Arguments against banning hi-cap mags

[monotonous_iterancy]

In the wake of the tragedy in Colorado, we're already hearing calls to ban things like drum magazines, hi-cap mags, and "things like that". I don't think that they really have enough weight to actually do anything legislative wise, but as for family and friends who say things like this, what do I say to that? I have arguments against banning guns, but not so much for accessories. All I can think of is "drum magazines are novelties that aren't very reliable, and that making a law based on the actions of one nut-job is a bad way to make laws, compared to how many people have these things and never commit crimes."

Are there any good arguments to use against the idea that accessories should be restricted? What do I say when someone says that "only the police should have them, and civilians have no real reason for having one." ?

 

[Texan Scott]

The trap is that answering the question "why should I" accepts the question as appropriate. The question to answer is "What good would banning them do?" How much sense does it make to say that you'd trust a man with a 10-shot firearm, but 11 makes him dangerous? If I have a .40 Glock 22 with three magazines, I have 45+1 rounds, correct? Would being limited to 30+1 make me less dangerous? (Does having 45+1 make me more likely to commit criminal violence?)

ETA: By even agreeing to CONSIDER the issue, we fall into the trap of regulating the object instead of the user.

 

[carbine85]

If you give a little they take a lot. Someone will always be pushing for more. The best option right now is not to argue the point, emotions are too high.

 

[pat701]

Why should 300,000,000 citizens be banned from hi-cap mag because of one nut case. 2 gallons of gasoline in the side door of the theater would have killed just as many, using tear gas as he did. I am a retired Chicago Police Officer 30 yrs on job. We have/had a hand gun ban for all residents of Chicago because 2% of the residents are gang bangers. The state of Ill has no carried conceal because of that same 2% of Chicago's population. So now the whole state of Illinois suffers with no CCW permits. Why should the many be punished for the very few, (way less then 1%) in our nation?

 

[Jnitti1014]

You have to make the argument personal to them. Why does anyone "need" a vehicle that exceeds the 60 mph speed limit? Doesn't speed kill, let's make all the cars limited to 60 mph. Does anyone "need" alcohol? Doesn't drunk driving kill a lot of people? Who "needs" a swimming pool? Statistically they kill more kids than firearms. You get the picture.

 

[justice06rr]

There really isn't a good arguement for lawmakers to further ban Hi-cap mags. A high-capacity magazine does NOT make you a criminal; its a person's actions that does.

People who are fear firearms will always have these crazy unreasonable arguements. Does a 600hp car make you break the speed limit? No, it is the driver/individual alone who is responsible for his own actions. It doesn't mean that high-powered vehicles need to be banned, for the same reasons as high-cap mags

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

Handicapping the law abiding with reduced capacity magazines does nothing. Ever seen someone who's practiced change a mag? Takes no time at all. The only time you can have "too much ammo" is when drowning.
Tell them they can only put 10 gallons of gas in their car at a time. Inconvenient? Exactly.

 

[EddieNFL]

Even limited to ten rounds you st5ill have guys that can do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMm9guIzU-s

 

[nosmr2]

I think that guy ^^^ is supposed to be doing laundry, not practicing.

 

[Justin]

There are a number of reasons for why a new ban on so-called "high capacity" magazines is a bad idea.

The biggest reason? Such a ban was in place for ten years from 1994-2004, and there is not one reputable study that has demonstrated that the ban had any effect whatsoever in bringing down the rate of violent crime. While correlation certainly doesn't equal causation, after the ban sunset in 2004, violent crime has continued to drop.

Hundreds of millions of such magazines are already in private hands, and, short of instituting a full-on police state, there's no way you would be able to gather up even a fraction of them. Trying to ban these magazines would be like trying to ban iPods, it would be completely futile.

Even if an effective magazine ban could be put in place, it would not stop spree killers. In response, they would do one of two things: reload the gun, which takes two seconds, max, or change their tactics to account for the lack of magazine capacity, and either institute their killings at longer ranges, or employ alternative methods of murder. In the case of the Aurora shooter, much as I hate to say it, he's quite intelligent, and if he had wanted to take out a theater full of people, he could have just as easily used explosives as guns.

A ban on magazines would be pointless, as tens of millions of law-abiding US citizens own them, and it would be completely idiotic to further burden an already creaking justice system with prosecutions against citizens whose only crime is owning one or more of these magazines.

 

[Skribs]

The trap is that answering the question "why should I" accepts the question as appropriate.

The people who are really asking the question believe the question is appropriate. Not the OP, but the antis who want to ban "assault clips."

Others have pointed out, bans on high-cap mags means the BGs will adapt by:
1) reloading
2) using explosives or other means of attack
3) using longer range weapons

Remember, the absolute worst terrorist attack commited in the US did not use guns. It used box cutters and jumbo jets. Banning 11+ round mags doesn't prevent terrorism.

 

[Shovelhead]

I chose my sig line a couple of shootings ago.

 

[Mastrogiacomo]

The reality is that most of these events are more about mental health than they are about guns. This young man clearly had mental health issues that were ignored for years. His mother knew the breaking story was her child and there was no real information in the news at that moment, still she knew it was her son. How does this young man set explosives around his house, and his neighbors don't see anything he's doing as odd, carrying all this stuff in? His classmates, school, family, knew his behavior was off - Hell the gun club where he tried to get membership in didn't want him because he was strange. People saw this coming but did nothing to try and get a psyh hold on him.

