California ban on high-capacity magazines is overturned by federal appeals court
abc7.com
abc7.com
The 10-Round Limit Magazines are Low Capacity magazines, are not standard, are often the source of feeding malfunctions, and in many rifles - are cumbersome to use/remove making for an overall more dangerous situation for all involved.
Ban "Standard Capacity" magazines? Bad guys do not follow your laws.
One of the arguments was that "these magazines are unusual" when in fact they are THE STANDARD size for many firearms. Many laws surrounding firearms were passed with misleading information like this. If you read through the text of some of these laws you'd laugh about how ridiculous some of them are.
The reality is that most firearms restrictions have been passed due to Racism, one of the most onerous and racist being the "National Firearms Act". Basically politicians (in league with the KKK and several other racist groups) were afraid of non-white people gaining access to firearms and protecting themselves. If we fast forward to the 1960s, California banned a variety of things because the Black Panthers were following the existing laws and racists didn't like it. This story repeats itself a lot.
If we fast forward to modern day - current firearms laws don't stop or deterr criminal use.
The "bad guys" of concern seem to be people with mental issues, not organized crime. In that respect, restricting low-effort access to weapons with a high kill-count capacity sounds targeted at the right demographic.
They are almost separate issues.
Criminal enterprise has more commonality with gun crime than gun ownership does. If gun ownership was simply the issue, there would be over 1000x since the US has millions of firearms in private ownership and has for a very long time.
This is why overly broad laws that criminalize regular people are stupid. We can use things like gang enhancements and laws that say "gun was used in a crime, increase sentence" to criminalize the correct people.
It's utterly clear to anyone who's bothered to live in a few different civilised countries, and one of the most shockingly 'wrong' thing that a lot of smart can't grasp. It's more of a case study in 'perspective and information bias' than it is guns.
Ratcheting up the laws for use in 'gun crime' will help a little bit, but there are no situations in which the widespread availability of guns won't result in quite a lot of excessive violence.
There is no way around the math: zillions of guns means excessive gun crime. That's it. People get angry, vengeful, stupid - when they have easy access, when we have 'gun culture' - they turn to guns. Where guns are sparse, and there is no gun culture ... they don't.
1) People do not just carry guns around with them in the US. That's factually untrue, and illegal in most places. Even where open-carry or CCW is legal, these are flatly not the people committing gun violence. There is no evidence of that at all. In fact, these tend to be the least likely people to actually use a gun over some argument or whatever. It's not 1843, it's not the wild west - there are no poker room gun fights or high-noon gun duels.
2) The guns commonly used in gun violence were obtained illegally. Turns out... criminals do not care about background checks, waiting periods, approved gun rosters, and more.
3) When an "otherwise lawful" citizen does use a gun to commit violence, it's usually murder, usually of someone they know (wife cheating, etc). Without a gun, a knife would be used, or a car, or poison, or whatever. Even your "civilized" country examples have this exact same problem - crimes of passion as they are often called.
4) One of the leading stats for gun related deaths are suicides. Without guns, you still have suicides (see Asian countries with zero civilian-owned guns, yet people jump out of buildings).
There simply is not a problem with legal gun owners running around committing acts of violence. It's simply not true.
This is false, especially the part about 'more dangerous for all involved'.
How often do you shoot a month? More than once? More than every weekend? Do you train and do you compete?
To characterise the extremely marginal degree of 'safety concern' when using a weapon which is 1000x more likely to cause harm through the means that it was designed for (i.e. shooting, getting shot) is a little ridiculous, especially in the context of the objective of the legislation.
While individual laws may be pointless by themselves, the fact is the US is basically an unruly, unlawful dangerous place with levels of violent crime completely abnormal for any civilised country. Even if you account for a number of 'danger areas / ghettos ' with anomalies amounts of crime, it's still bad.
The wide and easy availability of guns ostensibly destined for the hands of otherwise lawful gun owners is a big factor in what makes all this extreme violence possible.
So if we want to have 30 round magazines and all those other things widely and easily available, open carry etc. (i.e the US is nothing resembling 'Switzerland') ... then we have to 'pay the price' and live with the consequences: about 10 times more likely to get shot and killed then if we lived in a civilised country without guns widely available, and without gun culture.
