Why so many rounds in the magazine? I’m not talking of SWAT team members or LEOs who may find themselves at anytime under fire from multiple armed ne’er-do-good, but of the guns used as daily ballast in the waistband by Joe-you-and-me.
My thoughts are that for the realistic threat faced by the vast majority of us, non-professionally involved in violent action, there are more disadvantages than advantages to the trend of more-is-better.
High capacity magazines are heavy, and add a lot of bulk to handguns’ grips. So much so that many, if not most, people prefer the feel of a single-stack to that of any double-stack - but they still get a double-stack...
I’m wondering because I’ve spent quite some time trotting across the wilderness, chasing critters sized like a small bungalow, and as friendly as an escaped lifer high on PCP. In my nick of the woods, we do so with bolt action rifles having a magazine capacity of three to five rounds. Some even elicit to use double barrel rifles with the grand total of two (2) rounds before a cumbersome reload. The logic behind the double is that it’s faster than any bolt for the second shot, and if a problem happens and you don’t sort it in two rounds, you’re dead anyway.
The speed at which events unfold out there is such that there is no time for spray-and-pray, and no scope either: if you shoot “center of mass or thereabout”, you’re not going to stop anything coming for you, and whatever you’re shooting at will mash you into a pink frothy pulp before it even starts feeling dizzy.
The only way to terminate an attack with immediate effect is to switch off the control panel, which means a direct hit to the brain - preferably the brain stem, or the highest part of the spinal cord. This is achieved with aimed shots. When two tons or more of pissed-off thing with sharp horns, teeth, or tusks is incoming at 20-30 miles per hour from fifty or even a hundred feet away, you have a couple of seconds to hit the right spot, three if you’re lucky. You hit it once, you’re good for a stiff one by the campfire in the evening. You miss it fifteen times, they’ll need a scraper to get you all in one heap before throwing you in the bed of the pickup.
It may be of passing interest to know that in Zimbabwe, the law states that the red line within which you can invoke self-defense for shooting a charging elephant is ten meters. Eleven yards. At 20 mph, do your maths - but hurry up...
Now, whether the critter stands on two legs or four, the general blueprint is the same: pump and piping outlay, electrical system, computer box, intake, air filters, exhaust, ball joints, suspensions. And gunfight after gunfight relentlessly hammers the point home: too many times, shooting “in the black” does not end a fight. One hit in the right place does.
So, watching videos of encounters where one or the other shooter empties fifteen rounds in one-and-a-half second in the general direction of whatever bothers him at the moment, I always think “Why the excitement, why not aim?”.
Sitting perilously at my desk, with the luxury of a rewind button, I play and replay, and still think “Why so many rounds?”
Could it be because the high capacity magazines have led people to rely on quantity instead of quality? Was it like that when the usual load was six in a wheelgun or seven in a 1911?
I’d be curious to hear from the old school guys around here...
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