Magazines

One of the constant refrains of gun grabbers in recent years is “Nobody needs a thirty round magazine”, stated as an absolute.

This pretty much inevitably comes from people who’ve spent less time studying self-defense than I’ve spent on interpretive dance.

But if you (or they) are curious as to “why”?

I’ll answer that with a question. Three of them, actually.

First: are you ever going to be attacked by someone who wants to kill you, then and there? If you answer “I have no idea“, that’s a perfectly valid, honest answer. Violent attacks – robberies, kidnappings, rapes, aggravated assaults, spree killings, terror attacks – are exceptionally rare. Rarer still if you have no criminal record, don’t associate with criminals, and don’t work in a business where a lot of criminals are part of the clientele. That accounts for the vast majority of people.

Not a single person who gets robbed, kidnapped, raped, suffers a home invasion, or is at a location where a spree killer decides to stage their blaze of glory, woke up that morning thinking “I bet I’m going to be the target of a violent incident today!“ Did they?

Second: if the person decides to attack you with the lethal force we mentioned above, and you decide to defend yourself, how hard is it going to be the end the threat to your life?: impossible to predict, right? Many robberies, assaults and rapes, and even a few spree killings , have been ended by a good guy pulling out a gun, with no shots fired. Sometimes an attacker falls over unconscious, or dead, after a punch to the face. On the other hand there are records of people who’ve been shot 20 times and still had the strength to shoot, stab or hit before they bled out. I know one story of a woman who barricaded herself and her kids in an attic during a home invasion; when the guy broke into the attic, she shot at him six times at a range of 2 feet, hitting them five times in the face and head – and he lived without a lot of complications ( other than a lengthy prison sentence). Alcohol, drugs and mental illness all affect this as well – drunk people are harder to deter from doing stupid things; people who are extremely high may not experience pain, even pain from a gunshot wound. There are cases of people who were very, very high who never noticed they’d been shot until they bled to death.

So the question is: how many shots (if it’s a gun you choose) will it take to stop one person from following through on trying to murder you? The answer, given the evidence we have seen above, is “0 to 20 shots – maybe”.

Bear in mind that, under stress, almost nobody hits their target with every shot. Even at close range. Even if you practice shooting a lot (although that helps) the police, in self-defense situations, hit with an average of about one shot in every six. Put another way, the police fire an average of 17 shots to end an engagement.

So – you don’t know how many hits you’re going to need to end a lethal or threat to you (or your family, or innocent bystanders), and you don’t know how many shots that you fire are going to hit the person who is trying to kill you.

That’s with one attacker.

Which brings us to the third question

Third: how many people will be trying to kill, Rob, attack, rape or kidnap you?: The scenarios above are predicated on one attacker. Can you predict how many people are going to attack you?

In Saint Paul a few years back, there was a series of home invasions. Four people would break into a house, violently subdue any occupants who were present, and take what they wanted.

Nobody died in that series of incidents – but other home invasions do lead to murder, almost always murder of unarmed people.

Remember – none of the victims woke up that morning thinking “I bet I’m going to have a violent home invasion today”.

Now – if you hear somebody kick in your door in at midnight, ask yourself – how many of them are there? Are they armed? Are they drunk or on some sort of mind altering substance that warps their perception of risk, danger, and/or pain? How will they react to someone resisting (or not resisting)?

You are not going to know. All you know is that there is a potentially lethal threat to your life down there. Maybe the sound of a pistol racking up will send all of them scampering from your house. Or maybe the sight of one of them falling over, gushing blood after you shoot one of them will send them running.

Or maybe you pull out your six shooter, and fire all six shots of the first attacker you see – leaving you holding an empty revolver while robbers two, three, and four come at you with baseball bats, ice picks and a shotgun.

So the answer to your question is “When we are responsible for defending ourselves, our families and our community from a violent threat to our lives and we can’t predict who is going to carry out that attack, how many of them there will be, and what it will take to deter/stop them, we want a magazine that will leave you with at least one round in the chamber when the attacker runs out of attack”.

I hope that answers your question.

13 thoughts on “Magazines

  1. The basis for the “Nobody needs a thirty round magazine” proclamation is the implicit limitation ” . . . for self-defense purposes.”

