Magazine limits are security theater

I hadn’t thought of it this way before (even though he used my video to demonstrate his point) but he’s correct.

Why Magazine Limits Don’t Improve Security:

This video demonstrates what a practiced shooter can do with lower capacity magazines in short order. It should be quite clear that a high magazine capacity ban will do nothing to prevent a shooter of this skill level from wreaking significant havoc. Therefore, a high capacity magazine ban is nothing short of false sense of security– security theater.

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7 thoughts on “Magazine limits are security theater

  1. It is the first round in a firearm that I worry about, especially if someone is pointing a gun at me, not the 10th, 20th, or 30th.

    Tom Clancy had one of his characters summarize the situation thusly (I paraphrase): Imagine I’m pointing a gun at you. You get scared, right? Now imagine I take half the rounds out of the magazine, and point the gun at you again. Are you only half as scared?

  2. The other day I posted links to three news articles where people had tackled shooters before they had the chance to do much damage (I posted these as comments to Rolf’s post).

    One thing I noticed, in all three cases, the people attacked while the shooter was reloading.

    Does reloading allow others time to attack shooters? You have not explored this aspect of reloading.

  3. Whether someone can attack a shooter while reloading depends on several factors: the speed of the reload, the speed of the attacker, and the reaction time and state of mind of the unarmed attacker. Most people would not have the presence of mind to react to the reloading by attacking; the average person is usually somewhat in shock, and trying to find an escape rather than planning an attack and waiting for a lull in the shooting. That’s why people train.

  4. One of the things that surprised me about Aurora was that no one tried to tackle the shooter, even when he had a malfunction.

    That probably speaks to the chaos, but also belies the fact that attacking someone during a mag change is easily accomplished. There were military guys in the audience, and none of them felt they could make that attempt. I’m not close to being as proficient as Joe, and unless someone was within 10 feet, I seriously doubt they could get to me while I executed a mag change. And since the closest people are generally shot first, that is a low probability issue in the first place.

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