{"id":33172,"date":"2013-01-07T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33172"},"modified":"2014-05-21T16:26:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T21:26:53","slug":"the-case-for-ugly-guns-and-big-magazines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33172","title":{"rendered":"The Case For Ugly Guns And Big Magazines"},"content":{"rendered":"

WELCOME, Instapundit readers!<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

My neighbor AVERY LIBRELLE is concerned about gun violence.<\/p>\n

We met at a local coffee shop, where we spoke over the sound of a group of locals that was keeping alive the tradition of out-of-tune folk music played by large, enthusiastic groups of the tone-deaf.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0We need to ban high-clip bullets and assault weapons!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Ugh.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: “Ugh?” \u00a0What?<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Oh, I’ve only been having this argument for 25 years. \u00a0For starters, they’re called “high-capacity magazines”. \u00a0A “clip” as a general term for “anything that holds bullets” is a bit of Hollywood slang. \u00a0Really explaining it requires me to get all pedantic about how guns work, and I know you don’t care, and explaining it really takes me off the topic, but here – let me show you this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Clips”, pretty much by definition, are not “high-capacity”. \u00a0To talk much more about it would be to go onto a tangent that only gun geeks really care much about.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Well, the media uses them interchangeably.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Uh, yeah.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Anyway – you can not show me a reason anyone needs a…what? \u00a0High-capacity “magazine”?<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0No, I can’t show you one.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0I knew it.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0I can show you several. Here’s one; a woman hiding with her children shot an intruder with a revolver<\/a>\u00a0– which is what they used to call a “six-shooter”, because it holds six bullets.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0That seems kinda high-capacity – the founding fathers never thought of it when they were writing the Constitution – but OK…(Reads article) OK, but the woman survived, and the criminal’s in jail!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Read closer. \u00a0It was one burglar. \u00a0She shot six times, hitting the guy five times,\u00a0in the face and neck.\u00a0<\/em>Which, by the way, is pretty good shooting under that kind of stress. \u00a0So\u00a0think about it; that’s five shots,\u00a0in the face and neck<\/em> with a serious-caliber pistol, and the guy lived. \u00a0And there are cases of people surviving many, many hits by serious bullets and living to tell the tale.<\/a>\u00a0 One bullet\u00a0can\u00a0<\/em>kill someone instantly – if it hits the brain stem – but a person can still function just fine if they’re hit in the heart, for a few seconds anyway. \u00a0Hits in the lungs, liver, stomach, muscle tissue? \u00a0If they’re high enough, or dissociative enough, or drunk enough, or have enough adrenaline going, they may not even know they’ve been hit until they collapse from blood loss.<\/p>\n

Remember the book\u00a0Black Hawk Down<\/em>? \u00a0There were stories of Rangers hitting Somali attackers with\u00a0armor piercing bullets\u00a0<\/em>from their M-16 rifles – which are like AR15s, only they can fire full-automatic, like machine guns, and each of their bullets has five times the hitting power of that woman’s pistol – and they didn’t even know it, since they were high on adrenaline and qat<\/em>. \u00a0<\/address>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0OK, so what? \u00a0The woman lived.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Right. \u00a0But I said it was one burglar. \u00a0What if there’d been two? \u00a0Like in this incident…<\/p>\n