The myth of the high capacity gun magazine

NBC News personality, David Gregory got into a little hot water Sunday, when he displayed a 30 round capacity magazine while interviewing NRA President , Wayne LaPierre. Oooh. That's a big no-no as Washington D.C. outlawed gun magazines that are capable of holding more than 10 rounds. Mr. Gregory could be in some trouble as NBC claims the magazine wasn't purchased on their behalf for the news show. Is it his own magazine? David is not very pro-gun. So where did he get the magazine? Is it his own? Did he buy it "hot" from the streets. He got some splain'in to do. But I doubt a good liberal like David Gregory will get into much trouble. Somehow he'll walk away from this without even a slap on the wrists. But the bigger question here is about the high capacity magazine itself.

30 rounds. Who needs 30 rounds readily available, right? Well, in places like D.C., N.Y. and California, magazine capacities are regulated and may not exceed 10 rounds. That should be much safer. The logic being employed here is that some nut job couldn't be able to reek as much havoc with magazines that held less ammunition. As a semi-automatic gun owner whose gun magazines hold 15 rounds, I can assure you that I and most people could fire the 15 rounds, eject the empty magazine, reload another magazine and fire an additional 15 rounds in under 20 seconds. 25 seconds on a bad day. The difference is that I as a responsible gun owner am no threat to anyone not threatening me. A misguided nut job can inflict mayhem with one 30 round mag or two 15 round clips. If you think even a 15 round mag is unwarranted, then how about a 10 round one? The time it takes to empty three 10 round mags is longer - but not by much. Perhaps we should max out magazine capacity at 6, like the ol' six shooters of old West. Then again, maybe single shot muskets would be safer yet. Of course we won our Independence from a major world power using muskets, so perhaps they're too lethal as well.

The amount of rounds readily available in any firearm is inconsequential. Its the person using the firearm that matters most. Robert Kennedy was slain with a eight shot capacity .22 caliber gun. His brother, Jack with a 5 round bolt action (non semi-automatic) rifle (Only 3 shots were actually fired). Abraham Lincoln with a single shot Derringer. Martin Luther King died at the hands of a relatively small caliber "pump action" rifle. While large capacity magazines get a lot of attention, they are seldom used in robberies, home invasions or most criminal activities. The tragedy in Connecticut was an exception. Tragic, yes. But still the exception. over 400 people have been murdered in Chicago this year. None by high capacity magazine guns. The criminal element prefers smaller capacity handguns. So-called assault weapon inflicted deaths account for less than 2% of the total gun related deaths. So why is such attention given to what is obviously a minor role player in gun related deaths?

Well, large capacity magazines are scary. And an argument as to who may actually need one is an easy to make - just like a scary looking rifle some insist calling a scary name like "assault" rifle. If you're looking to make inroads into eventually disarming America, you start with the easy low hanging fruit. Once you can ban one type of gun or one kind of magazine, the ball is easier to keep rolling. Next will be certain types of handguns. Certain kinds of rifles, so on and so on. Then one day you wake up and the Feds tell you how long your butter knives are allowed to be. Yeah, it may sound ridiculous. But so is the myth that says we'll all be safer with guns that carry less than 10 rounds.

Amid tragedy, the anti-gun lobby promotes a misguided agenda.

 

 

A madman. Mentally sick perhaps. But definitely a madman. One can only imagine the mind that would plan an attack upon the most innocent of us. 28 people murdered. 20 of them children, their lives snuffed out far too soon. What could motivate someone to such a heinous act? We may never know. In the days and weeks that follow, more information will become available. Though nothing that is learned will change the events and loss of today. And nothing learned will make a bit of sense - because nothing learned could ever validate the act. His motivation known only to him.

It didn't take long for the anti-gun lobby to use this tragedy to advance their agenda. Already they call for more gun control. More limits on weapon purchases. More limits on how much ammunition can be bought. More limits on concealed-carry permits. More this, more that. But nothing they propose would make any difference because nothing they propose will limit evil acts by evil persons - motivated by thoughts so unfathomable, good people could not imagine them. While true, a gun can inflict more damage than most other weapons, more children die each year in the United States by drowning in backyard pools. Yet I hear no outrage that suggests banning pools or at the very least, limiting how much water can be introduced into a pool, or how many pools an individual can purchase in a given month. More children will die in car accidents this year than by guns - far more. And sadly, more children will die this year at the hands of their parents. And in the overwhelming majority of those cases, death wont be administered by a gun. Then why the preoccupation with firearms?

The right to bear arms is sacred. The founding fathers thought so highly of it, they place it only second behind the right to free speech in our constitution. They understood the necessity of a free people to be able to defend themselves against a criminal element and a tyrannical government. In fact, Thomas Jefferson said should he have only one option - he'd choose the right to bear arms over the right to free speech - knowing that the second amendment could secure the first, but not the other way around.

Disturbed individuals will perform disturbing acts. These acts will occur with or without the aid of a firearm. The Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 took 168 lives. Yet no gun was employed in the tragedy. A rental truck and fertilizer did the deed. Evil, deranged individuals will find inventive ways to reek pain and destruction. In 1978, Reverend Jim Jones was the author of 914 deaths by suicide, 200 were children. They willingly followed a madman into death. In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her 5 children in the family bathtub. In 1994, Susan Smith drowned her own kids by driving her car into a lake, falsely claiming she was carjacked. And these are the high profile cases we've heard about. Many more never get national or international acclaim but their acts are just as shocking and gruesome.

