XDA

It is strange to read support for a ban on removeable box magazines that hold more than 10 rounds on the day the only federal law with any real chance of passage (regarding background checks) goes down in flames. But rabid anti-gun advocates Sen. Frank Lautenburg and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, both Democrats, have a piece doing just that. If you look close, you can see why the proposed new federal legislation has failed so spectacularly. The anti-gunners have no idea what they are talking about. First idiocy.

High-capacity magazines have only one purpose: to kill a lot of people quickly. They were designed for war zones, not civilized societies.

What they call high capacity are actually normal capacity magazines. The high capacity ones, the drum magazines, are apparently unknown to these to gun geniuses. All magazines do have only one purpose--to hold a number of cartridges. You can use the gun with, say, 30 rounds in tis magazine, to shoot targets, to plink, to hunt small animals. There is no requirement that you use the gun to shoot people. It is absurd to say the only purpose of the box magazine is to kill a lot of people quickly. At best this is a mistake, but more probably is a cynical lie. Next idiocy.

In Aurora, Colo., a high-capacity magazine made it possible for the gunman to shoot 70 people, killing 12, in only a few minutes. His 100-round magazine jammed. Imagine how many more lives would have been lost had the drum not jammed.

Wait, his gun jammed because he was using a high capacity magazine, a drum magazine? (They do know about them.) Imagine how many more lives would have been lost had he used the normal sized magazines which rarely jam? The Senator and Representative seem to have missed the real lesson of the Aurora movie theater shooting. Next idiocy.

At Virginia Tech, the shooter killed 32 people and wounded 17 with guns equipped with high-capacity magazines. These magazines enabled Seung-Hui Cho to commit the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
 

The evil psychopath at Va Tech used a Walther P22, which uses a 10 round magazine, and a Glock 19, with a 15 round magazine. He shot 49 people. He must therefore have reloaded. How would two guns with only 10 round magazines changed a thing? The legislators seem to have missed the inconvenient fact that one gun used just the magazine they want us to have and double down on their gun ignorance by asserting the extra 5 rounds for the Glock, per magazine, was the essential deadliness of the attack. It's absurd. He could have done the very same thing with the OK 10 round magazines, he did just that with half his arsenal. Last idiocy.

And in Newtown, the shooter was able to fire 154 rounds from his assault rifle and multiple high-capacity magazines in less than five minutes, killing those twenty beautiful first-graders and six heroic educators. It has even been reported that 11 students were able to escape their classroom while the shooter reloaded, suggesting more children might be alive today had he needed to reload more often.
 

The dirty secret of that shooting is that the evil psychopath did not empty many of his 30 round magazines before he changed them out for a full one. He did not shoot any bullets from 3 of the 10 magazines he brought along. A ban on greater than 10 round magazines would have made no difference at all because he actually self limited the cartridges his magazines carried and 26 still were murdered. It is reported that some of the children were able to get away when he loaded a new magazine backwards and it wouldn't feed. Size had nothing to do with the escape. Speculation is so much useful than knowing the facts here.

You two can blame the NRA, the gun industry, or anyone else you want, for your legislation's complete failure, but the unpleasant truth for your ilk is that you guys blew it with unhelpful, proposed laws based on ignorance.

Labels: Failure, Lautenberg, McCarthy; gun ignorance