The civilised places which have managed to live without widespread gun ownership have demonstrated that it's almost entirely a better option. Nobody is clamouring for guns in these places or contemplating that they need to follow America's example in this regard. In fact - just the opposite. Basically, America is looked upon as a complete failure when it comes to these things.
What could work well? 'Well regulated Militias'. That might just work fine - rifles in the Armoury, keys held by the Sergeant at Arms. Not much but hunting rifles at home, locked up safely. Funny that ... 'Well regulated Militia' ...
Basically, your argument seems to be, guns can be dangerous if used improperly, therefore a magazine that was modified to meet some arbitrary requirement and causes routine malfunctions isn't a problem? That's absurd.
When you examine violent gun related crime - it is simply not law abiding citizens causing the problems. It simply is not.
It's gang shootings, and murders that dominate gun violence. Two things that will not stop if you magically removed all guns. You must be realistic, otherwise you're arguing from a disingenuous position.
California - and particularly Los Angeles - has some of the most strict gun policy in the country! Yet... are responsible for most of the gun violence in the nation. How do you explain that away? Is it a bunch of law abiding citizens committing all that violence? No it is not.
> The wide and easy availability of guns ostensibly destined for the hands of otherwise lawful gun owners is a big factor in what makes all this extreme violence possible
Really? One of the most commonly seized gang shooting-related firearms in California is the TEC-9, a gun that's been illegal to purchase since the 80's. No "otherwise lawful gun owner" has one - so how is your assertion possibly true?
What about all the so-called "Ghost Guns" that gang bangers are supposedly manufacturing in their homes? Is that because "otherwise lawful gun owners" own legal guns? You cannot even legally buy the serialized component of the firearm to manufacture into a complete firearm without doing so through an actual FFL (these are commonly called "80% kits" or sometimes are just the bare lower receiver of a AR-15 rifle - they are serialized and tracked by ATF and DOJ).
> Not much but hunting rifles at home, locked up safely.
You mean to say, not an AR-15 pattern rifle, or an AK-47 pattern rifle? What about a Mini-14 or Mini-30? You've probably never heard of them or seen one in person, and would probably be fine with them I would assume. They don't look like "military" rifles, right? Even though they fire the exact same cartridges as the two "scary military" rifles and can hold 5, 10, 20, 30+ rounds in their magazines too?
In any event, it seems abundantly clear you do not have much experience with these firearms and their magazines - which makes your rejection of my original comment highly suspicious, and likely completely baseless.
B) You're missing the point about 'availability of weapons'.
We don't need to speculate as to 'what might be' - we know exactly what 'would be' because here are dozens of other civilised countries as a basis of comparison.
There is a perfect correlation between 'less guns widely available' and 'less gun crime'.
It's blatantly obvious to anyone who's been outside the US for more than a few months.
(And FYI - guns are not widely available in Switzerland as they are in the US).
USA - tons of guns, tons of gun crime. Canada - less guns, less gun crime. Most of Europe (including CH) - very few guns, very little gun crime. Japan - almost zero guns, almost zero gun crime.
If it's difficult to grasp the obvious, consider 'market forces' and 'supply and demand': when guns are 'banned' and they exist nowhere legally in a nation, they are actually quite hard to get hands on.
A 'thug' in the US can easily get his hands on a weapon. In Canada, it's that much harder. In Europe, it's a huge pain. In Japan, it's almost impossible.
And guess what? Why would they need them? As there are fewer guns, and the punishment for having them goes way up, the level of violence is de-escelated. In the UK they have a 'knife problem' - which is bad - but it's much better than having a 'gun problem'.
Have you ever been to the UK? Most cops don't carry guns.
How is this possible? Come on now - add up the points ...
It's possible because there are almost no guns in the country, and the level of violence is low enough that they don't need to carry for the most part.
Once again: the ignorance of 'gun lovers' who literally can't see the data in front of them, or who are completely incapable of grasping a situation that is 'beyond their borders'.
It's a uniquely American thing, and it's really odd.
---> When there are considerably fewer guns in a civilised society, there is considerably less gun violence. Full Stop.
C) As for my 'experience' with weapons - 4 years, Army. Yes, I've played with some nice toys, in the field, where they belong. But that's completely irrelevant.
I’m not a gun owner, so I’m just asking—do you believe magazine capacity laws make handguns unsafe?
