34 comments on “Magazine Capacity Limits Are Dumb”
So what would you do? Is Newtown just the price of our freedom? I have a hard time with that, maybe post a video with your ideas on how to solve gun violence.
Newtown had little if anything to do with magazine capacities. It had far more to do with time. Yes, I may discuss a topic similar to that in the future.
That is a tough one, because who could say that….it is the price of freedom. I would argue that doing something that is not effective is worse than doing nothing at all. It is a complex problem, and most of us wish we had better answers instead of all the reasons why other peoples solutions won’t work.
I would like to see less on the laws with the guns, and more with the individuals. A gun is not legal or illegal, we all just must have the proper license to carry, possesses, etc based on background check, training, etc. I know it is an infringement on rights, but it will at least promote gun safety and ensure that gun owners have some basic level of training.
The one thing people miss on the magazines is that high-cap mags are more effective in a defensive role where someone else has a firearm. Shooting unarmed people it is almost useless to have a higher cap mag. Reloading while people are fleeing offers little to threaten you for the 2 seconds it takes to reload.
I think Newtown and Arora and Virginia Tech and so many other crimes are indeed the price of freedom – freedom for the mentally ill.
Mainstreaming the mentally ill has been a failure – the amount of homeless, crazy people in prisons, and mass shootings by the deranged and desperate are all an outgrowth of shutting down asylums. There is a social and budgetary cost of of letting the crazy roam free.
I am surprised that no one is argueing to ban sights on guns. Certainly if you can’t aim it, you can’t hit with it. I say, ban optics. I feel safer already.
3d printing will basically destroy all legislation that bans objects. after that it will have to go back to having outlawed deeds like murder, rather than outlawing the tools. after all, some 3d printers are able to print 60% of their own parts. http://www.reprap.org
Nice shirt Andrew. I had gwennies for lunch on Friday and It’s still inside of me.
Seriously though, good video as always. I find it hilarious that these politicians think they know how best americans can defend themselves and spew this drivel like it’s gospel and with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. Why don’t people in the media ask these buffoons any hard questions like “how many rounds are in the guns of your security detail?”
Keep up the good work.
The irony is, Jared Loughner was actually stopped by a 61-year-old lady precisely because he was using larger-than-standard-capacity magazines – she was able to get a hand on his 33-round Glock long-stick mag.
You also of course mentioned James Holmes’ problems when he attempted to use a ‘beta’ mag which caused his weapon to malfunction.
We can, of course, bring these up until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter because:
1) Anti-gun people aren’t about facts
2) Anti-gun people aren’t about rational thought
3) Anti-gun people won’t be satisfied until all guns are illegal
All they have are ‘feelings’ devoid of reason. They want pat, easy solutions to ‘solve gun violence’ when it’s the reasons behind that ‘violence’ they should be focusing on.
There’s no such thing as a violence-free environment that has humans in it. There will always be outliers, non-conformists, or chemically/emotionally/reason-impaired people who commit violence.
It takes a system of systems to detect, help, and correct these defectives, and those systems can still fail.
In the end, the only person who is ultimately responsible for your safety is you. Self-defense is the most basic Human Right.
I generally agree with your editorials, but not here. Your foundational argument is that you should have the right to defend yourself with the tools of your choice. Obv this is false – you can’t landmine your lawn or own a tank. Our firearms rights are limited, and thank goodness for that.
The question of the effectiveness of a magazine limit…The newtown guy apparently killed 26 people in <5 minutes. I have to think that if he had to reload several times people might have had a chance to flee or fight back. A trained soldier could reload in 2 seconds, but these shooters are untrained and are likely to foul up the reload, no?
David,
In your comment you (implicitly) advocate the option of fighting back. Would you also advocate giving those persons who would choose to fight back a fighting chance? If yes, with what tool might you want to supply the person who opts to fight back against an attacker armed with a firearm with high capacity magazines? Maybe a firearm with high capacity magazines? Oh.
Recently released police reports indicate that the Sandy Hook shooter expended something like 120 rounds of rifle ammo. With 30 round magazines, he had to have reloaded a few times, right? Seems to me that in this situation, in order to fight back someone might want the ability to shoot the attacker, multiple times if necessary. After all, when it was going down, people called the police to come and stop it, because the police have guns with lots of bullets. We sort of intuitively recognize that if you want to stop a crazy man armed with a gun, one of the best things to use is a gun with as many rounds as is necessary to definitively make him stop. You know?
Oh great – an internet gun control argument. I hope this can be civil, tho I doubt it will.
look all – we all agree that a line exists beyond which we do not have the right to own a certain weapon. Some think that line is around RPG level, others think it might be around sharp knife level.
if we agree that at some point our rights do end, then the discussion is where that point is. I think it is reasonable to limit magazines to 10 rounds. I don’t see the self defense need for larger magazines, and I think people can defend themselves with 10 rounds in 99.99999% of circumstances. Which is good enough for me. Jeremy what kind of incident are you thinking about where you need large capacity mags to defend yourself? If you think you need 30 round magazines to defend yourself you are probably kidding yourself and you just like fancy hardware.
