There's nothing in the text of the Second Amendment or the national tradition of gun ownership and regulation to suggest that modern day bans on "large capacity" magazines are constitutional, so judges have had to get pretty creative in order to uphold them. They've declared that magazines aren't arms protected by the Second Amendment and that magazines are not necessary components of a firearm. They've also suggested (as have anti-gun politicians) that no one needs to have X number of rounds available for self-defense; usually while pointing to a bogus study that purpotedly found the average defensive gun use involves fewer than three rounds being fired.
The Constitutional case against magazine bans is clear, but they're also a bad idea from a common sense standpoint. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the average defensive gun use does involve three pulls of the trigger. Who can guarantee that when we need to use one of our guns in self-defense, it will be an "average" situation?
A recent case out of Pennsylvania is a perfect example of why you should be able to easily access as many rounds of ammunition as possible when defending your life.
A woman in Brownsville called police when 69-year-old Ronald Rosiak allegedly began pounding on her door late Tuesday night, but before state troopers could arrive the suspect allegedly used a brick to bust the glass on her front door and made his way inside the home and up to her bedroom.
When the woman told Rosiek to leave, he advanced toward her, police said. In response, she shot him in the right upper leg with a .38 Special Taurus revolver.
She fired another four shots as he kept moving forward, one of which hit him in the right side of his head, the complaint said.
The woman told police Rosiek chased her to the second-floor bathroom, preventing her from shutting the door.
By that time, she was out of ammunition. Police said Rosiek forced the woman onto the ground, pulling out some of her hair and injuring her arms, back and neck.
Rosiek then held the woman down and tried to cover her face with fabric, according to court documents.
Thankfully, the woman was able to wiggle her way free and ran downstairs to find officers at the door. Rosiek was taken into custody and flown to a hospital in Pittsburgh for treatment of his injuries. There's no word on the extent of the injuries the armed citizen suffered, but thankfully they don't appear to be life threatening.
Though Rosiek was shot multiple times, he was still able to pursue the woman as she fled her bedroom, and he actually managed to tackle her and try to kill her. At that point, the woman's revolver had become nothing more than a small club, since she was out of ammunition and couldn't reload.
I'm a firm believer in carrying what you're comfortable with, but this incident does demonstrate the main drawback of a revolver as a self-defense tool; the limited amount of ammunition that's available to you when your life is on the line. Five shots clearly wasn't enough to stop Rosiek. Maybe a semi-automatic handgun with a 10-round magazine would have done the trick, but I'm guessing that in the moment the victim here would have preferred to have as large a magazine as possible.
As gun owners, we don't plan for an "average" defensive gun use. We have to assume and prepare for the worst. What if Rosiek had an accomplice with him that night? Would even ten rounds have been enough for this woman against multiple intruders intent on harming her?
When your life is in danger, you shoot to stop the threat. In some situations, one round may be all that's necessary, but again, there's no guarantee that will be the case. It's far better to have rounds that aren't needed than to need rounds you don't have.
There's a reason we're not using single-shot pistols for self-defense, and its the same reason why we've gone from cap-and-ball pistols to repeating revolvers to semi-automatic firearms with detachable magazines. When it comes to capacity, "more is better" has been the guiding philosophy of gun makers and gun owners for hundreds of years. That is part of the national tradition of gun ownership in the United States, while placing arbitrary limits on the number of rounds available to use in self-defense is a thoroughly modern creation of the gun control lobby and their political allies.
