What happens when someone robs a liquor store and the owner only has 7 bullets when the robber has three clips?

So, Aurora has me thinking about gun control issues, and one of the things that seems to make the most sense to me, at least in terms of limiting the body count from spree-killers like this guy without too greatly interfering with legitimate usage, is a cap on magazine capacities. Since folks here are far more knowledgeable about guns than I am, I figured I'd see what Gladers have to say on the subject.

Setting aside any legal/Constitutional issues for purposes of this discussion, what would be the practical objections to a nationwide ban on mag capacities greater than, say, 4+1 or maybe 9+1? How much of a difference would that make in the body count when nutjobs like this guy decide to kill a bunch of people? How easy would it be for would-be criminals and spree-killers to circumvent the ban by manufacturing their own larger-capacity mags? What would the negative impacts of such a ban be on hunting (when applied to rifles), self-defense, target shooting, etc.?

My understanding is he bought his assault rifle and 30 hand grenades on an illegal online site that deals anonymously using only bitcoins as currency.

Also the no guns allowed on premises. restriction didn't stop him either. So It seems likely he would have ignored mag restrictions too.

That "gun free" restriction did stop the five CCW holders at the theater from having their weapons. Criminals don't give a ****.

What would the negative impacts of such a ban be on hunting (when applied to rifles), self-defense, target shooting, etc.?

It wouldn't have any impact on the state hunting laws that I am aware of as most already have restrictions in place for hunting.

Whats more, I cant think of any hunting situations where more than a couple shots actually in the gun would be overly advantageous, except bird or wild boar hunting, and all the states I am familiar with already restrict shotguns to 3 shells for bird hunting ( typical shotguns hold 5).

We should create a national law requiring all non-felon, legal aged citizens to open carry in public. Strap on your firearm before heading to the store! I actually wonder how that would affect crime rates?

We should create a national law requiring all non-felon, legal aged citizens to open carry in public. Strap on your firearm before heading to the store! I actually wonder how that would affect crime rates?

Homicide Rates in the American West

by Randolph Roth

(July 2010 version)

Was the “Old West” violent? Scholars have established that it was not as violent as most movies and novels would suggest. Murder was not a daily, weekly, or even monthly occurrence in most small towns or farming, ranching, or mining communities. Still, homicide rates in the West were extraordinarily high by today’s standards and by the standards of the rest of the United States and the Western world in the nineteenth century, except for parts of the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Most data that historians have gathered are preliminary, based on a single source such as newspapers, legal records, or official statistics, rather than on multiple sources. They are minimum counts, not estimates of the number of homicides that occurred. But preliminary data are available for Oregon, British Columbia, Texas, nine counties in California (which together held 57 percent of the population of central and southern California), eight Native peoples in California, five cattle towns, five mining towns, and two counties each in Arizona and Colorado.

To appreciate how violent the West was, we need to consider not only the annual homicide rate, but the risk of being murdered over time. For instance, the adult residents of Dodge City faced a homicide rate of at least 165 per 100,000 adults per year, meaning that 0.165 percent of the population was murdered each year—between a fifth and a tenth of a percent. That may sound small, but it is large to a criminologist or epidemiologist, because it means that an adult who lived in Dodge City from 1876 to 1885 faced at least a 1 in 61 chance of being murdered—1.65 percent of the population was murdered in those 10 years. An adult who lived in San Francisco, 1850-1865, faced at least a 1 in 203 chance of being murdered, and in the eight other counties in California that have been studied to date, at least a 1 in 72 chance. Even in Oregon, 1850-1865, which had the lowest minimum rate yet discovered in the American West (30 per 100,000 adults per year), an adult faced at least a 1 in 208 chance of being murdered.

If we assume the towns and counties that have been studied to date were representative of similar towns and counties, and that their inhabitants were a fair sample of the inhabitants of similar towns or counties, we can also be confident (because of the laws of probability) that homicide rates were high in towns and counties that have not yet been studied. For instance, we can estimate that there is only a 1-in-200 chance that the homicide rate for all Western cattle towns was less than 97 per 100,000 adults per year, if the five cattle towns studied to date were typical (as there is every reason to believe). The chance that the rate in all cattle towns was low or moderate by the standards of the most of the rest of the United States and other Western nations—10 per 100,000 adults per year or less—is vanishingly small.

Prairie dog culling would be much more annoying if you could only have 3 or 4 shots onboard *shrug*.

It doesn't really matter if it wouldn't have a negative affect on legal activities, anyway. The 2nd Amendment advocates (if they're awake) are only paying attention to what happened to smokers when they went along with the light impact, "common sense" restrictions. No smoking in bars/restaurants? Oh, well, I can go outside and smoke I guess, no biggie. Oh, no smoking within 30' of an entrance? Well, that's annoying but I guess I can walk 30' from the door and smoke if I have to. Oh, no smoking on the sidewalk? I guess I can go smoke in the park, then. Oh, no smoking in public, period? Well, I guess I can go smoke in my car if I need one. Oh, no smoking even in my car? Well, it's not like they can stop me from smoking in my home, right...?

Yes, I know people are going to start whining about "slippery slope fallacies" and all that nonsense, but everyone said the same thing when smokers started complaining after each new restriction, too.

We should create a national law requiring all non-felon, legal aged citizens to open carry in public. Strap on your firearm before heading to the store! I actually wonder how that would affect crime rates?