What the gun prohibitionists won't tell you about magazine capacity limits

January 26, 7:31 PMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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Yesterday, I discussed the growing effort for a renewed ban of so-called "assault weapons."  Such bans invariably incorporate a limit on the magazine capacity--the now expired federal ban stipulated ten rounds as the acceptable limit.  The supposed rationale is that without "high capacity" (translation: normal capacity) magazines, a deranged killer will not be able to inflict as much carnage as he would if he had to reload more often.  That rationale ignores the fact that a skilled shooter can change magazines in an astonishingly short amount of time--see below: 

 Granted, Travis Tomasie is to most shooters what Lance Armstrong is to most cyclists, but the fact remains that with sufficient practice, anyone can learn to perform very quick magazine changes.

Actually, even if "limited" to a revolver, a skilled shooter will be able to spend a great deal more time shooting than reloading.  Enter Jerry Miculek: 

Again, Mr. Miculek combines DNA that most of us could only dream of, with untold thousands of hours of very hard work.  Again, though, the point is that the damage an armed man can inflict on unarmed victims has little to do with the amount of ammunition his firearm can hold.

Oh--have I mentioned that a study determined that the average number of rounds fired in a gun battle was 2.04 for a revolver, and 2.53 for a semi-automatic--regardless of magazine capacity (Michael McGonigal, John Cole, William Schwab, Donald Kauder, Michael Rotondo, Peter Angood, “Urban firearm deaths: A five-year perspective”, Journal of Trauma, 1993)?  How, exactly, would magazine capacity limits (even in the rather unlikely event that criminals would not find a way around them) save lives?

Fans of limits on magazine capacity wasted little time in jumping on the Virginia Tech atrocity to support their position.  Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who was so famously unfamiliar with just what she was trying to ban, introduced H.R. 1859 (a stand-alone magazine capacity limit, without the associated "assault weapon" ban) within hours of the massacre.  McCarthy and others blamed the expiration of the original federal AWB (with associated 10 round magazine capacity limit) for the number of deaths and woundings on that terrible day.

Last April, though, I discovered yet another flaw in that thinking, and I'll finish up here with the most important parts:

There are numerous problems with this argument, but perhaps the most telling (and one I don't remember seeing elsewhere), comes from simple mathematics. From the empty cartridge cases recovered at the scene, investigators determined that the VA Tech murderer fired 174 shots.

On Thursday, university officials let members of the news media tour Norris Hall, which has been locked since Cho fired 174 shots from two handguns in nine minutes in four classrooms.

To the uninitiated, this may seem an indication that he used specialized equipment, granting him what might sound like a great deal of firepower.

What that ignores, though, is the number of magazines he used--17.

Crime scene technicians recovered a total of 17 spent magazines of ammunition, the majority of which were for Mr. Cho’s 9-millimeter handgun, a law enforcement official said.

If he had started with rounds chambered in both his pistols, and 17 full magazines--even if they were limited to a capacity of 10 rounds, that would account for 172 of his 174 shots.

Do the citizen disarmament advocates claim that the carnage would have been materially reduced had he not been able to take those last two shots (one of which ended, albeit far too late, his miserable existence)? 

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