Just saying………….
The point that needs to be hammered as well is the fact that hands, fists, and feet, as well as the group of bats, blunt objects, and hammers kill more people annually in homicides than any type of rifle (hunting and modern sporting rifles included).
The bigger fight is within the states. IL was beaten back (for now) but NY is proposing confiscation legislation and the rumor from Maryland is likely to be as bad as these two Brady Bunch bastions.
That blunt objects are used to kill more people in the US than rifles is a losing argument; it’s close to the “This Obama sin is OK because Bush did it!” that we see the Left employ all the time.
If you want to go this way, perhaps instead point out we’re a violent people (non-gun murder rate about the total for the U.K.) and that if by magic one tool is removed others will replace them. But even then I think it’ll be a hard slog, there’s a reason rifles are special.
I will refuse to comply with any magazine ban. End of discussion. I will also not hand over my weapon or my magazines while I still draw breath.
On an entirely unrelated tangent, that the Mexican cartels are an interesting topic, and how they operate with regards to enforcement personal and lower ranking government stooges is simply fascinating. Horrifying, but fascinating. Don’t know for the life of me why my mind drifted in that direction. Sorry for the off-topic rambling.