The Sandy Hook guy – if he had to reload 30 times, he probably would have jammed or dropped several , or someone would have tackled him. Certainly more people would have had time to escape. Reloading 30 times is better than 3, no?
ok, I am prepared to be called names now: fire away. So to speak.
I should say here that I am a gun owner and shoot a lot of rounds. I don’t buy Andrew’s argument though.
What facts do you have to base your statements on, or is it all based on what you “think” or “feel?”
What experience do you have with the use of a firearm against another person with a firearm in order to determine that 10 rounds is the magic number for self defense?
Working through your logic, which one of the 6 year old children at Newtown was supposed to tackle the killer – and why didn’t they do so during one of the 6-10 times he did reload? Remember, he reloaded before each magazine was fully expended. And how are they supposed to deal with the secondary or tertiary loaded weapon carried by many spree killers?
Your argument is not based on a complete understanding of how mass killings, especially those in enclosed spaces with few exits, occur. I would suggest reading a lot about exactly what happens before spouting off with fantasy-like conjecture about what “should happen.”
I have no facts that really matter and neither do you. The sample size of mass killings is so small that making infererences from them is next to useless. I have no experience using guns against another person. But neither does just about anyone in congress, but they still have to make laws. There were adults at Newtown not just kids. Reloading 30 times would have given kids time to escape, and time for the shooter kid to panic.
Well here’s a fact I just thought of: How many rounds do cops have in their handguns? 14? 18? They go looking for trouble every day and that’s all they they think they need. Maybe that should be a guide. I would be fine with 15 as a limit instead of 10. There is no science here and you know it – just people trying to do their best with policy.
I’m probably done with this argument – I’ll read your response if there is one, but the thing with gun control arguments is that no one ever changes their mind from them.
So basically, you show up, you troll, and you leave. You have no real knowledge of how shootings happen, nothing to support your argument, no idea what police officers carry or why…
I can appreciate the fact that folks have remained civil in this discussion.
With that being said, I am being presumptuous in saying this, but with Andrew’s military background, he might have a slightly more intimate understanding of real-world applications of some of this stuff. Before words are put into my mouth, I’m not saying “OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH YEAH” like the Kool-Aid man in my tank blasting through brick walls and stuff, but rather, there are tools that serve specific purposes.
Also, Andrew, stop using such big words, man. You’re gonna discombobulate those politicians.
The rational “limit” to our 2nd Amendment right is up to and including what assailants will likely use to attack an innocent person. This is why the ban on automatic weapons is seldom [if ever] argued.
But there are hundreds of millions of semiautomatic firearms and 10+ round magazines in existence today, and will always be, no matter what goofy, feel-good law people try to enact.
So, regardless of how you feel, or what you “think” about 10-round magazines, all you’re doing is limiting an innocent person’s ability to defend himself against what an assailant has readily available to use in his assault.
And btw, with minimal practice it takes less than 2 seconds to reload a firearm, regardless of magazine capacity.
That you think someone is going to have the wherewithal to not urinate himself, count the number of rounds that have been expended, assess whether or not this criminal decided to follow your arbitrary ban on 30-round magazines, and then run over and stop the shooter — is further evidence that you do not fully understand the situation.
Andrew: here are some facts on how some spree shootings happen. I wish you wouldn’t make such snide responses – it weakens your argument.
Three recent spree shootings ended because of the need to reload. You can name others that reloading was irrelevant to, but I’m willing to say ‘we can’t save every life, but we can save a few.’ You are not willing to make that jump. But please don’t say things like “You have no real knowledge of how shootings happen, nothing to support your argument.” Because in 1 minute of googling I found these three that support my argument.
In that 1 minute of googling I also learned that there is no standard issue police handgun. Magazines range from 8 to 17. I think it is a fair argument that if some officers don’t think they need more than 8 rounds, that is a fair measure of what a civilian needs.
Ferguson had emptied two 15-round magazines during the shooting. While reloading his third magazine, somebody yelled, “Grab him!”[14] Passengers Michael O’Connor, Kevin Blum and Mark McEntee tackled Ferguson and pinned him to one of the train’s seats.
On May 20, 1998, 15-year-old student Kip Kinkel was expelled from Thurston High School for bringing a firearm into school. After returning to his home from the police station, he got his father’s Ruger semi-automatic rifle, then shot and killed his parents. The next day, on May 21, Kinkel drove his mother’s car to the school, and, wearing a long trench coat, he entered the cafeteria and began shooting at students with the rifle.[5] As he was reloading his rifle, Kinkel was subdued by seven other students who held him until the police arrived at the scene.
Loughner stopped to reload, but dropped the loaded magazine from his pocket to the sidewalk, from where bystander Patricia Maisch grabbed it.[24] Another bystander clubbed the back of the assailant’s head with a folding chair, injuring his elbow in the process, representing the 14th injury.[25] Loughner was tackled to the ground by 74-year-old retired United States Army Colonel Bill Badger,[26] who had been shot himself.
