What appears to be the gun-grabbers most winnable argument is as irrational as the rest.
By John Rosenberg
The Hartford
Courant reports
that on April 1, Connecticut legislators reached bipartisan agreement on what
they say could be the “nation’s strongest gun-control bill,” and that easy
passage is expected.
One of the bills provisions:
scary-looking semi-automatic rifles (“assault weapons”) will now need only one
frightening feature (such as a pistol grip or flash suppressor) instead of the
current two to make the banned list. A second: future sales of “high-capacity
magazines” of over 10 rounds will be banned. This is the one element of
the pending legislation that has divided its supporters. The bill does not
impose an outright ban on the newly illicit magazines, allowing current owners
to keep them:
…
if they make an official declaration by January 1 of how many they own and
submit to restrictions on their use. The magazines could only be loaded with 10
or fewer rounds, except in their owners’ homes or at a shooting range, where they
can be fully loaded.
Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy supported
those — including many Sandy Hook parents — who had called for an outright ban:
Simply
banning [the magazines'] sale moving forward would not be an effective
solution.
One Sandy Hook parent — whose son was
murdered — said:
I
think it’s useless to register the magazines. How are you going to register
them? I think it’s stupid. There’s no way to register them, there’s no serial
numbers. … It’s just another law or regulation that’s not going to be
enforceable.
According to Nicole Hockley, the mother
of a six-year-old son who was murdered:
We
learned, the way that no other parents should learn, that the most dangerous,
dangerous part of an assault weapon is the magazine.
Vice President Joe Biden agrees
with this statement. Hockley also claimed to have learned something else, an
argument that has since become a staple of the gun-control argument:
The
shooter carried 10 30-round large-capacity magazines. … We have learned that in
the time it took him to reload in one of the classrooms, 11 children were able
to escape. We ask ourselves every day — every minute — if those magazines had
held 10 rounds, forcing the shooter to reload at least six more times, would
our children be alive today?
The argument that restricting magazine
size will save lives by allowing intended victims to escape or onlookers to
attack the shooter while he pauses to reload has become the most plausible in
the gun controllers’ arsenal.
Unlike using cosmetics such as pistol
grips or bayonet lugs to define “assault rifles,” outlawing what has been
called “assault
magazines” has an arguably rational relationship to the goal
of reducing violence. Even some conservatives who are normally skeptical of
knee-jerk “just do something!” responses to shocking events have expressed
agreement. The Wall Street
Journal’s Peggy
Noonan:
[I
want] a quick, short, simple bill that would ban the use of big ugly monstrous
high-capacity magazines [that would force shooters to] reload after seven or
eight shots. It won’t hurt hunters, it won’t leave your house less safe, and in
the cases of crazy people attacking children and mallgoers it will force them
to reload, in which time someone might be able to knock them down or get the
gun from their hands.
This argument seems plausible, supported
as it seems to be by evidence from Sandy Hook and the attack on Gabby Giffords
and others. Per Howard
Kurtz:
Should
Jared Loughner have been able to obtain 30 rounds of ammunition to kill six
people and wound Gabby Giffords, or should there be limits on high-magazine
clips?
The argument has moved beyond plausible
to become an article of faith among the acolytes of gun control. However, there
is good reason to doubt that it is persuasive per the actual events. Here is
what is actually known or suspected on the magazine issue from Sandy Hook:
As
many as a half-dozen first graders may have survived Adam Lanza’s deadly
shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School because he stopped firing
briefly, perhaps either to reload his rifle or because it jammed, according to
law enforcement officials familiar with the events.
…
Based
on initial statements from surviving children and the fact that unfired bullets
from Lanza’s rifle were found on the ground, detectives suspect that some
students were able to run to safety when Lanza stopped firing, probably for a
short period of time, the officials said.
It
is possible that Lanza, who reloaded the rifle frequently, mishandled or
dropped a magazine and unfired bullets fell to the floor, they said.
But
it also is possible, they said, that the mechanism that fed bullets into the
rifle jammed, causing Lanza to remove the magazine and clear the weapon.
Unfired bullets could have fallen to the classroom floor during that process as
well, law enforcement officials said.
Based on his experience and his analysis
of Sandy Hook, Marshall K. Robinson, the forensic scientist for the Bridgeport
Police Department who also works at the state police forensic lab in Meriden,
believes that banning “high-capacity” magazines would have no effect on gun
violence. He testified:
High-capacity
magazines have been “banned” before. … It proved nothing and the ban was lifted
a few years ago.
Regarding the Gabby Giffords shooting, CNN
misrepresented the events in a manner that supported the burgeoning magazine
argument:
Authorities
said the suspect, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was tackled by two men when
he tried to reload his pistol — while a woman in the crowd, Patricia Maisch,
took away the fresh magazine Loughner had dropped.
That version of what happened was widely
repeated:
• New
York Times: “Onlookers tackled and restrained him when
he paused to reload.”
• NBC
News: “‘He had emptied the first magazine and was trying to
reload when he was tackled,’ said one law enforcement official.”
• Time:
“As Loughner fumbled to load a second clip, one of the 20 victims wounded by
gunfire — a woman whose name has not been released — approached the assailant
and was able to wrest the clip away. Loughner subsequently loaded a second
clip, but its spring jammed. He was then tackled by two ‘brave, quick-thinking
individuals’ who pinned him until authorities arrived.”
