Tuesday, March 5, 2013

GUN "Almost" FACTS 101: High Capacity Magazines

There is a series of videos from the organization "Protest Easy Guns" titled Gun Facts 101 that can be found on YouTube. Comments are not allowed so originally I had the idea of fisking them with my own video. Alas, that takes way too much time. So I just will do a line by line analysis of the "Almost Facts" (in italics) that are presented. This one is on High Capacity Magazines.

A high capacity magazine is filled with bullets.
Not to start off by being a English grammar junkie, be “A high capacity magazine may be filled with cartridges” would be a more accurate statement. A bullet and a cartridge are not the same thing. A cartridge is a combination of shell, primer, gunpowder, and bullet. Only the bullet comes out the muzzle of the gun (if you have more than the bullet coming out the front end of the gun, then you have some bigger problems to worry about). If you loaded a magazine with bullets, you would have a great paperweight. If you want to look at it from a weapon standpoint it would be a blunt force object, although, there are many cheaper, more available, and more effective alternatives (i.e. rocks). So, if you want a high capacity magazine to be effective, then you need to fill it with cartridges. Also, when you buy a high capacity magazine, there won’t be any cartridges in it. You have to buy those separately. I know, I know, I am nitpicking here, but if your organization is suppose to “educate” people then you open yourself up to nitpicking when you are wrong.

And the number of bullets can be anywhere from say well six is considered rather standard
Actually, there is no such thing as a universal standard. Some handguns have a standard magazine capacity (assuming that a standard magazine fits completely – or nearly completely – into the grip) of 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17. Its all a function of the cartridge size, grip width, and grip length. For the most popular sizes of handgun (.380, 9 mm, .40, .45) very few can be purchased with a OEM 6 round capacity or less magazine. For rifles and shotguns it gets even more complicated.

Tubular magazines may hold only two or three rounds, but that is usually because there is a plug taking up the extra space. Why the plug? Because many state laws limit the amount of ammunition loaded into a firearm while hunting. I don’t hunt, so any firearm I own currently or in the future would have such ridiculousness removed so that I can have the maximum designed capacity or greater. Anything less just means I need to reload more when I go to the range. Standard tubular magazines can fit as many cartridges as will fit along the length of the barrel.  For a .22 Short, this could be upwards of 20 rounds is an off the shell rifle.

For detachable magazines, the options are nearly limitless (and the standard magazine that is purchased with a firearm is likewise nearly limitless). For instance, the standard image one has of the Tommy Gun is probably with a 50 or 75 round drum magazine.

and that’s basically around the capacity that hunters use.
No, not really. That’s what SOME hunter’s use because they are limited by state laws. And in a lot of cases, hunter's only need one round (particularly if you hunt with a muzzle loader). In some places (or with some calibers), there are no such limits. For instance, there are crazy people who hunt hogs or bears or other wildlife with handguns that have capacities of more than 6 rounds. This is far more sporting than using a rifle at 300 yards, but in this case “more sporting” to me also means more insane. Our primate hunting instincts and skills long since were discarded on our evolutionary journey to the top of the food chain. In any case, hunters use magazines with less than six rounds because A) they only plan on taking 1 shot or B) state law limits them to less than six rounds.  The firearm still works the same way with 7-30 rounds in it.

High capacity is considered generally anything above six rounds of bullets as you see in this picture here, in the magazine.
Um, actually, the only time that high capacity magazine was defined in federal legislation (1994 Assault Weapons Ban) the cutoff was set at 10 rounds. More than 10 rounds was considered “high” capacity.  New York has now defined it as 7 rounds.  But other states have defined it as 15 rounds or 20 rounds, so even the various governments who believe in high capacity magazine limits haven't come to a consensus as to how many that is.
The capacity can go up to 20 rounds, 30 rounds, 40.
I know, isn’t it great! And then if you have a belt-fed weapon it has the same effect of having a 100, 200, 500, 1000 or more round magazine. So, if great hunters only use 1 shot per trip, why have 20, 30, or 40 round magazines? Because everyone who shoots is not a great hunter, or even a hunter period. As mentioned before, “high” capacity magazines allow me to reload less at the range.

This is an example of a magazine in an assault pistol.
And this is an example of a cute cuddly sidearm. See its pink!