Aaron: fair point on defining self defense as having the right to the same armament as the bad ‘uns. Check.
But I disagree on the reloading being easy- I have done some biathlons, and you should see the panicked reloading in a competition. Rounds in the snow, magazines dropped, etc. Multiply that by about 1000 in a life or death situation and spree shooters will mess it up a good part of the time. Maybe a military guy could describe how untrained soldiers waste a massive amount of ammunition and shoot very poorly. Same thing.
in the end, saying that magazine limits is feel good legislation…well, there is that side to it. But since at least 3 spree shootings have been stopped because of reloading issues makes it reasonable to suggest that if some other spree shooters had to reload 10-30 times, it could have saved some lives. That’s not a foolish assertion.
David –
I’m going to be presumptuous here as well, but I feel I can (relatively) safely assume that you might not be a firearms enthusiast like a lot of us who follow this blog.
Your googling probably found the 8-rd magazines, and I’d put a considerable sum of money on those LEOs carrying 1911s. The 8rd capacity there is limited by the design of the firearm itself. To say, “Everyone should carry 8rds because these guys carrying guns with mags that only hold 8rds” because of one specific case is kind of boo-boo, to be honest. That would be like saying, “I drive a Dodge Ram, but because there are cars that use 195/16 tires, I should too!” Things just don’t work like that – there are, again, specific tools for specific jobs.
I also think that the bringing up of the taking down of the AZ shooter repeatedly is a very specific situation. At a political rally, most of your attendees are adults. Also, it’s kind of a large blob of people. In regards to the Newtown shooting, how many CHILDREN are there as opposed to adults? Also, consider the proximity of folks to one another. In a school, you have desks, classrooms, space between people. To to close a gap – which while we’re on the sidelines like we are now may seem easy – might not be that easy in a real world situation. Let’s use an arbitrary number of 15 students to 1 teacher. Let’s say that Newton had 15 teachers, so let’s say 225 students. What are these kids, of elementary school age, supposed to do against an armed, grown, cowardly punk?
I don’t think that relying on arbitrary limitations is a “reliable” thing to do. As has been said before, what’s stopping these people who give zero f’s about the laws from doing what they need/want to achieve their twisted desires? That is to say, what’s going to stop them from obtaining standcard capacity magazines? Or more guns, ala the VT shooter?
Also, relying on other people messing up is NOT the way to do things in a self defense scenario. The thing to rely on, the crux of self defense arguments period, is that you can only rely on yourself when SHTF and things need to happen. Period. I know I have guns in my domicile, and I know I have them ready to go if need be. In a hypothetical situation again, if my residence were to be broken in to, am I waiting for the bad guy to open my fridge and eat my leftover pizza? Or am I taking action? The thing about the “gun grab during reload” argument is that it relies too much on a certain degree of randomness. And quite frankly, limiting magazines will not stop the first magazine from being full, regardless of the size of that first magazine.
I know the “what-if” game is easy to play, but in all reality, how different could things have been if one – or several – of those teachers had been armed?
yeah, you’re being presumptuous. I am a gun owner, compete regularly in biathlon, and have also taught my son how to shoot.
I’ll look over your post and respond if I can think of anything to say, although this thing is starting to nick into my worktime.
But unfair of you to say the AZ shooting was unique, when I found two others where the same thing happened.
I think the grinch here is that you guys think that a law that might stop 20% of spree shootings would be stupid. I think that is a fair tradeoff. I don’t see how we’re going to bridge that gap.
Yikes, this is consuming a lot of my time too.
Note how I worded that – enthusiast vs. owner. There’s a difference there. Owner does =/= enthusiast.
Also now that I think of it, a more apt analogy for the magazine capacity being limited to 8rds because some LEOs carry 1911s would be saying “I only have to drive 5 miles to/from work, so I’m putting exactly .34871 gallons of gas in my car.” Or seatbelts for that matter – “I don’t ever expect to get into a car wreck, so I’m not gonna wear my seatbelt!” Does anyone think like that?
Projecting my argument, sure, but the point I’m getting at is you prepare for the worst and hope for the best, while stacking the deck behind the scenes in your favor.
You’re right, that gap won’t be bridged. We (not specifically me and you, but in general) see things differently. We’re wired fundamentally differently.
Where do you get 20%? did you make that up or are you referring to some study that concluded this “fact”?
Here’s a fact for you: the three incidents you claim to exist where reloading a gun saved lives, were still mass shootings. . . .
Furthermore, the old lady that stopped Loughner from reloading his gun says he was knocked to the ground by a group of men before she even grabbed the magazine!
And who said it would be stupid?? If you have some evidence that crime wouldn’t increase, but that mass shootings would DECREASE by 20%, simply because law-abiding people don’t have access to 30-round magazines, I would be all for it!
But you don’t, so our argument will continue — you will continue to believe that the dastardly 30-round magazine is the bane of our existence and I will continue to know otherwise. . . .