 Professor Emeritus James Q. Wilson, the UCLA public policy expert, says: "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond 100,000 uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as 2 1/2 or 3 million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number. Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney David P. Koppel studied gun control for the Cato Institute. Citing a 1979-1985 study by the National Crime Victimization Survey, Koppel found: "When a robbery victim does not defend himself, the robber succeeds 88 percent of the time, and the victim is injured 25 percent of the time. When a victim resists with a gun, the robbery success rate falls to 30 percent, and the victim injury rate falls to 17 percent. No other response to a robbery – from drawing a knife to shouting for help to fleeing – produces such low rates of victim injury and robbery success." Lesson learned? Bad guys don't like an armed populous.

In Pearl, Miss., a gunman who killed two students and wounded seven at a high school was stopped by an assistant principal, who rushed to his car and got his gun. The assistant principal, running back with his .45, spotted the rifle-carrying shooter in the parking lot. Ordering the teen to stop, the vice principal held his gun to the shooter's neck until police arrived.
 In Salt Lake City, a man purchased a knife in a grocery store, walked outside and stabbed and critically injured two men. He was threatening others, when a store patron with a concealed weapons permit drew his gun, forced the attacker to the ground and held him until police arrived.
 In Grundy, Va., a disgruntled student on the verge of his second suspension at Appalachian School of Law shot and killed the dean, a professor and a fellow student. Two students, both off-duty peace officers, ran to their cars, retrieved their guns and used them to halt the attack.
 No one knows whether Aurora would have turned out differently had there been an armed patron or two inside the theater. But at the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, where 32 people died, there was a no-guns policy – just as, apparently, at the movie theater in Aurora.

Most schools have a "no gun zone" policy and post signs that say so.  While that may seem to make sense, it doesn't. Crazy people bent on destruction don't give a damn about signs. Those signs just limit sane people from defending themselves and others. Over the next few weeks and months, we'll see proposed legislation at the state and federal level meant to keep us safe from gun related deaths. But what they will produce are new laws that law abiding citizens will be forced to follow and reject nut jobs will ignore. The new laws may make you feel safer but will have little positive effect except to disarm those who should remain armed and vigilant. As for me, I choose to remain armed. I use my firearm as I use my car insurance. I hope never to use or need it. But would not think of moving through life without it.

Obama holds us all hostage. And the ransom is $80 billion

Unless you're living on the dark side of Saturn's moon, Titan - you must know that unless the President and congress agree to a new tax and revenue plan before the end of the year, all of our taxes will go up on January 1st. The President has laid out his plan. It calls for $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $80 billion in new stimulus spending in 2013, $600 billion in new spending programs and a clever budget gimmick that allows the administration to claim money NOT budgeted and NOT spent on the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan to be counted as "savings". In addition, the Emperor er, uh President wants congress to give up their constitutional power to authorize a debt ceiling limit, so he may spend monies above what congress authorizes. Constitution? He don't need no stinking Constitution. I'll say this for the guy - he's got balls.

The big sticking point for Obama appears to be on the tax hike for the top 2%. He wants to take their top tax rate up from 35% to 39%. Since nobody feels sorry for rich people who pay the majority of federal taxes, it hard to garner any sympathy for them. The top 1% pay 37% of the fed's tax bill. The top 5% pay 51%. Still, it's not enough for Barack. If their rates are returned to 39%, it would generate an extra $80 billion a year in federal taxes - roughly enough money to fund the federal government for a week. Hardly seems worth sending us over the cliff for a lousy $80 billion. But Barry says he'll do it. So we're all in jeopardy of having our taxes go up over a stinkin' $80 billion. So what's that all about anyway?

Well, Mr. Obama knows that increasing taxes on the rich wont have any beneficial effect on the country's balance sheet. In fact, it will probably hurt employment opportunities, costing companies revenue. But he's all about "fairness". If I had a dollar for every time I heard him say the word fairness when describing taxes, I could afford to pay the budget deficit myself. He was re-elected on the "fairness platform" and now he's got to reward his legions by following through on that class warfare promise. In exchange for increasing taxes on he job creators, Obama has promised Republicans that he will maybe, probably, perhaps and most possibly make $400 billion in unspecified cuts somewhere down the road...perhaps. All while not addressing entitlement programs that currently have $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities - in other words, money that is promised to people alive today for Social Security and Medicare and other entitlement benefits. News flash: We don't have $60 trillion and neither do the top 2%. It's so bad that if the government confiscated ALL the wealth of people making over $250,000 a year, it would only fund government expenditures for 4 months. Perhaps now you can see how raising taxes on the top 1% or even the top 52% wont solve our financial problems.

The GOP wants to keep the middle class tax rates intact as well as the top 2%. They also want to eliminate numerous tax exemptions and loop holes in exchange for keeping the top rates where their at. In addition, they want to address the entitlement mess by raising Social Security & Medicare eligibility ages for future retirees - just like the President's bipartisan Bowles-Simpson plan suggested. The Republicans also want to lower benefits for the wealthy and possibly employ means testing for the rich in an effort to extend the viability of those programs. You'd think Obama would embrace an offer like that, seeing how he hates the well-to-do so much. But no. He's got his sights on that not-so-massive $80 billion in extra revenue.

This tax situation has exposed Barack Obama to all those who are willing to open their eyes. He has no plan to preserve Social Security and Medicare for future retirees. No new ideas on how to resurrect a stagnant economy unless you like wasting more borrowed money for stimulus. Demonize the rich and play to the poor. Tax more. Spend even more. If this is what you voted for last month - you're an idiot. Sorry. Your class warfare plans won an election but cannot salvage a national fiscal nightmare. Maybe electing a guy who actually had a successful history in business would have been a better choice after all. Even though he was rich.