(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Size Matters, and In This Case Smaller Is Better [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-08 In 2019 in downtown Dayton, a gunman armed with an assault-style weapon and a 100-round drum magazine was able to fire off 41 shots in 32 seconds, ending when he was shot and killed by police. In his half-minute of work this lunatic shot more than two dozen people, killing nine of them. “If he was using a 30-round magazine, he would have to reload once,” said Richard Biehl, who was Dayton’s police chief at the time of the shooting. “A 15-round magazine, he would reload twice. That could be six lives saved in that particular incident. That’s why I think it matters.” Yes, in this case size matters. But, as with all issues around gun ownership and the Second Amendment in this country, the ludicrous proposition that regular citizens should be allowed to have weapons of war and their accessories is a heated debate. In the 30 seconds it takes a person to reload and shoot three 10-round magazines, someone with a 100-round magazine can shoot 100 bullets without reloading, the Washington Post reported in an extensive piece titled, “High-capacity-magazine bans could save lives. Will they hold up in court?” Numerous studies in recent years have found that laws restricting magazine sizes reduce casualties. One study analyzing nearly 30 years of data found that almost two-thirds of mass shootings with a least six fatalities involved magazines with more than 10 rounds -- and that the death tolls in those cases far exceeded the number of the fatalities in attacks with smaller magazines, according to the Post. The math is staggering and inarguable. The bigger the magazine, the more bullets a gunman can fire in less time. The fewer times he has to stop and reload, the less chances there are for his intended victims to flee or fight back. Yet, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have legislation in place limiting the size of magazines. One definition of a “high-capacity” magazine is any that holds more than 10 bullets. We’ll go with that one for this discussion. Not surprisingly, gun advocates are challenging these laws on courts. The issue could end up before our corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, where it’s conservative majority may have no problem with putting more of our lives in danger by ignoring common sense in favor of its biased interpretation of a constitution written centuries before high-capacity magazines – the choice of mass killers everywhere – even existed. I wonder if the justices would prefer whether a deranged gunman entering their courtroom brought with him a 10-round or a 100-round magazine. Maybe someone should ask them that. The gun folks claim the right to bear arms includes ammunition magazines. Of course, the Right has been lying about the Second Amendment for a long time. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger even said that the notion that the Second Amendment guaranteed an unlimited individual right to obtain guns “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups.” In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 vote in the case of District of Columbia. v Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense. However, what’s notable in this decision came from the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative hero who wrote in the majority opinion that the right to bear arms has limits. He said, “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” He added that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Like Rhode Island state Rep. Justine Caldwell told the Post: “Nobody has a constitutional right to a 100-round magazine.” Another argument from the gun lobby is that a citizen’s safety would be threatened if he was limited in the size of his weapon’s magazine, because it would limit his available firepower if he had to protect himself and others. Wow. Under that argument we should be allowed to carry any weapon we want: a machine gun, a bazooka, a flamethrower, because you never know what the bad guy might be packing. It’s true that, thankfully, there have been times when an armed individual has intervened to successfully stop a gunman. But does that happen enough to allow anyone to tote around as many bullets as they can? Lucy Allen, a former White House economist, looked at 700 cases published by the National Rifle Association about people using guns for self-defense between 2011 and 2017, the Post reported. She found that on average people fired a little more than two shots in self-defense. Many times, they never fired a shot. Someone fired more than 10 shots in just two cases. Let’s be honest here. The vast majority of the times that a good guy with a gun – especially one with no military or police experience – finds bullets whizzing by his head he’s understandingly going to be too busy trying to get himself and his loved ones to safety to strike up a Rambo pose and take out the assailant. Does it make sense that we should make it easier for mass killers to kill just in case a good guy with a gun happens to be in the area? Limiting the possible firepower of a madman makes more sense than making it easier for him to spray as many bullets as possible, in as short a time as possible, into an unsuspecting crowd on the hope that someone will shoot him before police arrive. You can read the post story here. When you think about it, a big magazine might seem like a reasonable remedy for men who tie their relationship with weapons to their manhood. After all, a typical 30-round magazine hanging out of the bottom of their rifle is about seven inches long. According to the website Healthline.com, the average length of an erect penis is between 5.1 and 5.5 inches. Vive la difference. Seriously, how many bullets do we need? There are an estimated 400 million guns in this country and millions of magazines that can hold at least 30 rounds, according to gun rights groups and court filings. For many modern gunmakers, the 30-round magazine is standard with AR-style rifles. The largest can hold 100 rounds or more, the Post reported. During the Vietnam War era, the military relied on 20-round magazines. Is the goal today self-defense or maximum carnage? Is it appeasing the gun fanatics for political purposes or dealing with our country’s staggering amount of gun deaths, including those of children? Look, we’re always going to have mass shootings, no matter what we do about out gun laws. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to mitigate the damage. There’s an opportunity here to save lives. Republicans like to talk about the lives lost via abortion. How about the lives lost because they have no interest in common-sense gun laws? Do the latter lives not count as much as the former? Or is it all about the politics. I think we all know the answer to that question. *** Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/8/2162801/-Size-Matters-and-In-This-Case-Smaller-Is-Better Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/