Who is panicked? The guy shooting me and having no intention of living through his massacre isn’t panicked. The person being shot at is panicked (I know I would be).
So, if your assertion holds true — and I believe it does — you are putting the person being assaulted at a disadvantage by having to reload as much (or MORE, if I have a 10-round magazine and, thus, not breaking the law, and the bad guy has a 30-round).
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t know of these 3 shootings that were stopped because of reloading. I know Newtown wasn’t, I know Aurora was not, I know Columbine wasn’t. . . and I know far more than three shootings that were stopped because someone else else had a gun – like the armed guard who stopped the school shooting in Georgia last month, or the Clackamas mall shooter, or the 15 other mass shootings (not to mention the countless solo shootings) to which I can refer. . . .
well but did those armed guards have magazines >10 capacity? You are mixing arguments. I am not suggesting banning guns.
I would be surprised if a defender has needed a magazine larger than 10 to stop those shooters you mentioned.
Just think if the newtown guy had had to reload 30 times. Just think about that.
or if the guy in norway had to reload 100 times or whatever it was.
I’m “mixing arguments,” as you put it, because we don’t live in a vacuum.
Ask yourself why do police carry AR-15’s and 9mm’s that hold more than 10 rounds if, by your assumption, you would “be surprised” if they ever needed more than 10 rounds to stop those shooters?
and reloading 30 times? I guess we’re going back to the 19th century at this point with our arguments.
Hey, imagine if gunpowder had never been invented! Well, it was — and so was the semiautomatic — and we’re all fresh out of magic wands to wave and make them disappear.
To pretend that making something illegal is going to save people, or stop a criminal from using it to kill people, is the biggest flaw in your argument, regardless of how much you might consider it a compromise.
As an addendum – those three cases might have indeed involved a tackle/gun grab during reload – but as we can see from our empirical evidence, how often does that actually happen? As saddening as it is to say, I think we’ve seen enough of these to know that this might not always be a realistic thing to do. Or, people are human, and afraid of taking action when the deck seems stacked against them. I know that some people just want to curl up in a ball and tell themselves they hope they wake up from this nightmare.
That’s 3 shootings that have been stopped in my lifetime, but I’ve also seen (well, not seen firsthand, but you know what I mean) at least 10 that have gone on without any “divine intervention.”
People are crazy. You can’t stop crazy. Crazy people who want to do bad things are going to find ways to do them. How do you fight crazy? With rationality. Gun > fist. But, Gun = gun. Or even better, gun(s) + training (from good guys) > gun (bad guy)
Oh… come on Andrew… you’re providing a logical, fact-based point and making far too much sense for a politician or anti-gunner to understand…
It’s asinine symptom-treatment done daftly. It’s better to invest in mental health institutions and detect nutters before they go out on killing sprees rather than trying to half-arsedly limit some of the possible means by which those can be carried out (and stopped, of course).
It’s odd that this kind of legislative stupidity only happens when guns are involved. The government didn’t ban pocket knifes (used to commit the hijackings) after the 9/11 attacks, they went after the bloody terrorists instead, as any sane person would.
I have a background extremely similar to Andrew’s as a former HM2 and was an 8404. I will readily admit he spends a great deal more time at the range and is more intimately involved in the gun industry.
First off, LEOs “might” carry 8-17 rounds per magazine, which is limited by the carrying capacity of a particular firearm. It has become commonplace for police to carry “tactical carbines’, read AR-15’s in their patrol vehicles. Those carry “standard capacity” 30 round magazines.
Here’s an article from Police One, a police officer website that describes an officer that carries 145 rounds on him “every day” in his words.
Now, if you are going to argue that police are different, I would suggest doing some research. America’s courts have ruled unanimously that the police have absolutely “no obligation” to protect you. They are obligated to protect the population collectively, but bear no responsibility for anyone becoming a victim of a crime. So, if the police are permitted to carry whatever they choose, it stands to reason that each of us retain the same right. As I have the Right to life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness and the police are under no obligation to protect me, it is obvious that I alone am responsible for my safety and that of my family.
The issue I have, and I am not anti-police per se, is that if society is dangerous enough that they can be armed, then nobody has the right to say that I cannot be similarly armed.
Lastly, yes….sadly, Sandy Hook, Aurora and Columbines ARE the price we pay for freedom. Bad things happen. Far, far more people die from drunk driving, yet there is no outcry to ban alcohol or automobiles. I am not minimizing the horrible loss of life from those incidents, but people die on the highways every day by careless, inattentive or intoxicated drivers in staggering numbers, but hey, that doesn’t sell papers or make good news stories.
It’s been said before, but I’ll say it…..it’s not about guns, it’s about control.
So what would you do? Is Newtown just the price of our freedom? I have a hard time with that, maybe post a video with your ideas on how to solve gun violence.
Newtown had little if anything to do with magazine capacities. It had far more to do with time. Yes, I may discuss a topic similar to that in the future.
