- Point out that we already had a federal, nationwide ban on these magazines. It lasted ten years, and not one trustworthy study could prove that the ban on high capacity magazines had any measurable effect on violent crime at all. Ten years, and there was not one single shred of proof that the law did anything.
Come on, now. Tell the whole truth, not just the parts you like. It was never a true ban mor anything close. It was PR and both sides knew it could not work.
Citizens were banned from purchasing new magazines, by any honest metric, that's a ban. That previously existing magazines were grandfathered in only goes to show that those who drafted the ban recognized the futility in trying to round them up.
- There was a year or so before this 'ban' went into effect. Manufacturers ran overtime flooding the market with mags before they had to quit. Millions of them. Because...
- All existing mags were exempt. Between this provision and the market flooding above, there were so many around the whole 10 years that the prices didn't even go up much, except for new some new models. They were never hard to find or buy. legally.
Regardless of whether it's pot, cold medicine, or Glock magazines, market forces will soften the impact of any attempt to implement such a ban. Attempting to implement yet another ban would only cause yet higher demand for >10 magazines.
-If they still insist that a ban is a good idea, ask them to explain how a new ban would work when the old one clearly did not.
Easy. Outlaw them all, old and new. A fine and loss of 2A rights will do it. Give a grace period to procure legal 10 rd. replacements. Granting that nothing works perfectly, that will work.
Easy? Really? How do you propose we contact 40 million+ American gun owners to demand that they turn in every single >10 rd. magazine that they might own?
-Point out that high-capacity magazines are small items, about the size of a candy bar, and they're practically untraceable. Ask them how they would plan to keep people from importing magazines, buying them on the secondary market, or making them.
Easy again. If they're all illegal, with a fine and loss of gun rights attached, all law-abiding folk, and most criminals with any sense, will get rid of theirs 'cause it simply isn't worth the risk to keep them.
So, the proposal would require a felony conviction and fine for anyone caught with such a magazine, even if it happens to have been inadvertently overlooked in the initial turn-in because it was sitting at the bottom of a box in some dusty corner of a basement?
Regardless of whether someone thinks high-cap mags should be legal or not, if they're the least bit reasonable, they will recognize how this is fundamentally unfair and unenforceable.
Also, for every old geezer arrested because he had an M1 carbine magazine he forgot about, you're going to expend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars convicting and incarcerating him. In a bad economy those sorts of costs would be unjustifiable.
Also, the argument over-estimates the odds that criminals would abide by the law, even assuming they were aware of it.
-Point out that tens of millions of these magazines are already in private hands in this country. Ask them to explain whether or not they would be willing to arrest, try, and imprison someone simply for owning such an item.
No need. Law abiding folks won't run the risk as long as there is a legal, satisfactory (to them) alternative. Most of those few who remain probably belong in prison.
It won't be "those few." It will be "tens of millions." Anyone who would advocate for the incarceration of these people should be mocked for their fundamentally authoritarian world view.
-Furthermore, ask them if imprisoning someone for simple possession of a plastic tube with a spring in it is a reasonable use of the already strained and overextended resources of the American judicial system.
Please. We imprison folks for the simple posession of harmless chemicals, for speech we don't like, and all manor of other goofy stuff. High cap magazine bans won't excite anybody save a very very few hard-cores. They will be no need for prison and no problem.
Anyone who would try to favorably compare a magazine ban to the war on drugs is going to lose that argument immediately. Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars, interdiction efforts all over the world, the continual erosion of civil liberties in the name of safety, and the highest incarceration numbers of any first world nation, the entire weight of the US federal government still hasn't found a way to keep 15 year olds from getting high.
Calling them a 'plastic tube with a spring' is deceptive and we need to be honest.
Breaking the object down into it's core components
is honest. The average magazine has less than a half-dozen parts, all of them easily fabricated. Pointing out what a magazine is made of simply helps to de-mystify what the thing actually is, and highlights the silliness of trying to prohibit the ownership of an item made of thoroughly non-exotic components.
We are in a weak position on this issue, blowing smoke doesn't help.
I disagree. We aren't in a weak position, and the presented counter arguments only serve to highlight this. In order to well and truly institute an effective ban on high cap magazines, it would require governmental effort and expenditure on par with the war on drugs, as well as yet more relinquishment of civil rights above and beyond those enumerated in the 2nd Amendment.
Not even Paul Helmke would try to make such an argument.