• Associated
Press: “[Loughner] was reloading when a woman in the crowd,
already wounded, attempted to grab the gun from him. He finally changed the
magazine and tried to fire, authorities said, but the gun jammed. Meanwhile,
two men from the crowd grabbed him and subdued him, according to officials.”
As with Sandy Hook, however, it seems
that “what we learned” is incorrect. The picture of what happened, per
those who actually painted it, is subtly but significantly different. An ABC
News headline — “Woman Wrestled Fresh Ammo Clip From Tucson
Shooter as He Tried to Reload” — reflected the magazine argument, yet the
reporting did not:
[Patricia]
Maisch, 61, effectively disarmed the shooter as several men pounced on him and
threw him to ground.
…
She
considered trying to run away, she said, but thought that would make her more
of a target, so she laid down on the ground. But then something unexpected
happened.
“Then
he was next to me on the ground,” she said. “The gentleman knocked him down.
“I
kneeled over him. He was pulling a magazine [to reload] and I grabbed the
magazine and secured that. I think the men got the gun, and I was able to get
the magazine,” she said.
…
[Bill]
Badger, a 74-year-old retired army colonel living in Tucson, told Pottsville,
Pa.’s Republican-Herald: “I turned and saw him running down
the line of people on the chairs. He ran between me and the store. Someone hit
him with a chair and he flinched a little. That’s when I grabbed his left arm.
Someone grabbed his right arm and we got him to the ground.”
“The
other guy put his knee into the back of his neck and I grabbed him around the
throat. We held him until police got there.”
So:
according to the actual participants, there
was no “pause to reload.”
Whatever combination of gun jamming or
reloading happened in Tucson or at Sandy Hook, the time and risk to the shooter
of reloading magazines has been absurdly overstated by gun-control advocates
and compliant media. In reality, it takes no more than a second or two to
replace an empty magazine in a semi-automatic weapon.
These videos of average
shooters
reloading
Glocks
clearly demonstrate
this.
Dave Kopel points this out in his “Rational
Basis of ‘Assault Weapon’ Prohibition”:
In
one firearms demonstration, a police shooter emptied a thirty round magazine
attached to a banned Colt rifle in 5.9 seconds. The officer then fired a
fifteen round magazine attached to an unbanned Glock pistol, changed magazines
(2.25 seconds), and then fired another 15 rounds. The same thirty rounds were
fired by the Glock in 8.92 seconds.
Using 10-round magazines, requiring two
reloads, would add about two seconds, bringing the time to fire 30 rounds to
about 11 seconds. But if the shooter had more than one handgun, there would
have been no practical difference between rate of fire of the Glock (or any
other semi-automatic handgun) and the 30-round rifle.
In addition to the fact that limiting the
capacity of magazines would have little if any practical impact on the
lethality of mass gun violence, there are many other reasons why such a legal ban
would be impractical, bad policy, and arguably unconstitutional.
The millions of magazines currently in
existence infer that any new legal restriction would restrict only the
law-abiding. This is bad policy, because civilians need high-capacity magazines
as much as — and for the same
reasons — as the police. Legal scholar Randy Barnett pointed this
out in a letter
to Senator Ted Cruz:
Will
some citizens — such as current or retired members of law enforcement or
government officials — be privileged in the means by which they can protect
themselves over others?
If an American citizen who is employed to
protect the safety of others, or an active or retired police officer, requires
a certain type of weapon, with a certain rate of fire or capacity, to protect
him or herself or others, why does not a law abiding citizen of the United
States require the same sort of weapon for the same lawful purpose?
A commenter on the Arms and the Law site pointed
out:
These
restrictions would have marginal effect on a determined would-be mass shooter,
since he could prepare in advance by carrying multiple smaller magazines on his
belt, in sports vest pockets, etc. and train himself to exchange them quickly.
The civilian defender against an attack, on the other hand, is not going to be
so attired and likely will have only what ammo is with his defensive firearm
when he grabs it. Magazine size restrictions, therefore, would
disproportionately hinder defense relative to attack, shifting the balance of
power towards the criminal.
And then there is the Constitution, which
can get in the way of ill-considered schemes. Some measures, such as New York’s
hastily passed restriction of magazine capacity to seven rounds, are almost
certainly unconstitutional. Since there are no seven-round
magazines produced for most of the 9mm and .40 caliber Glocks, Springfields,
Smith & Wessons, Heckler & Kochs, etc. widely owned by civilians, the
New York law would turn those perfectly legal weapons into expensive
paperweights. This runs afoul of the Heller v. District of Columbia prohibition of
banning firearms and magazines that are “typically possessed by law-abiding
citizens for lawful purposes.”
An added reason to be highly skeptical of
restricting magazine capacity: the lead sponsor of legislation in the House, Rep.
Diana DeGette (D-CO), the Democrats’ chief
deputy whip, quite literally doesn’t know what she’s talking
about.
At a forum this week, the Denver Post revealed,
“the senior congresswoman from Denver appeared not to understand how guns work”:
Asked
how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in
reducing gun violence, DeGette said:
“I
will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have
those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the
number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over
time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more
available.”
What
she didn’t appear to understand is that a magazine can be reloaded with more
bullets.
She is the lead sponsor. You can’t make
this stuff up.
Other than perhaps violating the
Constitution and depriving millions of gun owners of something they believe is
desirable and necessary, the primary, and just about the only, effect of
passing restrictions on magazine capacity would be to make the restrictors feel
as if they had accomplished something.
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