That is a tough one, because who could say that….it is the price of freedom. I would argue that doing something that is not effective is worse than doing nothing at all. It is a complex problem, and most of us wish we had better answers instead of all the reasons why other peoples solutions won’t work.
I would like to see less on the laws with the guns, and more with the individuals. A gun is not legal or illegal, we all just must have the proper license to carry, possesses, etc based on background check, training, etc. I know it is an infringement on rights, but it will at least promote gun safety and ensure that gun owners have some basic level of training.
The one thing people miss on the magazines is that high-cap mags are more effective in a defensive role where someone else has a firearm. Shooting unarmed people it is almost useless to have a higher cap mag. Reloading while people are fleeing offers little to threaten you for the 2 seconds it takes to reload.
I think Newtown and Arora and Virginia Tech and so many other crimes are indeed the price of freedom – freedom for the mentally ill.
Mainstreaming the mentally ill has been a failure – the amount of homeless, crazy people in prisons, and mass shootings by the deranged and desperate are all an outgrowth of shutting down asylums. There is a social and budgetary cost of of letting the crazy roam free.
Well said, but unfortunately the “other” side doesn’t listen to logic or common sense.
I am surprised that no one is argueing to ban sights on guns. Certainly if you can’t aim it, you can’t hit with it. I say, ban optics. I feel safer already.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/defence-distributed-want-to-arm-america-with-3d-guns
3d printing will basically destroy all legislation that bans objects. after that it will have to go back to having outlawed deeds like murder, rather than outlawing the tools. after all, some 3d printers are able to print 60% of their own parts. http://www.reprap.org
Nice shirt Andrew. I had gwennies for lunch on Friday and It’s still inside of me.
Seriously though, good video as always. I find it hilarious that these politicians think they know how best americans can defend themselves and spew this drivel like it’s gospel and with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. Why don’t people in the media ask these buffoons any hard questions like “how many rounds are in the guns of your security detail?”
Keep up the good work.
The irony is, Jared Loughner was actually stopped by a 61-year-old lady precisely because he was using larger-than-standard-capacity magazines – she was able to get a hand on his 33-round Glock long-stick mag.
You also of course mentioned James Holmes’ problems when he attempted to use a ‘beta’ mag which caused his weapon to malfunction.
We can, of course, bring these up until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter because:
1) Anti-gun people aren’t about facts
2) Anti-gun people aren’t about rational thought
3) Anti-gun people won’t be satisfied until all guns are illegal
All they have are ‘feelings’ devoid of reason. They want pat, easy solutions to ‘solve gun violence’ when it’s the reasons behind that ‘violence’ they should be focusing on.
There’s no such thing as a violence-free environment that has humans in it. There will always be outliers, non-conformists, or chemically/emotionally/reason-impaired people who commit violence.
It takes a system of systems to detect, help, and correct these defectives, and those systems can still fail.
In the end, the only person who is ultimately responsible for your safety is you. Self-defense is the most basic Human Right.
I generally agree with your editorials, but not here. Your foundational argument is that you should have the right to defend yourself with the tools of your choice. Obv this is false – you can’t landmine your lawn or own a tank. Our firearms rights are limited, and thank goodness for that.
The question of the effectiveness of a magazine limit…The newtown guy apparently killed 26 people in <5 minutes. I have to think that if he had to reload several times people might have had a chance to flee or fight back. A trained soldier could reload in 2 seconds, but these shooters are untrained and are likely to foul up the reload, no?
Yeah, because wanting 15 rounds in my G19 instead of 10 is like wanting to mine my yard. Right.
Claymore the approaches.
David,
In your comment you (implicitly) advocate the option of fighting back. Would you also advocate giving those persons who would choose to fight back a fighting chance? If yes, with what tool might you want to supply the person who opts to fight back against an attacker armed with a firearm with high capacity magazines? Maybe a firearm with high capacity magazines? Oh.
Recently released police reports indicate that the Sandy Hook shooter expended something like 120 rounds of rifle ammo. With 30 round magazines, he had to have reloaded a few times, right? Seems to me that in this situation, in order to fight back someone might want the ability to shoot the attacker, multiple times if necessary. After all, when it was going down, people called the police to come and stop it, because the police have guns with lots of bullets. We sort of intuitively recognize that if you want to stop a crazy man armed with a gun, one of the best things to use is a gun with as many rounds as is necessary to definitively make him stop. You know?
Jeremy
Oh great – an internet gun control argument. I hope this can be civil, tho I doubt it will.
look all – we all agree that a line exists beyond which we do not have the right to own a certain weapon. Some think that line is around RPG level, others think it might be around sharp knife level.
if we agree that at some point our rights do end, then the discussion is where that point is. I think it is reasonable to limit magazines to 10 rounds. I don’t see the self defense need for larger magazines, and I think people can defend themselves with 10 rounds in 99.99999% of circumstances. Which is good enough for me. Jeremy what kind of incident are you thinking about where you need large capacity mags to defend yourself? If you think you need 30 round magazines to defend yourself you are probably kidding yourself and you just like fancy hardware.
