PA Bill Number: SB945
Title: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals.
Description: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals. ...
Last Action: Third consideration and final passage (199-0)
Last Action Date: Apr 17, 2024
Why Magazine Restrictions Are Useless For Preventing Mass Shootings :: 06/07/2019
In the wake of any number of mass shootings, from Virginia Beach to Sandy Hook, there tends to be a call for magazine restrictions by those so inclined to push for gun control. Their thinking apparently is that if you restrict the number of rounds in the weapon, you can mitigate the amount of carnage at these shootings.
However, magazine restrictions won’t do any such thing, and for a number of reasons.
First, let’s face the facts that there are piles of magazines that carry a lot more than 10 rounds. Tons of them. They’ve been legal since 2006 and while there’s no evidence the magazine restriction had any impact on crime during the era of the assault weapon ban, people have since bought magazines like they were expecting another ban at any time.
There’s literally no way to take all those magazines off the streets. It’s not happening. “Banning” anything other than low-capacity magazines is a fool’s errand.
Let’s say, though, that they could. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that it’s possible. It still won’t do a damn thing except to hurt law-abiding citizens in their efforts to protect their own lives.
Now, I’ve had anti-gunners claim I’m being inconsistent with statements like this, but I’m not. Not really, and I’ll explain why.
First, let’s look at the nature of most mass shootings.
Generally, they’re planned events. The killers know they’re going to commit a crime like this and plan accordingly. They pick gun free zones where they’re not likely to meet armed opposition. If there’s armed security, they may try to take them out first, but generally, they know no one is there to stop them.
Now, let’s say they only have a 10-round magazine. So what?
They have all day to shoot at innocent people, then reload. It doesn’t take a lot of time to swap out a magazine, after all. That’s why semi-automatic pistols became the norm for military and law enforcement as well as for armed citizens. A mass shooter can have all day to reload because he’s not likely to meet any armed opposition.
More importantly, though, they picked when and where the encounter will take place. They can stack the deck in their favor, even if magazine capacity is restricted.
The average armed citizen doesn’t get that luxury.
Should, God forbid, we find ourselves in an armed encounter, we don’t get to pick anything about it except whether or not we’re armed. We don’t get to pick the time, the location, the lighting conditions, nothing. The armed citizen isn’t acting, they’re reacting. That’s not likely to change.
Armed citizens don’t get to stack the deck in their favor.
So, should they find themselves in a gunfight, the last thing they need to do is worry about reloading. After all, they won’t have all the time in the world because someone is shooting at them already. There’s a reason we don’t give 10-round magazines to our military, after all.
Remember, the M-16 originally came with a 20-round magazine, but that was soon changed to a 30-round mag. Why? Reloading when bullets are flying toward you is generally a less than ideal situation. We want our troops to be able to minimize that.
On the same token, though, armed citizens having to reload when bullets are flying at them is less than ideal as well.
As you can see, the frequency of reloading is very different. Mass shooters typically have all the time in the world while the law-abiding can’t count on that luxury.
But it’s not just me talking here. There’s evidence supporting this.
The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ignited the calls for a renewed assault weapon ban. It’s yet another case of a shooting being used to demonize the AR-15 and it, too, led for calls of ending the availability of so-called “high-capacity magazines.” The shooting claimed the lives of 17 innocent people.
By contrast, Virginia Beach was a different animal entirely. The killer took 12 lives with a couple of handguns. Evidence that magazine restrictions work?
The Parkland killer only had 10-round magazines. The Virginia Beach shooter, by contrast, had the higher-capacity magazines, yet he claimed fewer lives.
Now, this isn’t to say that 10-round magazines are more deadly. They’re not.
What I am saying, though, is that for a mass shooter, magazine capacity is irrelevant. For the average citizen, it may end up being deadly, especially if you’re like the poor Houston man who found himself besieged by multiple attackers.
I get the desire to try and combat mass shootings. Absolutely no one wants them to continue. However, I and a lot of other people aren’t willing to handicap ourselves and our efforts to protect ourselves and our families for no good reason just so some politicians can pat themselves on the back and talk about how they “did something.” Especially when that “something” won’t do a damn bit of good in the first place.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/06/07/magazine-restrictions-useless-mass-shootings/