California has attempted to use "safety" as a reason to ban certain guns, yet strangely LEOs are allowed to buy/use/sell them. We use unsafe things all the time but having a larger capacity magazine makes the wielder much safer in a situation where they need to use their firearm.
> What could work well? 'Well regulated Militias'
This is a common misunderstanding of the law. "Well Regulated" back then meant "Well supplied" and also the militia is "the people".
There's also zero evidence that larger magazines makes anyone unsafer. If that was the case, the millions of magazines that filed into California during part of this case would've caused a massive upswing in crime, it didn't.
I didn't say there was.
But there is absolute evidence that 'not having guns widespread' will keep people safer.
Not only is it blatantly obvious, the evidence is there in every civilised nation. Go ahead and get a passport, and visit another civilised country. Then ask around 'why there is so much less gun violence' and also why 'people don't feel the need to buy guns'. Or even as a UK cop why he doesn't even carry a gun, which is unthinkable in the US.
The US has zero credibility on the issue - aside from some legitimate issues around the second amendment - the 'safety' arguments are asinine. Considerably fewer guns in civilised countries leads to less gun violence literally by supply and demand and simple probabilities of people being able to access them.
There is no such evidence. Your canard about other countries is completely silly, their crime rates are totally different based on their cultures.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/08/14/1...
There are so many other things that are predictors of crime and this is absolutely not one of them.
Frankly, I'm surprised more people haven't gone off their rocker and committed mass murders in the few public places that are still crowded. The pandemic has revealed quite a few pre-existing stress cracks in the foundations of civil society.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
I think the ultimate issue, though, was that after the civil war, looking at what our founding fathers intended and what our country actually wanted to do became a less valid strategy. We fought for more federal control and got it. In doing so, the idea that we would still enshrine our rights to fight back against the government seems less consistent.
After the sharp escalation in military technology from the 1950s onward, it seems even less relevant, since not only have our own citizens paid taxes to, fought in wars for, and voted for our government, but our global position has been one of strength through our government.
Our right to own guns to fight our government is anachronistic and laughable. All other uses for firearms do not demand high capacity magazines.
There are a lot of reasons why you'd need a standard capacity magazine but the most important reason is "its not the business of the government to unconstitutionally deprive its citizens of their rights".
https://www.thefire.org/a-reminder-about-shouting-fire-in-a-...
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
If restricting magazine size had any benefit for law enforcement you might have a point, but it doesn't.
The line has been drawn, we are just arguing over where.
Several of these things can actually be purchased illegally, non-trivially, but yet they're never used for crime. You can buy grenades, grenade launchers, cannons/etc with a "permit" from the government - they're never used in crime.
And to those who've passed a few physics classes...
This is also in the Netherlands where the borders to countries involved in active war are fairly porous.
That's not a really accurate portrayal of events. Federalism may have increased as an outcome, but that was not why the war started, nor why the Union-aligned states continued to fight for several years despite losses
The Belton flintlock, a repeating rifle design, was presented in some form to the Continental Congress in 1777. The idea that the founders did not dream beyond single shot muskets is not supported by the historical record.
It's not always about resisting the government (though sometimes it is), and rarely if ever about resisting the federal government.
For example: if and when civil unrest comes to your city, police will not help you. They will neither be willing nor able. Durning the 1992 L.A. Riots, Korean storeowners who defended their livelihoods with guns escaped the worst looting and burning. Those who did not defend their businesses lost everything.
"L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later - Gun Store Manager David Joo Looks Back"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYT9Hew9ZU
Similar scenes have recently played out in Minneapolis and elsewhere:
"After nights of violence in Minneapolis, locals take up arms to defend their community"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovtLTPrB2MA
Looking further back, during the era of Jim Crow, the armed Deacons for Justice protected black Americans from the Klan and corrupt local law enforcement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justic...
Numerous similar examples may be found in American history.
Others have mentioned the state of small arms development at the time, so I'll take a different approach.
Elsewhere in the Constitution are provisions for the issuance of "Letters of Marque and Reprisal". These basically commissioned private ships to serve on behalf of the US government and take enemy ships and cargoes on the high seas. For this provision to be usable at all, private ship owners must have been expected to have appropriate arms at their disposal - muskets, sure, but also swivel guns and cannon.
If private individuals were expected to have access to ships armed with weapon able to bombard coastal towns and fortifications... how much sense would it make to believe that those same individuals shouldn't have access to effective small arms?