The Sandy Hook guy – if he had to reload 30 times, he probably would have jammed or dropped several , or someone would have tackled him. Certainly more people would have had time to escape. Reloading 30 times is better than 3, no?
ok, I am prepared to be called names now: fire away. So to speak.
I should say here that I am a gun owner and shoot a lot of rounds. I don’t buy Andrew’s argument though.
What facts do you have to base your statements on, or is it all based on what you “think” or “feel?”
What experience do you have with the use of a firearm against another person with a firearm in order to determine that 10 rounds is the magic number for self defense?
Working through your logic, which one of the 6 year old children at Newtown was supposed to tackle the killer – and why didn’t they do so during one of the 6-10 times he did reload? Remember, he reloaded before each magazine was fully expended. And how are they supposed to deal with the secondary or tertiary loaded weapon carried by many spree killers?
Your argument is not based on a complete understanding of how mass killings, especially those in enclosed spaces with few exits, occur. I would suggest reading a lot about exactly what happens before spouting off with fantasy-like conjecture about what “should happen.”
I have no facts that really matter and neither do you. The sample size of mass killings is so small that making infererences from them is next to useless. I have no experience using guns against another person. But neither does just about anyone in congress, but they still have to make laws. There were adults at Newtown not just kids. Reloading 30 times would have given kids time to escape, and time for the shooter kid to panic.
Well here’s a fact I just thought of: How many rounds do cops have in their handguns? 14? 18? They go looking for trouble every day and that’s all they they think they need. Maybe that should be a guide. I would be fine with 15 as a limit instead of 10. There is no science here and you know it – just people trying to do their best with policy.
I’m probably done with this argument – I’ll read your response if there is one, but the thing with gun control arguments is that no one ever changes their mind from them.
So basically, you show up, you troll, and you leave. You have no real knowledge of how shootings happen, nothing to support your argument, no idea what police officers carry or why…
I can appreciate the fact that folks have remained civil in this discussion.
With that being said, I am being presumptuous in saying this, but with Andrew’s military background, he might have a slightly more intimate understanding of real-world applications of some of this stuff. Before words are put into my mouth, I’m not saying “OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH YEAH” like the Kool-Aid man in my tank blasting through brick walls and stuff, but rather, there are tools that serve specific purposes.
Also, Andrew, stop using such big words, man. You’re gonna discombobulate those politicians.
The rational “limit” to our 2nd Amendment right is up to and including what assailants will likely use to attack an innocent person. This is why the ban on automatic weapons is seldom [if ever] argued.
But there are hundreds of millions of semiautomatic firearms and 10+ round magazines in existence today, and will always be, no matter what goofy, feel-good law people try to enact.
So, regardless of how you feel, or what you “think” about 10-round magazines, all you’re doing is limiting an innocent person’s ability to defend himself against what an assailant has readily available to use in his assault.
And btw, with minimal practice it takes less than 2 seconds to reload a firearm, regardless of magazine capacity.
That you think someone is going to have the wherewithal to not urinate himself, count the number of rounds that have been expended, assess whether or not this criminal decided to follow your arbitrary ban on 30-round magazines, and then run over and stop the shooter — is further evidence that you do not fully understand the situation.
Ok, I’m back.
Andrew: here are some facts on how some spree shootings happen. I wish you wouldn’t make such snide responses – it weakens your argument.
Three recent spree shootings ended because of the need to reload. You can name others that reloading was irrelevant to, but I’m willing to say ‘we can’t save every life, but we can save a few.’ You are not willing to make that jump. But please don’t say things like “You have no real knowledge of how shootings happen, nothing to support your argument.” Because in 1 minute of googling I found these three that support my argument.
In that 1 minute of googling I also learned that there is no standard issue police handgun. Magazines range from 8 to 17. I think it is a fair argument that if some officers don’t think they need more than 8 rounds, that is a fair measure of what a civilian needs.
Ferguson had emptied two 15-round magazines during the shooting. While reloading his third magazine, somebody yelled, “Grab him!”[14] Passengers Michael O’Connor, Kevin Blum and Mark McEntee tackled Ferguson and pinned him to one of the train’s seats.
On May 20, 1998, 15-year-old student Kip Kinkel was expelled from Thurston High School for bringing a firearm into school. After returning to his home from the police station, he got his father’s Ruger semi-automatic rifle, then shot and killed his parents. The next day, on May 21, Kinkel drove his mother’s car to the school, and, wearing a long trench coat, he entered the cafeteria and began shooting at students with the rifle.[5] As he was reloading his rifle, Kinkel was subdued by seven other students who held him until the police arrived at the scene.
Loughner stopped to reload, but dropped the loaded magazine from his pocket to the sidewalk, from where bystander Patricia Maisch grabbed it.[24] Another bystander clubbed the back of the assailant’s head with a folding chair, injuring his elbow in the process, representing the 14th injury.[25] Loughner was tackled to the ground by 74-year-old retired United States Army Colonel Bill Badger,[26] who had been shot himself.
