We refer to people who support gun control as being anti-gun. We do this for a reason, mostly because they’re typically freaked out by an object that has no volition of its own, often while ignoring the sad reality that some people are broken and will be dangerous with anything.
But those who support gun control are typically very ignorant about the items they want to regulate.
In the Charlotte Observer, an op-ed thinks it’s figured out how to find common ground between anti-gun activists and gun rights supporters.
I’d tell you to stifle your laughter, but nah. You shouldn’t.
After all, the suggestion? Magazine limits.
I’m no expert on firearms engineering or policy, just a concerned citizen who has spent my lifetime around knowledgeable and responsible gun owners.
From this personal experience, one thing is clear to me: A considerable number of proponents of gun control seem to know very little about the firearms they seek to regulate and so often sound ignorant when discussing gun control.
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There is one functional feature of many “assault weapons” that, if regulated, could substantially reduce injuries and fatalities during mass-shootings — high-capacity magazines. A ban on such magazines would be a meaningful step to reduce the potential damage a firearm can cause in a mass shooting scenario.
There is no legitimate sporting or self-defense need for someone with proper marksmanship training to possess a 10-plus round magazine.
Now you see why I didn’t tell you to stifle your laughter.
The author admits their own ignorance as well as anti-gun ignorance, admits that gun rights advocates lock onto that, then he manages to double down on it by thinking we’d find common ground on magazine capacity limits? He follows that by presenting an argument that only makes sense to anyone who has never studied how firefights actually work.
Marksmanship has its place, but targets don’t shoot back. They don’t move around trying to avoid being shot while trying to hurt you. The range doesn’t have the same level of stress to make your hands shake, to cause your vision to tunnel in.
In other words, no degree of marksmanship training is going to make it easy for the average citizen to never need more than 10 rounds. We’ve seen ordinary citizens face attacks by multiple bad guys and those good guys were fortunate to have had more than 10 rounds.
Of course, this is an anti-gun individual who actually thinks we’ll support a restriction on magazine capacities? Honestly, it’s just hysterical.
Even if you could convince us that we wouldn’t ever need more than 10 rounds–something that simply cannot be done–you’d also have to convince us that such restrictions wouldn’t be used as justification for stricter measures later. Since at least one lawmaker sought to limit firearm capacity to just five rounds, that’s just not humanly possible.
So no, gun rights advocates aren’t going to side with anti-gun voices and support magazine capacity restrictions.
I get that the author knows he’s not a gun guy. I respect that he can acknowledge that. In fact, he’s smarter than most non-gun folks because part of what I removed from the above quote is him saying to stop pushing for ban on cosmetic features that get a firearm labeled as an assault weapon. I give him credit for that.
Yet he still tries to go down the same rabbit hole of regulating something he doesn’t understand by suggesting we’d find common ground on magazine restrictions.
The truth of the matter is that we’re not interested in the common ground anymore. We compromised and we dealt and what did it get us? We got to enjoy fewer and fewer of our rights as violent crime skyrocketed. So, we stopped playing nice.
That’s not about to change.
