Anti-gun activist David Hogg has long pontificated on guns. He’s used his status as a survivor of the Parkland shooting to try and leverage that into some kind of authority on gun control. That has got him a lot of television appearances and all, but it wasn’t enough apparently.
Lately, he’s spent a fair bit of time on Twitter trying to position himself as a shooter. There have been several tweets about going to the range, shooting trap, or what have you. The reason he’s doing this is obvious. He wants people to think he’s not really anti-gun, just anti-violence.
On Thursday, though, he went whole Hogg (pun fully intended) in this by posting a series of tweets where he shows just how much of an authority he is.
If you need more than 10 rounds to hit something you need more range time or you need glasses, not a larger magazine. Hell, if you're that bad of a shot you're safer with a baseball bat because a gun will probably be turned on you. Especially if you are shooting a rifle and you…
— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) July 6, 2023
Now, this is nothing new. We’ve all seen this “reasoning” before. But Hogg doubles down from here.
I know many who follow me haven't shot guns or semi automatic rifles before. Even with zero training I could shoot a pretty tight grouping at 20 yards. Just look. You don't need 30 round mags. If you can't stop whatever you need to with 10 7.62 rounds. You got bigger problems. pic.twitter.com/sJMxsfnmbT
— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) July 6, 2023
Yeah, that’s not a fairly tight group at 20 yards. That’s actually kind of meh, at best.
I mean, if it’s someone’s first time shooting–and I mean anything, not semi-auto rifles–or whatever, sure, I’d say that’s a solid effort, but for someone who has been bragging about his shooting prowess, that’s nothing to write home about. In a later tweet, he seems to brag that this wasn’t from a bipod, to which I reply, “I should hope not.”
Yet Hogg presents this as if it somehow proves that you don’t need more than 10 rounds, so let’s address this.
First, as noted, this isn’t particularly great shooting at just 20 yards. Oh, it’s arguably minute-of-bad-guy, but it’s nothing special.
But what Hogg doesn’t grasp here is that this is a static range, a controlled environment with a target that just sits there and waits for you. It’ll give you all day to shoot it and, most importantly, it’s not trying to kill you.
Real gunfights are nothing like that.
If you’re pulling out a rifle to engage a threat, that threat is going to be armed. That means they’re going to be trying to kill you too, which is going to raise the stress levels significantly. That’s going to trigger the fight-or-flight response, which floods your body with adrenaline.
As a result, your hands may start shaking, even as you move to avoid being shot.
All of that conspires to reduce your accuracy. So no, needing more than 10 rounds isn’t a sign you need glasses or you can’t shoot. It’s a sign that you understand that gunfights are dynamic and unpredictable.
Then we have the fact that this is a single target. What if there are two or three bad guys? Now you’ve got as few as three rounds per bad guy, adrenaline coursing through your cardiovascular system, and you’re supposed to protect yourself with just that?
So Hogg’s day at the range with mediocre results doesn’t prove jack squat about what we “need” with regard to guns.
Even so, if he wants to just use a 10-round magazine, that’s fine. That’s what the killer at his high school reportedly used, after all, so if that’s what he wants, so be it.
My problem here is that Hogg is taking a day at the range to provide “proof” that no one needs more than 10 rounds. He’s trying to use this to argue that there’s no reason to not have restrictions on magazine capacity. He’s basically pretending to be an authority so he can try and justify the positions he already had.
The problem is that there are too many people who know more than him, for one thing.
In fact, based on this bloviating, I’d say that includes almost everyone not a braindead moron.
For another, the Constitution isn’t about what David Hogg says we need. It’s about preserving the right of the people to make that determination for themselves.
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