Aaron: fair point on defining self defense as having the right to the same armament as the bad ‘uns. Check.
But I disagree on the reloading being easy- I have done some biathlons, and you should see the panicked reloading in a competition. Rounds in the snow, magazines dropped, etc. Multiply that by about 1000 in a life or death situation and spree shooters will mess it up a good part of the time. Maybe a military guy could describe how untrained soldiers waste a massive amount of ammunition and shoot very poorly. Same thing.
in the end, saying that magazine limits is feel good legislation…well, there is that side to it. But since at least 3 spree shootings have been stopped because of reloading issues makes it reasonable to suggest that if some other spree shooters had to reload 10-30 times, it could have saved some lives. That’s not a foolish assertion.
David –
I’m going to be presumptuous here as well, but I feel I can (relatively) safely assume that you might not be a firearms enthusiast like a lot of us who follow this blog.
Your googling probably found the 8-rd magazines, and I’d put a considerable sum of money on those LEOs carrying 1911s. The 8rd capacity there is limited by the design of the firearm itself. To say, “Everyone should carry 8rds because these guys carrying guns with mags that only hold 8rds” because of one specific case is kind of boo-boo, to be honest. That would be like saying, “I drive a Dodge Ram, but because there are cars that use 195/16 tires, I should too!” Things just don’t work like that – there are, again, specific tools for specific jobs.
I also think that the bringing up of the taking down of the AZ shooter repeatedly is a very specific situation. At a political rally, most of your attendees are adults. Also, it’s kind of a large blob of people. In regards to the Newtown shooting, how many CHILDREN are there as opposed to adults? Also, consider the proximity of folks to one another. In a school, you have desks, classrooms, space between people. To to close a gap – which while we’re on the sidelines like we are now may seem easy – might not be that easy in a real world situation. Let’s use an arbitrary number of 15 students to 1 teacher. Let’s say that Newton had 15 teachers, so let’s say 225 students. What are these kids, of elementary school age, supposed to do against an armed, grown, cowardly punk?
I don’t think that relying on arbitrary limitations is a “reliable” thing to do. As has been said before, what’s stopping these people who give zero f’s about the laws from doing what they need/want to achieve their twisted desires? That is to say, what’s going to stop them from obtaining standcard capacity magazines? Or more guns, ala the VT shooter?
Also, relying on other people messing up is NOT the way to do things in a self defense scenario. The thing to rely on, the crux of self defense arguments period, is that you can only rely on yourself when SHTF and things need to happen. Period. I know I have guns in my domicile, and I know I have them ready to go if need be. In a hypothetical situation again, if my residence were to be broken in to, am I waiting for the bad guy to open my fridge and eat my leftover pizza? Or am I taking action? The thing about the “gun grab during reload” argument is that it relies too much on a certain degree of randomness. And quite frankly, limiting magazines will not stop the first magazine from being full, regardless of the size of that first magazine.
I know the “what-if” game is easy to play, but in all reality, how different could things have been if one – or several – of those teachers had been armed?
yeah, you’re being presumptuous. I am a gun owner, compete regularly in biathlon, and have also taught my son how to shoot.
I’ll look over your post and respond if I can think of anything to say, although this thing is starting to nick into my worktime.
But unfair of you to say the AZ shooting was unique, when I found two others where the same thing happened.
I think the grinch here is that you guys think that a law that might stop 20% of spree shootings would be stupid. I think that is a fair tradeoff. I don’t see how we’re going to bridge that gap.
Yikes, this is consuming a lot of my time too.
Note how I worded that – enthusiast vs. owner. There’s a difference there. Owner does =/= enthusiast.
Also now that I think of it, a more apt analogy for the magazine capacity being limited to 8rds because some LEOs carry 1911s would be saying “I only have to drive 5 miles to/from work, so I’m putting exactly .34871 gallons of gas in my car.” Or seatbelts for that matter – “I don’t ever expect to get into a car wreck, so I’m not gonna wear my seatbelt!” Does anyone think like that?
Projecting my argument, sure, but the point I’m getting at is you prepare for the worst and hope for the best, while stacking the deck behind the scenes in your favor.
You’re right, that gap won’t be bridged. We (not specifically me and you, but in general) see things differently. We’re wired fundamentally differently.
Where do you get 20%? did you make that up or are you referring to some study that concluded this “fact”?
Here’s a fact for you: the three incidents you claim to exist where reloading a gun saved lives, were still mass shootings. . . .
Furthermore, the old lady that stopped Loughner from reloading his gun says he was knocked to the ground by a group of men before she even grabbed the magazine!
And who said it would be stupid?? If you have some evidence that crime wouldn’t increase, but that mass shootings would DECREASE by 20%, simply because law-abiding people don’t have access to 30-round magazines, I would be all for it!
But you don’t, so our argument will continue — you will continue to believe that the dastardly 30-round magazine is the bane of our existence and I will continue to know otherwise. . . .