    What if home defense is not the only reason the Founders wanted ordinary people to own firearms? What if – just spitballing here, just throwing out ideas – the Founders expected widespread civilian ownership of military grade firearms to act as a deterrent to politicians with visions of grandeur who might otherwise style themselves King, above the law? There’s a clever internet meme going around now, with reference to Venezuela: “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out of it.”

    How many round should your magazine hold, if that were the case?

  2. Moderation Purgatory. I don’t speak Swedish Chef but maybe if I remove the word offensive to SJW moderators?

    The basis for the “Nobody needs a thirty round magazine” proclamation is the implicit limitation ” . . . for self-defense purposes.”

    What if home defense is not the only reason the Founders wanted ordinary people to own firearms? What if – just spitballing here, just throwing out ideas – the Founders expected widespread civilian ownership of military grade firearms to act as a deterrent to politicians with visions of grandeur who might otherwise style themselves King, above the law? There’s a clever internet meme going around now, with reference to Venezuela: “You can vote your way into s****ism, but you have to shoot your way out of it.”

    How many round should your magazine hold, if that were the case?

  3. Once they are illegal 30 round magazines are, and would not be, difficult to build in moderate qty if you have access to a 500W CO2 laser and the metal shaping tools that you would find in any auto body/machine shop. Even without the Laser it would not be terribly labor intensive. You can buy all the sheet metal you need from a scrap yard (Ford F-150 or Chevy Impala quarterpanels will do). It would be a very high margin item for the black market. Find an old farmstead with a nearby scrapyard within 10 miles of an interstate and you’re good to go.

    Not that I would think of doing something like that, although it would be fun doing the CNC programming for the Laser.

  4. Not only is it possible to make large magazines in most any machine shop, but hundreds of manufacturers have demonstrated that they can do it better than the guys making hundreds of thousands of them each year for the government.

    Just sayin’.

  5. I’m a of fan of the Israeli defense strategy. When you are threatened, keep shooting until:
    A. You run out of ammo or,
    B. The threat is reduced to a smoking cinder pile.

    And never let A happen…

  6. BB, a friend of mine, a fellow who is not afraid of firearms like I am, suggests that there is more to making a magazine than welding on side plates and adding a bigger spring. Modern sporting rifles are surprisingly picky about how you feed them.

    Cartridge geometry\action speed\feed ramps must be taken into consideration. My friend tells me that is why large capacity mags are rotary rather than just longer.

  7. In my state magazines are limited to 10 rounds, so I bought a big-ass colt 45.
    When I retire to Wisconsin (next year, God willing), I will sell it and get a Baretta parabellum. I want 18 rounds.

  8. MacArthur Wheeler on March 29, 2019 at 10:26 pm said:
    This is hopeful – but it will likely end up in front of SCOTUS
    https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/29/federal-court-strikes-down-california-gun-magazine-ban/

    I am in the 9th circuit. Hawaii has extremely restrictive gun laws. There is a lawsuit, endorsed by the NRA, working its way through the local courts, challenging the state’s “may issue” law. Apparently the state has not issued a CC permit since 2013, effectively enforcing an illegal “no issue” policy.

  9. MP
    if you do get that nice Beretta 9mm (M9A3, 92 Classic or APX?) next year this range in Polk Co WI is inexpensive, very accessible, and fun to shoot:
    https://www.facebook.com/SouthForkSportingClub
    it has Trap leagues in addition to hosting the Frederic and Siren High School shooting teams
    they also sponsor Ice Fishing contests

  10. As it happens, MacArthur Wheeler, I plan on retiring to Osceola.
    IIRC, Polk County went for Trump about 70/30.

  11. Swiftee; I share your terror at firearms, but having read of little companies doing the bigs one better in terms of product quality–at a price of course–I think that somebody appears to be capable of making these things on the quiet. It’s almost like people understand the physical properties of steel, plastic, aluminium, and the like. Like there’s something out there called “engineering school” that teaches this to young people.

    Weird.

  12. MP
    Yes Polk Co did go for Trump but the county is starting to be diluted by refugees from the Twin Cities who like the low taxes but vote for the stuff they voted for in MPLS. The county is kinda split into a South of 8/North of 8 divide. Everyone who lives south of US Highway 8 views everyone who lives North of 8 as hillbillys and jack pine savages. They’re not completely wrong.

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