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One of the "assault weapon" limitations under re-examination is an arbitrary ten-round limit on magazine capacity. The presumption is that this will constrain massacres by forcing the barbarians to reload more.
Bullshit.
If a lunatic is going to fire 300 rounds into a crowd of victims, it doesn't matter whether he has to reload 10 times or 30 times in the process. The net effect is the same. He controls the area. He's not facing resistance (notice how few of these mass shootings happen in a place where resistance is likely?). He's not on a clock in which seconds (or fractions of a second) matter. Police response time is likely to be measured in minutes.
A situation in which the need to reload does matter is when a single defender is facing multiple aggressors - and two-legged predators do travel in packs. Guns aren't magic wands. A determined attacker often needs to receive multiple hits before he ceases his attack. Stopping to reload presents a vulnerability which surviving attackers can and will exploit. Thus, magazine capacity limits serve not to deter criminal acts, but to limit the individual citizen's self-defense capabilities.
Bullshit.
If a lunatic is going to fire 300 rounds into a crowd of victims, it doesn't matter whether he has to reload 10 times or 30 times in the process. The net effect is the same. He controls the area. He's not facing resistance (notice how few of these mass shootings happen in a place where resistance is likely?). He's not on a clock in which seconds (or fractions of a second) matter. Police response time is likely to be measured in minutes.
A situation in which the need to reload does matter is when a single defender is facing multiple aggressors - and two-legged predators do travel in packs. Guns aren't magic wands. A determined attacker often needs to receive multiple hits before he ceases his attack. Stopping to reload presents a vulnerability which surviving attackers can and will exploit. Thus, magazine capacity limits serve not to deter criminal acts, but to limit the individual citizen's self-defense capabilities.