Why we can't have nice things

[Dial H For Hero]

3. Clarification, please: Under your proposal, would detachable magazines remain legal and only

semiautomatic firearms which accept detachable magazines be outlawed....nothing else?

(Before I go on, please excuse the pro-gun videos I've included in this post, but I'm using them simply to demonstrate the capabilities of the weapons in question, since anti-gun (or even neutral videos on such matters are virtually nonexistent, as I'm sure you yourself discovered when you posted pro-gun articles and videos in this series of posts to illustrate your points).

While I will certainly grant that your proposal wold reduce the average lethality of a typical mass shooting, I would point out that there are now pump action rifles which resemble AR-15's (most of the parts interchange). Here's someone shooting it in rapid fire. 11 shots in 9 seconds, and he shortstroked it once. While he appears to have a high capacity magazine, the caption says that the rifle has been converted to fire manually and is thus "still legal". I presume he's in a state such as New York where such rifles are popular, and is using a 10 round magazine as mandated there, thus 11 shots (full magazine plus one in the chamber).

This rifle could be used with the same magazines as a standard AR-15....20, 30, 40 60, and even 100 round drums (though the last are notoriously unreliably). It's practical rate of fire is perhaps half that of a semiautomatic AR-15. Still enough to cause horrific casualties, and it can be reloaded every bit as quickly as a semiauto AR. There are also pump action variants of the AK-47.

You also mentioned that you had no problem with semiautomatics which have fixed magazines of any capacity. Here's someone shooting an SKS semiautomatic rifle with a fixed 10 round magazine. He reloads it seven times, shooting 73 shots in 73 seconds (one of the stripper clips was only partially loaded). You estimated (with a bit of a tongue in cheek exaggeration, I presume) that it "might take a fella's lunch hour" to reload 30 rounds using stripper clips. All three clips take him 25 seconds, combined.

There have also been a few stripper clip fed fixed magazine semiautomatic handguns, although all bu one (AFAIK) were from the early 20th Century. The Steyr-Hahn M1912 was the best of the lot.


As you can see, though the shooter finds using a stripper clip awkward as compared to a detachable magazine handgun, his speed increases after the first couple of tries, and toward the end he's only taking a couple of seconds longer to reload than he would if it had a detachable magazine. And of course, it fires just as quickly as any other semiauto.

For that matter, there are fixed magazine manually operated firearms which can put out a massive amounts of lead without the need to be reloaded. The KSG pump action shotgun has two 7 round tubular magazines which feed into a single barrel. It can fire 15 rounds of 12 Gauge without reloading, and when using 2 3/4" 00 buckshot (each of which contains 12 .33 caliber pellets), it will launch 180 projectiles downrange, each of which has a bit more power than a .32 ACP pistol round. If loaded with #4 buckshot (each of which contains 27 .24 caliber pellets), it will launch 405 projectiles downrange, each roughly a .22 lr bullet. Here's someone shooting all 15 rounds in 12 seconds: This includes the two seconds he spends switching the feed from one magazine the other.

Here's someone who isn't particularly proficient shooting the the larger version, the KSG-25. It can fire 25 rounds of 2 3/4" 12 Gauge without reloading, and when using 2 3/4" 00 buckshot it will launch 300 projectiles downrange, or, if using #4 buckshot, it will launch 675 of them. He then fills it
with 41 minishells instead, giving him 41 shots instead of 25, and launching 451 projectiles of roughly .22 LR in power.

For that matter, there have recently come upon the market pump action shotguns with high capacity detachable magazines. The Mossberg 590M has a 20 round magazine. 20 rounds in 16 seconds, 240 00 buck projectiles or 540 #4 buck pellets. Can be reloaded in 2 to 3 seconds.

So: Let's look at the reduced lethality of the firearms that would replace the ones you propose banning, given a bit of time for firearms manufactures to respond.

Rifles: The rifle of choice for maximum firepower is now either a pump action rifle fed by detachable magazine of 30 to 60 rounds or a semiautomatic rifle with a fixed magazine of 30 to 60 rounds, which is fed stripper clips which hold 10 cartridges. The first has roughly half the rate of fire as an old AR-15, but can be reloaded just as quickly. The second fires just as quickly for the first 30 to 60 rounds, but then takes a shooter who halfway knows what he's doing 30 to 60 seconds to fully reload. Result: Mass shooting with such weapons are, on average, somewhat less deadly.

Handguns: Revolvers become extraordinary popular, especially 8 shot models. Gun compactness pour money into modern designs for fixed magazine stripper clip fed models. Some years later, semiautomatics make a comebqdk, although they are a bit slower to reload then detachable magazine models. Assaults in which handguns are fired are, on average, a bit less deadly (ccurrently, less than 20% of handgun assaults result in more than 6 shots being fired).

Shotguns: Very little difference. Unlike rifles and handguns, the vast majority of dombat shotguns in the United States are not detachable magazine fed (although their number has increased somewhat in recent years). Pump action shotguns have just as much magazine capacity as their semiautomatic counterparts. Instead of comprising 80% of the combat shotgun market, pump actions will comprise 95% Result: Little to no change.

My conclusion is that your proposal, in and of itself, which have a fairly modest impact on the overall gun death rate in the US. The most obvious change would be in the death toll of of mass shootings. If the shooter is using a 30 shot pump rifle with detachable magazines rather than a semiautomatic, there will very likely be fewer casualties, simply because the rate of fire is only about half as much. Likewsie, rifle with a fixed magazine will reload more sloaly. Depending on the circumstances, this may lead anywhere from many fewer deaths or no change at all.