The push to restrict magazine capacity focuses on the apparently magic number “ten”. Reduce Americans to ten-round magazines and no more mass murder, they claim. Let’s look at where this leads.
Ten rounds has been the standard capacity for military rifles for a long time. 1895 Lee-Enfield held ten, as did the Soviet SVT and the German G43 rifles. Post-WW2 SKS, FN49 and SVD held ten also. No one would claim that they aren’t formidable weapons even today. So why stop at ten if the goal is to reduce capability of any rifleman?
The first military rifle designed for high-velocity smokeless ammunition, the 1886 Lebel, held 8 rounds in the magazine. So did the first rifle with detachable box magazine, the 1888 Lee-Metford. As did the “finest battle implement ever designed”, the US M1 Garand. Nobody can claim that these aren’t suitable for bloody mayhem in the wrong hands, so could we claim that fewer than 8 should be the limit.
That brings us to six rounds. The Italian WW2 Carcano (including that which was used to shoot JFK), the superb Swiss Schmidt-Rubin, the American M1917 and many Mannlicher bolt actions held six. Too many still?
Five, do I hear five? That would be the capacity of Mauser, Springfield, Mosin, P1914, MAS38, Arisaka, Krag, Winchester 1895 and many other guns that were front-line military weapons until the 1950s.
Four? No, that would give us certain Winchester and Remington sniper rifles in common military use since the Vietnam War. No anti-gun legislator would admit sniper rifles suitable for civilian ownership. The substantial similarity of a deer hunting rifle to the military sniper rifle is purely coincidental, of course.
Maybe three would be the magic number? French Berthier infantry rifle with a three-shot magazine was widely used through WW1. So the real number would probably be two. At which point anti-gun propaganda would harp on the similarity to double-barreled dangerous game guns and the few remaining gun owners would end up with single-shot low-power guns grudgingly permitted after much red tape…until the next confiscation. It’s a lot easier, you see, to go after people reduced to pre-1850s defensive technology. Not that the gun-banners would go after us in person — even a musket or a pike in steady hands scare them — but they would send their uniformed thugs with modern guns. That scenario played out in Soviet Russia, in Communist China and more recently in Venezuela. Once the gap of arms between the government and the people is great enough, such minor matters as civil rights cease to matter much to the rulers.
The mostly disarmed British subjects may still possess a few guns of limited specifications, but they lost the right to use those for self-defense. Storage, transport and other uses are so severely restricted as to make the remaining arms of minimal use. That’s the end game for the American gun banners — but they won’t live to win it. Their demented numerological plots matter less than the million defensive rifles sold this week. Those gun purchases are the true vote — with money, personal time and effort — that will override the hateful propaganda broadcasts and the squawking in the bully pulpits of the legislative sessions.
I’m from a former socialist country and we also have very, very tight regulations for weapons. Self-defense with a gun? Better not try. I’d end up in a world of trouble; almost impossible to pull off legally.
Mandatory medicinal + psychological exam, mandatory training course of shooting + assembly/disassembly, exam about knowledge of the weapons’ law and first aid, mandatory membership in a shooting (or hunting) club and criminal background check, of course. Long waiting periods. Then, for every weapon a buying permit and registration with plenty of taxation. If not shooting competitively or hunting, also need a permit to buy ammo.
There’s only one positive aspect of all this red tape: once I got all the documents I can buy pretty much anything in unlimited numbers up to .50 cal. (Automatic weapons only for collectors with no legal possibility of actually using those weapons.)
A lot of effort, time and money to spend but here in the post-socialistic countries we’re used to such procedures, they’ve been there all along, for a hundred years at least, since pre-communism.
Americans must not give up their natural gun rights! My government took the Hitlerian gun ownership approach a long, long time ago. Stay strong, stay together!
Thank you for your blog, I’m a regular reader.
So, what are you doing to turn things around?
The unintended consequence of any draconian gun law being passed is this: There is a certain number of gun owners who will not wait for the stack to come through the door. They will go hunting, and those that fomented and passed that law will be higher on the list than those who are sent to enforce it.
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Their demented numerological plots matter less than the million defensive rifles sold this week.
Yup. It isn’t 1994 any more.
1. This time it isn’t a small minority of gun owners looked down on by the “reasonable” folks. Sporting rifles are mainstream.
2. This time you don’t have to get your information from the MSM. We have the internet, and it’s seething with stories from people who have seen SHTF.
3. This time you don’t have to send off for bound copies of legislation, then mail your representative a letter. With Thomas.gov and email we can communicate in realtime.
4. And finally, the folks with the social studies who keep saying that gun ownership is dropping are deluding themselves.
At one shot only, you may as well pick up or build a punt gun or a 2-bore rifle.
Right, then the caliber restrictions would come.
Well, maybe if it gets to that point, a group of people who have sworn to defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic would be on the side of Constitutional rights.
There is an “ilk” of anti-gun activist who doesn’t care about a practical approach to keeping guns out of the the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. They hate guns and they hate gun owners. These people are bigots. Gun owners are one of the most law-abiding demographics in American society, but they would like to simply have them “deemed” criminals by legislative fiat.
As difficult as they know that will be, they are adopting a fallback position. Although garden-variety Liberals have been advocates of the mentally ill and dispelling its myths and stimga, they are preparing to violate the civil liberties of that very group. Currently, that standard for denying the mentally ill the right to own a firearm is rather high, but if you can remove any child who has ever been treated for ADD / ADHD (or any such disorder that is outgrown in adulthood) from the population of eligible gun owners, you force a large number of people over to your side. They will reason ‘if I can’t have a gun, I don’t want anyone else to have a gun’.
I’ve already warned my son he gets to pile the dead confiscators on the trailer so we can take them somewhere else. That’ll just be a heck of a mess in the yard if we don’t. The fed has already broken its contract with me; I shall act as I see fit, and whether it’s legal or not is simply a coincidence. State, city laws, I respect more. That’s my neighbors and me getting along. The fed can just go do rude things to itself.