The Growing Police State: When Will They Learn Edition

So, California has a ban on weapons with a "detachable magazine" which also have a pistol grip or some other things.  Basically, they wanted to outlaw AR-15s and AK variants.  Besides the fact they obviously don't understand the language "...the Right to bear arms shall not be infringed..." that's pretty standard liberal "blame the implement" stuff.

In response, the weapons manufacturers designed something called a "Bullet Button."  This is a button, normally depressed by an extra bullet, which allows a magazine to detach.  By the definition of the law, that makes the magazine "fixed" (as opposed to "detachable") and therefore legal.  In addition, various gun accessory manufacturers have created after-market add-ons which make the bullet button slightly less inconvenient.

This, of course, is completely unacceptable to liberals, who now want to ban bullet button weapons over and above their "assault weapons" ban.  Now, let's set aside the obvious Second Amendment issues.  Let's even set aside the fact that no law ever prevented a criminal act.  Let's take a look at some purely practical reasons why legislating how easy or hard it has to be to reload a weapon are silly.

Obviously A Mass Murder In Waiting

1) Multiple Weapons- How many times in the various horrific mass-shootings do we hear that the shooter had multiple weapons?  Most of them.  This is because, without a lot of training and practice, it's actually pretty hard to reload a weapon quickly (in the relative time of a shoot-out).  Releasing the old magazine, retrieving a new one, slapping it into the grip (or wherever the magazine receiver happens to be) and then chambering the first round- you're talking maybe 6 - 10 seconds (maybe more) for someone who hasn't practiced those movements a lot.  As someone who has engaged in various legal and moderated forms of fighting, let me tell you that 6 seconds is forever. 

Another Obvious Mass Murderer

This means most shooters know they're unlikely to get to reload their primary weapon, so they're already planning for that contingency.  All this law does is means they're slightly less likely to carry extra magazines even for a "just in case" scenario.  It doesn't inconvenience them at all.  However, that guy at the range who just wants to exercise his God-Given and Constitutionally Protected right to keep and bear arms?  Him it inconveniences a lot.

2) Extended Clips (really 'Magazines' but reporters always get it wrong)- Again a favorite of mass shooters everywhere, extended magazines reduce the need for reloading in the first place.  While even your gun carrying victims are limited to 17 shots (or so) you're not.  Your magazine carries 30 - 50 rounds (for reliable ones), or more (for the more jam-prone varieties).  When you're talking about the amount of damage an AR-15 can do, 50 rounds is a lot of ammunition.

This, again, means that most mass shooters aren't going to worry about reloading.  Extended magazines are (and should remain) legal.  Why worry about reloading when all your targets (or you) are likely to be dead before you run out of ammunition in your first magazine?  However, your honest citizen is more inconvenienced by not having an extended magazine.  In the shooting range it means more time reloading instead of putting hot lead down range.  In self defense, it means you run out of bullets in your gun before the bad guy does.  Very inconvenient.

The point of this is that bad people, committed to doing bad things, will not be stopped by bans on "detachable magazines," or limits on magazine capacity.  This is why making nouns illegal is useless.  Verbs- that is: behavior- are what should be legislated.  Guess what, we already have laws against murder.  Someone planning shoot up a crowd outside a theater or temple, or inside a school, or on a university campus doesn't care about that law.  Why would you think they would care about what weapons are legal?