Rep. Carolyn Maloney Wants To Ban 'Machine Gun Magazines'

I love a good comedy. There’s something therapeutic about laughing. Unless, of course, what’s causing you to laugh is someone who has both the power and desire to take away your constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

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At that point, the laughing isn’t nearly as enjoyable, though still warranted.

After all, it’s amusing how people who don’t even know the nomenclature on firearms are such experts on what those guns can do and how deadly they are (emphasis mine).

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) called for a ban on “machine gun magazines” during a press conference Tuesday.

“If guns made this country safer, we would be the safest country on earth, but we are far from it,” Maloney told reporters outside of the U.S. Capitol Building.

The congresswoman, who represents New Yorkers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, called for a multi-pronged approach to gun control in the wake of the Feb. 14 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“We need to really act in a number of ways. We need to pass an assault weapon ban, we need to ban the massacre machine gun magazines, and we need comprehensive background checks,” she continued. “These are all bills and efforts that Democrats have supported.”

I’m going to guess she means what Democrats normally call high capacity magazines and what the rest of us just call “magazines.”

However, any restriction on magazine types is going to be pointless. For one, there are already tens of thousands of 30-round magazines floating around for the AR-15 alone. Many other weapons are going to be similar in nature. That genie is out of the bottle already, and it ain’t gonna go back in.

Furthermore, swapping out a magazine is a simple, quick process that takes mere seconds, even in non-experienced hands. It won’t make a lot of difference if it’s after ten rounds or 30, it’ll still happen and happen quickly.

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This isn’t the Old West where rounds had to be added in one at a time. Modern-day firearms simply don’t require that kind of a slow reload. Even revolvers can be reloaded quickly, although not necessarily as quickly as a magazine change.

These attempts to ban magazines holding a few more rounds than some people might like are routine at this point, but they’re also futile. The previous assault weapon ban had a magazine capacity restriction, and what happened? What was the impact on crime during that era? Oh, yeah, that’s right. None.

What will it take to get people to stop looking at tired old solutions that we’ve already seen don’t work and start thinking about why people commit acts of violence. Let’s stop pretending that a few more rounds in a box of plastic or metal are what is causing our problems and start looking for real solutions, solutions that don’t require infringing on the rights of ordinary Americans who have done nothing wrong.

Let’s try that for a change. It could hardly work worse than the anti-gun politicians’ proposals.

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