Our SOP says...

[rrneck]

166. Reloading...

Last edited Sat Jul 6, 2013, 11:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Search on youtube for "fast mag change ar15".

The last I heard every magazine Lanza discarded had unspent rounds in it. That's called a tactical reload. Lanza did it wrong. A properly reloaded rifle leaves no time for anybody to do anything. If you want to argue that reloading leaves others time to respond then the NRA will be able to argue that it will leave time an armed citizen to pull a gun and shoot back. It makes no sense to create a law that depends on the bad guy making a mistake or a good guy to properly respond. Especially if that mistake will have little or no impact on his objective. Ammunition capacity is one small variable in a whole constellation of factors that go into a mass shooting. Push that legislation through and the bad guys will redesign their training and tactics to work around it before the ink is dry. Meanwhile you've blown a boatload of political capital on a law that will do nothing to keep anyone safer. What are you going to say after the next mass shooting, "We did good. See? Six more people out of twenty didn't get shot." That's assuming you get the opportunity to make that claim. It sure as hell won't help get anyone elected. A five round magazine can kill five people. That's a mass shooting. Quibbling over numbers is ghoulish sensationalism.

The last background check legislation I heard about is a reboot of Manchin/Toomey. It's interesting but I don't think it will work.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023029647#post124

Manchin/Toomey attempted to regulate internet and intra state sales (as I recall). I thought that was very interesting. It hadn't occurred to me to go about it that way. Why intra state and internet sales? Some more cynical than myself would think it was an incremental approach to firearms confiscation. I think that's unlikely. I think it was an attempt to regulate firearms transfers based on intimacy. The assumption was that is was unlikely that two people who met online or live across state lines share a sufficiently close relationship to allow the seller to determine if the buyer would be a legal and responsible gun owner. In theory it makes sense. In practice I don' think it would work. Given the population density across the eastern seaboard it is quite possible to be intimately familiar with somebody across a state line. There are not a few cities and towns in the United States that actually straddle state lines. And if you're selling a gun through an internet connection you'll never see the buyer, or the straw purchaser who is buying the gun for him.

The law would have zero impact while annoying a lot of voters. That's all risk and no payoff for any legislator that supports it. Now I know that it almost passed the senate. The United States Senate is the most exclusive club in the world. There is no doubt they got together and decided who would vote how based on who could and who could not afford to do so. It was all political theater from the get go. They took one look at the legislative task at hand and turned it into WWF wrestling match to distribute red meat to their respective bases.

So the legislation was based not on firearms (the AWB and mag capacity tried that) but on relationships between people. I don't know what social circles you run in, but where I am relationships come in all sorts and kinds of flavors. People create, change, redefine and manipulate relationships all the time. There is simply no way to write workable legislation designed to regulate personal relationships between people. The only relationship between people that involves a gun we can hope to regulate is that between a licenced FFL and a qualified buyer because it's a business relationship. Beyond that all bets are off. There is no way in hell we can demand a wife do a background check on her husband if she wants to give him a gun. That's just stupid. The legislation that the president and Manchin/Toomey proposed made exceptions for family. But define "family". We already have a problem with that right now in this country. There are already outrages aplenty with laws regulating marriage and you want the Democratic party to tell two people in a relationship what they can and cannot do? Under penalty of law? It's morally repugnant and politically suicidal. It's an invasion of people's privacy, and that won't work.

So now do you want to have a try at explaining how the law would actually work? For real people in the real world?