An assault rifle generally has a magazine that hangs down
Unless it comes out the side, or the top, or contained within the pistol grip, or is belt fed like I mentioned above. All of these configurations have their advantages and disadvantages. All of them have varying capacities.

and ones that we have seen in photos from the Iraq war we see a lot of soldiers with them
That is because soldiers shoot their guns a lot in combat (just like I shoot my guns a lot at the range – except that I am not trying to kill anyone and no one is shooting back). So it would make no sense to reload after six rounds. These photos are not limited to the Iraq War. Any war since the beginning of the 20th Century has featured “high” capacity magazines (they have also featured a lot of “low” capacity magazines).

you generally will see what folks call banana clips sometimes they’ll use that expression.
Well, if we are talking about third world nations, former eastern bloc countries, communist countries, or terrorists then yes. The “banana clip” (it is really a magazine, not a clip) is a unique feature of the AK-47 and its 7.62 x 39mm derivatives because…..

Because as the number of bullets increase, the magazine kind of comes around in a curved shape.
Actually, it has nothing to do with the number of cartridges (not bullets). It has to do with the geometry of the cartridge. Most cartridges are straight walled (i.e. the shell is cylindrical). The 7.62x39mm round is tapered (i.e. the shell is conical). The 5.56 round used in the M-16 is straight walled. Sometimes, on their magazines, there will be a slight angle. This angle serves no function in regards to the ammunition, although it may aid when using the magazine as a grip. Personally, I think the designers were just jealous with the total coolness of the AK-47 and wanted to pretend that their weapon was just as cool. Its not. Face it, for all of its backwardness, some good things came out of the Soviet Union. They are primarily limited to the AK-47 and Anna Kournikova. (The Mosin-Nagant was developed in Tsarist Russian so it doesn’t count).

There are also round magazines that can hold even greater than 50 rounds.
These are properly called drum magazines. Having cartridges stacked up in a magazine has practical limits to the amount you can put in. A drum uses a spiral or circular spring to put 50, 75, 100, or 150 rounds in a fairly compact package. For more than this, you basically have to go the belt-fed route.

And the reason that these are so dangerous is that as the Long Island Railroad Shooter showed,
No, the Long Island Railroad Shooter was dangerous, irrespective of whether he had a gun in his hand or a Molotov cocktail or a pipe bomb (of course then he wouldn’t be called a shooter, but a bomber or an arsonist – either way, he is still a murderer).

when you put a high capacity magazine in a gun you can just keep firing.
…Until your cartridges run out, in which case you need to reload.

It makes it much more difficult for Law Enforcement to take the person down
What makes it difficult for shooters bent on mass murder to be taken down by law enforcement is not the “high” capacity magazine of the shooter, its that the law enforcement personnel are not there when the shooting starts (and usually not there for several minutes after the shooting starts).  Gun Free Zones make it more difficult to take a shooter down.

and we end with tragically many more victims when high capacity magazines are used.

Depending on how you define “high” capacity. Using the AWB definition of 10 rounds as the cutoff most mass shootings were accomplished with low capacity magazines. Even when a weapon was used that had a "high capacity" magazine (such as Aurora, Newtown, or Virginia Tech), the shooter also used another weapon which did not have a "high capacity" magazine.  In most of these mass shootings, the perpetrator had several (in some cases dozens) of magazines and did frequent reloads to the point that even though a "high capacity" magazine may have been used, it was reloaded before being fully expended. In other words, a low capacity magazine could have been substituted just as easily.
So when the Assault Weapons Ban expired in the United States in ’04, the ban on high capacity magazines also expired.
Of course, the ban didn’t actually ban the magazines. It just banned the manufacture of new magazines. All of the old magazines were still legal to own, sell, and use. 

So it’s only in a few localities where that ban exists.
Massachusetts and New York have been known recently as the keepers of Liberty. Oh wait, I was thinking about the beginning of the country. Recently, Massachusetts and New York have been the epitome of the nanny state.  Unsuprisingly, comparing crime in areas that have the ban and don't have the ban has shown that it has done nothing to decrease crime or mass shootings.

So in most of the United States it is now legal to purchase high capacity magazines.
It’s also legal to purchase “high” capacity gasoline vehicles. You don’t even need a driver’s license to go fill up two five gallon gas cans. Flour is sold in 50 lb bags to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Matches are given away like candy. Bleach and Ammonia can be found in most every grocery store in the US and aren’t even in locked cabinets (in most cases there isn’t even a foil seal on them).

And this is good, because a criminal justice system that is focused on the object rather than the person will provide little justice and breed more criminals.

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