Late last year, I read a study in the JAMA Network Open which purported to conduct a deep dive into firearm homicides in Boston over a five-year period. I read it thoroughly and with great interest because it appeared to be conducted to meet some professional standards and was claimed to come from an objective point of view. I’ve been intending to write about it for a while, but that was on the back burner until I saw that the New York Times noticed the study and breathlessly repeated its conclusions.
I have several issues with the study which I will write about in a separate article; for the purposes of this article, we’re going to be staying near the surface and discussing how, if the proposals in the article are accepted as true and acted on by the anti-gun lobby, they will directly undercut one of the major tenets of anti-gun legislation over the last three decades. What is that major tenet?
Magazine capacity restrictions.
You see, the study claims that if larger “caliber” (their words, not mine) bullets were replaced with smaller “caliber” bullets, there would have been fewer homicides, because the smaller caliber bullet wounds were more survivable than the larger caliber ones. Okay, on the surface, this is a big “duh.” If every time I fired a .22LR the bullet magically became a solid copper .45 ACP hollowpoint as it exited the muzzle, I would expect this magic bullet to have a greater terminal effect than the .22LR bullet it replaced.
Reality, however, dictates that the bullet will stay the same when it leaves the muzzle. I can’t control it after it leaves the gun. I can control it while it’s in the gun, though, and that by extension means I can pick a bigger bullet if I want.
In a gun law vacuum, I’d pick whatever bullet allowed me to balance capacity and effectiveness and shootability. Most of the time, that means 9mm Luger, and in your average compact-to-full-size handgun that means bringing along fifteen to eighteen rounds. Just as we don’t live in a world with magic, however, we also don’t live in a world without gun laws. In some states – including Massachusetts, where the study was centered upon – magazines are restricted to ten rounds or less. In those states, carrying most 9mm pistols means leaving empty space in the magazine.
I don’t live in one of these restricted states, but if I did, I would carry a 9mm pistol less often – if at all. With one leg of my decision table kicked out (capacity) I’d be left with balancing shootability and effectiveness. I’d probably switch to something like my Smith & Wesson M&P45, which offers a nice balance in both physical and effectiveness terms. It has a ten-round magazine capacity even in free state guise, meaning I wouldn’t be leaving any empty space in my mags.
I know for a fact that many ban-state friends make the same decision, opting for .40 S&W or .45 ACP over 9mm because 10 rounds of 9mm just doesn’t have the same heft as 10 rounds of 45. I would be willing to bet that, if they are concerned with magazine capacity laws or restrictions at all, some criminals make the same decision.
Fun fact, while I’m talking about more effective cartridges: 10mm Auto was 100% fatal, according to the study. Yes, before you ask, the sample size was small: two deaths. There was also only one death from a rifle cartridge – 7.62x39mm.
It’s also important to note that according to the study, the average number of shots fired in a gun homicide was approximately 6. If you didn’t notice, 6 is less than 10. Even with magazine capacity restrictions, criminals still have almost half a mag left after successfully committing homicide. Are these laws having any effect on “gun violence”? Probably not.
My conclusions are threefold. First, this study shows that criminals might be directly forced by gun control restrictions to choose guns with a heightened ability to kill, meaning that gun control laws might be increasing deaths from “gun violence.” Second, the magazine capacity restrictions might be having no counterbalancing positive effect on crime, because criminals are not, on average, using up their legally allowed 10 rounds per magazine. Third, expending political capital on banning rifles is as quixotic as ever, as out of the 221 homicides studied, only one resulted from the use of a rifle caliber.
None of these possibilities or issues was discussed in the New York Times article, which I will also address separately.
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