Years ago, a director's son drove his car into a crowd trying to kill people. No one said, "Let's ban BMWs," or "Let's ban movies." Guns are always an easy scapegoat. They don't realize that people Hell bent on hurting others will find a way. Remember the stabbing at the last Olympics? A Chinese man wielding a knife in Beijing stabbed a Western couple, killing the father in law of one of the coaches. Why not the outrage about knives? In this past year there's been so many stories of men bursting into schools and slitting the throats of Chinese children, it seems the country can barely contain it's nut cases. These stories don't make a dent in this country but they prove that if you get rid of guns - the violence doesn't go away.

Laura

 

[happygeek]

Banning the mere possession of 30 round mags makes about as much sense as banning liquor that's over 30 proof or banning marijuana. Of course we haven't let that stop us in the past.

 

[AlexanderA]

Regardless of the merits of "hi-cap" mags, I think the strongest argument against trying to regulate them is this: the horse has already fled the barn. That is, there are probably a million of them out there. If you "grandfather" the existing ones, all you do is drive up the price. If you try to ban them entirely without a grandfather clause, you'll have massive noncompliance and the law itself will held in contempt. We should have learned our lesson with alcohol Prohibition.

 

[Nico Testosteros]

I totally agree. The first ban didnt work or really limit anything, how would a 2nd after the production and distribution of millions of mags and guns do anything?

 

[monotonous_iterancy]

^^ Wouldn't banning them without a grandfather clause be an ex-post facto law?

 

[beatledog7]

A government ban of anything is a step toward a government ban of something else, and so on and so on. That's tyranny.

 

[hso]

Point out that it jammed so the mag failure helped save lives.

 

[AlexanderA]

Wouldn't banning them without a grandfather clause be an ex-post facto law?

The ex post facto law clause of the Constitution applies only to criminal penalties. (Making an act criminal, that was not criminal at the time the act was committed.) A confiscation could be set up so that it would be a civil forfeiture, and it would operate prospectively, that is, to magazines possessed after a certain date. If you don't turn them in, then that would be the criminal act. The "just compensation" clause of the Constitution wouldn't apply, either, because this wouldn't be a taking "for public use." The Second Amendment argument would depend on whether limiting magazine capacity would be a "reasonable regulation" under Scalia's opinion in the Heller case, and also on whether hi-cap magazines were "in common use" in a self-defense setting.

 

[husbandofaromanian]

Here's my argument against a high-cap mag ban:
If all existing high-cap magazines where banned AND most citizens turned their high-cap magazines in AND all of this passed a challenge to the Supreme Court, this would only slightly slow down a massacre by a phsyco not stop it.

 

[monotonous_iterancy]

^^ I just learned about civil forfeiture today. What exactly makes that concept legal?

 

[Neverwinter]

The reality is that most of these events are more about mental health than they are about guns. This young man clearly had mental health issues that were ignored for years. His mother knew the breaking story was her child and there was no real information in the news at that moment, still she knew it was her son. How does this young man set explosives around his house, and his neighbors don't see anything he's doing as odd, carrying all this stuff in? His classmates, school, family, knew his behavior was off - Hell the gun club where he tried to get membership in didn't want him because he was strange. People saw this coming but did nothing to try and get a psyh hold on him.

Years ago, a director's son drove his car into a crowd trying to kill people. No one said, "Let's ban BMWs," or "Let's ban movies." Guns are always an easy scapegoat. They don't realize that people Hell bent on hurting others will find a way. Remember the stabbing at the last Olympics? A Chinese man wielding a knife in Beijing stabbed a Western couple, killing the father in law of one of the coaches. Why not the outrage about knives? In this past year there's been so many stories of men bursting into schools and slitting the throats of Chinese children, it seems the country can barely contain it's nut cases. These stories don't make a dent in this country but they prove that if you get rid of guns - the violence doesn't go away.

Laura

This.
It's like buying new ammo because your gas system is misconfigured.

 

[leadcounsel]

I've been having this argument with a really intelligent but overly emotional person.

Remember:
1. We are a free society and with great freedom comes great individual responsibility
2. Each time we ban something, we create criminals from otherwise non-criminals. And banning more 'things' doesn't really address the 'problem.'
3. Criminals, real hardened criminals, don't care about 'bans' or the 'law.' Let's not forget that if a person like this Joker killer cared about the law, he wouldn't have shot people and killed people. Does anyone honestly think that he would have been deterred in any way with lower capacity magazines? No of course not. He could have easily used several lower capacity magazines and reloaded.
4. Criminals can obtain ANYTHING. We outlaw cocaine and other hard drugs, hand grenades, and all sorts of other things, and yet they still find a way.
5. IF we were to outlaw XYZ item, they would just use something else, like a hunting rifle. Then what, we ban those 'dangerous hunting rifles' because who needs to hunt these days??

 

[coalman]

It's an idealogical debate. And, fear plays a part on both sides. Politics, too. There is not a universal ethically, morally or scientifically single right answer. So, each opinion is personal and will vary. The concept behind "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is the still the most correct argument IMO and it remains just as ineffective as it always has and will. Good luck explaining the 75-100rd drum regardless.