Understanding the Need for High Capacity Magazines

There's been a lot of talk about how much ammunition you really need for personal or home defense. And of course, one of the things that people are talking about is the concept of a high-capacity magazine. Now the high capacity magazine is something that came into the conversation really in the 1990s when we had the federal assault weapons ban in the 1990s, there was a distinguishing between high capacity magazines, which held more than 10 rounds, and low-capacity magazines. Now the terminology really has been switched to standard capacity. So we're now talking about the idea that ammunition that we're going to use inside of a fight is going to be X-number of rounds.

And we want our standard capacity to be more than the rounds that we're going to need. So when we talk about standard-capacity magazines, we know about ammunition needs inside of personal defense. Well, what we normally train for inside of the combat focus shooting program is a multiple rounds string of fire. If we think about how many rounds we're going to need, we tell people to plan on shooting between two and five rounds. Now, of course, there are such a thing as occasional one-shot stops.

There are such a thing as psychological stops where people are shot at and even missed, and yet they still stop attacking and they run away. But when we have two to five rounds going at or into a bad guy to stop them physiologically we can see very quickly that if we have multiple attackers and we know that thieves do work in groups. We know that multiple person, violent home invasions are becoming more and more common. We can see where we would need a certain number of rounds very quickly and in a worst-case scenario. So the idea that we're going to limit ourselves to seven rounds in at least one state now that many states have talked about 10 or 15 round magazine ban capacities.

We talk about the idea that on a federal level we used to have a 10-round limit. We can see that just two bad guys, take us to that limit. Now, Tom Givens, of course, has done a lot of research on how many rounds have been fired at what distance under what circumstances in actual personal defense cases very distinct group of information from law enforcement or military type shootings. When we look at his information he gives a presentation called, Lessons from the Street, and when he highlights the certain ones that that really represent the whole he shows those that eight, 10, 12 different scenarios. And one of the things that he said at one of the presentations I was at was the average number of rounds fired was 4.7, but he quickly points out that it no specific instance was 4.7 rounds actually fired.

And of course, what he's trying to say is, we can't predict how many rounds it will take. But if we go to the high end of our two to five rounds string of fire, we think about five rounds. Just two attackers equals a potential for 10 rounds. Now, if we need 10 rounds, for just two attackers. We have no misses.

We don't have any malfunctions. We don't have any problem with the gun whatsoever. We now have an empty gun. If we get to three attackers or four attackers or five attackers. And if there may be a little bit tougher or if our shooting isn't quite as good as it needs to be.

And we start thinking about going beyond that five rounds we can quickly see where one-30 round magazine, the kind of magazine that people would put into a semi-automatic rifle for home defense might not even be enough. If we just go to six rounds per person and we have multiple threats inside of the home, while these situations are very rare, we could actually need more than that 30 rounds and very easily and very quickly, we see how we could go beyond a limit of seven rounds, 10 rounds or even 15 rounds as have been implemented in some areas. Now, the fact is that these situations are incredibly rare in the United States. It's very, very unlikely that you're ever going to need to use a firearm to defend yourself at all. It's certainly unlikely that you're going to need more than that two to five rounds, but in America, we do have the right and really the responsibility to be prepared for that situation.

If you choose to be prepared for that situation with a firearm you also should have the option of meeting the need for a high number of rounds inside of your firearm. You shouldn't be restricted from that simply because the idea is, well, you probably won't need it. Of course, we probably won't need the firearm at all. The other important thing to consider here is that the accident, the thing that we are most worried about with a firearm, not the evil person, that also is incredibly rare, not the group of evil people using these high-capacity, standard capacity, whatever you want to call it magazines, but really the accident that accident happens with one bullet. The negligence, the unsecured firearm, the mentally ill person, the suicide because someone is desperate to do something and they have access to a firearm.

All of these things that we hear about being dangerous as far as firearms, just merely existing. Those things happen with one round. And certainly we understand that it's the slippery slope. It tells us we don't need 30. We don't need 15.

We don't need 10. We don't need seven. Well, maybe we don't need any at all. And that's something that we really need to fight against. One of the ways we can fight against it is by simply understanding that the logical need for a large number of rounds inside of a defensive firearms is a reality.

And it's something we should be prepared.