Who is panicked? The guy shooting me and having no intention of living through his massacre isn’t panicked. The person being shot at is panicked (I know I would be).
So, if your assertion holds true — and I believe it does — you are putting the person being assaulted at a disadvantage by having to reload as much (or MORE, if I have a 10-round magazine and, thus, not breaking the law, and the bad guy has a 30-round).
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t know of these 3 shootings that were stopped because of reloading. I know Newtown wasn’t, I know Aurora was not, I know Columbine wasn’t. . . and I know far more than three shootings that were stopped because someone else else had a gun – like the armed guard who stopped the school shooting in Georgia last month, or the Clackamas mall shooter, or the 15 other mass shootings (not to mention the countless solo shootings) to which I can refer. . . .
well but did those armed guards have magazines >10 capacity? You are mixing arguments. I am not suggesting banning guns.
I would be surprised if a defender has needed a magazine larger than 10 to stop those shooters you mentioned.
Just think if the newtown guy had had to reload 30 times. Just think about that.
or if the guy in norway had to reload 100 times or whatever it was.
I’m “mixing arguments,” as you put it, because we don’t live in a vacuum.
Ask yourself why do police carry AR-15’s and 9mm’s that hold more than 10 rounds if, by your assumption, you would “be surprised” if they ever needed more than 10 rounds to stop those shooters?
and reloading 30 times? I guess we’re going back to the 19th century at this point with our arguments.
Hey, imagine if gunpowder had never been invented! Well, it was — and so was the semiautomatic — and we’re all fresh out of magic wands to wave and make them disappear.
To pretend that making something illegal is going to save people, or stop a criminal from using it to kill people, is the biggest flaw in your argument, regardless of how much you might consider it a compromise.
As an addendum – those three cases might have indeed involved a tackle/gun grab during reload – but as we can see from our empirical evidence, how often does that actually happen? As saddening as it is to say, I think we’ve seen enough of these to know that this might not always be a realistic thing to do. Or, people are human, and afraid of taking action when the deck seems stacked against them. I know that some people just want to curl up in a ball and tell themselves they hope they wake up from this nightmare.
That’s 3 shootings that have been stopped in my lifetime, but I’ve also seen (well, not seen firsthand, but you know what I mean) at least 10 that have gone on without any “divine intervention.”
People are crazy. You can’t stop crazy. Crazy people who want to do bad things are going to find ways to do them. How do you fight crazy? With rationality. Gun > fist. But, Gun = gun. Or even better, gun(s) + training (from good guys) > gun (bad guy)
Oh… come on Andrew… you’re providing a logical, fact-based point and making far too much sense for a politician or anti-gunner to understand…
Dann in Ohio
Yeah, it’s too rational.
It’s asinine symptom-treatment done daftly. It’s better to invest in mental health institutions and detect nutters before they go out on killing sprees rather than trying to half-arsedly limit some of the possible means by which those can be carried out (and stopped, of course).
It’s odd that this kind of legislative stupidity only happens when guns are involved. The government didn’t ban pocket knifes (used to commit the hijackings) after the 9/11 attacks, they went after the bloody terrorists instead, as any sane person would.
I have a background extremely similar to Andrew’s as a former HM2 and was an 8404. I will readily admit he spends a great deal more time at the range and is more intimately involved in the gun industry.
First off, LEOs “might” carry 8-17 rounds per magazine, which is limited by the carrying capacity of a particular firearm. It has become commonplace for police to carry “tactical carbines’, read AR-15’s in their patrol vehicles. Those carry “standard capacity” 30 round magazines.
Here’s an article from Police One, a police officer website that describes an officer that carries 145 rounds on him “every day” in his words.
http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/6199620-Why-one-cop-carries-145-rounds-of-ammo-on-the-job/
Now, if you are going to argue that police are different, I would suggest doing some research. America’s courts have ruled unanimously that the police have absolutely “no obligation” to protect you. They are obligated to protect the population collectively, but bear no responsibility for anyone becoming a victim of a crime. So, if the police are permitted to carry whatever they choose, it stands to reason that each of us retain the same right. As I have the Right to life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness and the police are under no obligation to protect me, it is obvious that I alone am responsible for my safety and that of my family.
The issue I have, and I am not anti-police per se, is that if society is dangerous enough that they can be armed, then nobody has the right to say that I cannot be similarly armed.
Lastly, yes….sadly, Sandy Hook, Aurora and Columbines ARE the price we pay for freedom. Bad things happen. Far, far more people die from drunk driving, yet there is no outcry to ban alcohol or automobiles. I am not minimizing the horrible loss of life from those incidents, but people die on the highways every day by careless, inattentive or intoxicated drivers in staggering numbers, but hey, that doesn’t sell papers or make good news stories.
It’s been said before, but I’ll say it…..it’s not about guns, it’s about control.
Nice shirt, I live in AK and that is one classy place to eat.
Thanks, I love Gwennies and eat there every time I’m in Anchorage.