Sheriff Ken Campbell from Boone County, Indiana is a stand-up guy and then some. I’ve trained with him on two or three occasions and he’s just like one of your best friends at the gun club who happens to be a sheriff.
So, it’s not surprising to see him narrating a video demonstrating how magazine bans are arbitrary and capricious and fail the common sense test of effectiveness.
The video’s makers at the Second Amendment Foundation note that civilians often face violent attack under conditions similar to law-enforcement officers and that most law-enforcement agencies have migrated to handguns with greater magazine capacity, in part because so many rounds miss the intended target in a critical incident. Even more significantly, even hits sometimes fail to stop the aggressor’s attack in a timely manner.
“It’s not about hunting,” the video notes.
The video cites a host of incidents where police officers nationally, as well as in New York City, fire much more than 15 rounds to stop a violent attack, with a great majority of the shots missing the attacker.
So, with a ten-round or fewer limit, this would leave a civilian like you or me at a greater risk of death or great bodily injury during a criminal attack.
For those worried that civilians, with their lesser requirement for training in states with shall-issue carry laws, will shoot more innocent people with errant shots from their standard capacity magazines, the real world data shows that not to be the case.
The video doesn’t mention it, but police officers employing deadly force in self-defense accidentally shoot the wrong people at a 5.5 times greater rate than civilians. (Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws, Clayton Cramer, David Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994.)
The video shows that magazine restrictions don’t pass the common-sense test.
They don’t provide opportunities to tackle the attacker, but they do make it harder for civilians to protect themselves and their families from violent attacks.
In short, gun control is classist, sexist and racist.
Gun control is about people control, not crime control, as criminals ignore laws about gun possession just as they ignore laws about armed robbery, homicide, sexual attack, and a plethora of other societal prohibitions.
Criminals do generally abide by the wishes of a good guy with a gun by and large. If they fail to do so, they often end up perforated, sometimes rapidly and promiscuously, ending their criminal careers rather abruptly.
Oh yeah, and we have to love this video’s creator’s sense of humor demonstrating the “New York Reload” at the end.
And then “Jim” fired a 100+ year old pistol with three, seven-round magazines, starting from an empty gun, in under ten seconds. Did we mention each shot was a hit?
Edit to add: For those of you skeptical about police officers’ ability to use their guns as well as “Jim”, here’s a tip for the day: You would not be a wise ban to bet against Sheriff Ken executing that drill with the Colt 1911 just as well.
Their cadence sped up as they used the lower capacity magazines. Obviously, the pressure was on in their minds, knowing they had to perform a reload in fewer rounds. With Jim, or most other skilled and experienced shooters, I doubt there was much overall loss of accuracy. However, I imagine that an inexperienced or lesser skilled individual would experience a large loss of accuracy, if the reload coming up sooner was on their mind.
And even Jim, the experienced shooter, sped up knowing he was on the clock and had to perform extra reloads……