Friday, January 21, 2011

30 round mags

Well, perennial civil rights deniers are putting up a 30 round magazine ban Bill in the House that has zero chance of passing.  Especially now that keeping and bearing has been enshrined as an individual right, which a darn sight more settled compared to the last time a magazine ban came through the Congress.  This one Bill currently contemplated won't grandfather older magazines so if you own one of these magazines after a certain date, you are a felon.  Let's pretend, as a sort of a mind game, what this would mean to me if it DID pass.

I have a couple dozen 20 round magazines for the M1A, so no problem their.  I have a half dozen 12 round magazines for my Sig, so no problem there either.  And the state of Maryland knows only about two, the ones that came with the SIG pistol that the State allowed me to buy.  There is really no other mechanism for them to track anything else, and they might not even consider those.  I have 4 magazines for my .22 converion kit that hold 15 rounds, and 8 magazines that hold 7 or 10 .22 for rifles of mine.  Another half dozen 8 round .45 mags and a bunch of 8 round en bloc clips for the Garand.  But this is a ban of 30 rounders so no skin off my back.  Sure Maryland or the Feds could find out who New Jovian Thunderbolt is with warrants or cheating, I know that.  But this propose law doesn't apply to me so... no worries, right?

Except it's NOT a ban of 30 rounders.  Non-gunnies don't consider that, fixating on the '30' number because that is what that crazy dude in Arizona had, and thus a bad guy had the 30 round magazine so they must be bad things, right?  Except there is no proposed law to ban 30 round magazines as some seem to think.  It's the banning of magazines holding more than 10.  Because if you have more than 10 in your gun you can only use that for murder, the anti-2nd Amendment folks claim.  Of course police are exempt from this law.  I guess they need to murder folks or something... 

Why don't they say that?  It's an 11 round magazine ban.   Any way, I'm in Dutch with the Feds for possessing 40 of those. 

Back to the subject of the mind game...  if the Bill did... is this the line in the sand for gunnies everywhere? Not just the purists with blog screeds even scarier to Democrats than mine, but average ordinary gun owners.

The 'line' is easy when they announce they are going door to door to round up all the firearms, but that isn't likely to happen and both sides know it.  Too many would resist such overt tyranny.  So the anti-civil-rights side uses incremental approaches.  Banning magazines bigger than 10 is one of these incremental approaches.  But is that sort of ban enough to get the relatively few of us gun enthusiasts to say, "No, we won't comply."

Well, I have a little story.  Remember when Obama got elected and there was a run on the gun stores.  People bought AR's and AR clones in record numbers and it was months before they were available again.  It is the most popular gun model for home, sport, and serious target competition already.  There are a lot of lever action hunting rifles extant, but that's not the most popular rifle anymore.  And hunting isn't the most popular reason to own a rifle anymore.  People were toying with the idea that the AR should stand for America's Rifle instead of the original Armalite (AR only stands for Assault Rifle in some Leftist's fever dreams)

Guess what sized magazine is standard with the AR15 rifles?  Right!  30!  There are a bajillion ARs out there and umpty bajillion magazines with them, because folks buy spares just for normal casual plinking use.  You don't have to be a militia survivalist type stamping out you manifesto in a tar paper cabin in Montana to have a handful of 30 round magazines.  Even in Maryland, where purchase of magazines more than 20 rounds is not allowed, but possession is no issue and perfectly legal.

Beyond ARs there are pistols.  6 shot revolvers are the popular shooting iron anymore by the even GREATER multitudes of pistol owner in the country.  And the most popular pistols these days are composite framed semi-autos just like you see on the belt of a police officer.  Most of these hold 12 or 15 or a few more rounds in the magazine, standard.  Most pistols come with 2 in a briefcase sized plastic box with the pistol, nestles in a little cutout in the cushioning egg crate foam.     

If you are reading this at work (and I know you are...) and you don't work in a anti-gun enclave like DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco and you sit in a cubicle and have never discussed guns with any of your co-workers, I can almost guarantee you that you can throw a stapler right now and hit someone with a AR or Glock at home with at least 2 30 round magazines or 2 15 round Glock magazines.  And in DC you have Virginia and Maryland Commuters so you can probably STILL hit someone with a stapler that would be a felon and kinda upset and maybe considering not complying if such a law was passed despite the felony rap penalty.  You can't throw all those otherwise law-abiding people in jail for wanting to exercise a human right in a way of their choosing.
    
If some bureaucratic trick somehow got this rule/bill/regulation out there with the force of law...  civil disobedience could get interesting.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only magazines I have that hold less than 10 are for my 1911s. I even have a couple drum mags for those.

Anonymous said...

Yup.

The mags for my 1911 hold 7 or 8 rounds.

Every other autoloader I own uses mags of over ten rounds.

I've probably got over a hundred magazines that have a capacity in excess of 10 rounds.

Heck, I use 20 round mags with my match rifle even though the most that's ever loaded into them is 8 rounds because the 20's are more reliable than the ten rounders.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Well, this may not be so far off as one might think. There is nothing to prevent Obama from issuing an Exec. Order to the Batfeieio telling them pull the FFL's of every Dealer who would sell those Murder Devices, is there? After all, I believe it was Bush the Elder who did so on importing Assault Rifles about 20 years ago, and every Prez since then has refused to rescind it. Also, there is the fact that most major Gun Makers add "+1" to their ads, so the Ban may place a limit of 9 rounds Max per magazine. Could this be part of the reason that there is a trend by most of the Pistol makers to make 6/7/8/9 round single stacks weapons for "Concealed Carry"? Even Remington is now making a 1911. Perhaps the Gun Makers are covering their butts by having products ready to sell if a Capacity Ban gets decreed. Those of us who went through the first ban in 90's can remember how the Manufacturers scrambled to make blocks and pins in the magazines so they could keep selling their products. Better stock up while you can.

Arthur said...

"And the state of Maryland only about two, the ones that came with the SIG pistol that the State allowed me to buy."

Huh?

Along the lines of what Bubblehead Les was saying, I didn't think much of the ban until that idiot Cheney opened his mouth. A few Stupid Party members might be enough cover for Obama to start pushing for regulations.
In any event, I just ordered a few more mags for the 10+ capacity pistols I didn't already have plenty of magazines for.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Thanks Arthur. Forgot a word. 'knows'