In which I answer an "Anonymous" comment.

This morning I found this comment to a post I made a week ago about U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D) not knowing that a magazine could be reloaded and thinking that once they were used that they were no longer “available”  for use.

Normally I don’t allow anonymous comments, but this one needs to be addressed. Put aside that I did not express anything but amazement that the person (Rep. Diana DeGette (D)) who is the lead sponsor of a bill presented to the House would/could be so ignorant of the item she wishes to ban, nowhere in my post did I make any of the statements alluded to in the reply. Upon reflection, this may be a response to a discussion I've been having with a former colleague on Facebook, or it could simply be a troll. I don't know because they didn't sign their name or leave a link through which I could identify them.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Congress and Idiots...but I repeat myself":

I disagree with you and I think that banning high capcity [sic] magazines would be effective...it won't solve the problem but it will help. Yes, magazines can be reloaded, but how much time does that take? Also doesn't every security/police/military expert agree that reaction time to a situation is essential? i.e [sic] if you can slow them down then isn't that a good thing? 

Reloading a magazine in a fire fight does take time. Reloading one at leisure, not so much. Reloading a weapon when you have multiple magazines takes virtually no time at all. Watch some competition shooting by people who know how to use a pistol or rifle and you’d see that it takes less than a second or two to drop an empty magazine and slap a full one in place. The shooter in Newtown carried 10 magazines and switched out partially empty ones several times as he moved from classroom to classroom even when those magazines weren't empty. Three of the ten were still full when he took his own life but many of the other seven still held live rounds.

As to reaction time being essential, yes it is. Call 911 in an emergency and see how long it takes for armed police officers to arrive. An armed citizen on the spot could be holding the perpetrator at bay while the responders are still answering the phone.

But the bigger question I have is what practical use (I also adress [sic] gun rights below, this is simply a practical question) do you have for a high capacity magazine? I get that people want to hunt, but if you need high capacity then you're a bad hunter. You want to protect your home? Then learn to shoot without a high capacity mag. In the relatively recent Empire States Building shooting all the bystanders where [sic] shot by highly trained police officers. 

“What practical use do you have for a high capacity magazine?” If a home invasion is made by two or more thugs, wouldn’t it be better to have as much if not more firepower than they do? High capacity magazines (also known as “standard magazines” since most modern pistols come equipped with magazines that would make Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Schumer cringe) are not so much for hunting. Many states already limit the number of rounds you may have in a shotgun or the type of rifle you may carry when hunting in their game laws. My bolt action .270 is more powerful than most AR-15s. I've been fortunate enough to take several deer with it in recent years. It took me just one shot for each, but I still carried over a dozen rounds of ammunition with me into the woods. It's magazine (built-in, non-detachable) holds five shells. I carry 8 more rounds in a belt pouch. Why? Because one never knows what will happen in the woods even a few hundred yards from the house.

The .223 round used by the Newtown shooter in his Bushmaster are excellent for small game like groundhog, fox or coyote. The 5.56 used by the military and NATO are less powerful still, but they (the military) can often select fire bursts at a time--although that's considered a wast of ammo. Civilian rifles can, at best be semi-automatic which requires one trigger pul for each shot.

Also, in your example of the Empire States Building shooting, I would suggest that your “highly trained police officers” weren’t. Be sure of your target and beyond is one of the prime directives of any firearm safety course.

You're telling me that a weekend conceal and carry course [sic] is going to make us safer? To use your argument, crime is going happen regardless, what scares me more than a single deranged gunman is a hoard of semi trained, unpracticed, scared civilians firing off rounds. Unless you spend the same amount of time on a range as our active duty paid armed police and military forces do (at a minimum) then Johnny Q Public is my biggest safety fear. And if you qualified on a rifle in previous armed conflicts with no combat re-cert then it does not make you a highly trained shooter today. 

I didn’t address this in the post, but yes, a weekend concealed carry course would make everyone safer. Those who carry on a regular basis are extremely law abiding. (More so than Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns it seems.
"The important take-away from all those numbers? After 23 years of licensing those who wish to carry handguns, Florida has only had to revoke, at most, 0.277% of those licenses for cause.
As a somewhat random reminder, I would point out that Mayors Against Illegal Guns has had 2.2% of its members arrested, charged, and convicted of criminal activities (assuming 500 mayors – a number that is fiercely debated and probably artificially inflated).

Comparatively speaking, Mayors Against Illegal Guns members are almost eight times more likely to be convicted of crimes than Florida concealed firearm license holders – but that number is based off 23 years of licenses versus four years of MAIG. Assuming the mayors had as much history as the licenses, and assuming the same trend (11 mayors convicted in four years – a sizeable assumption, but it is all the data we have to operate on), you are looking at MAIG members being over 45 times more likely to be convicted of crimes than Florida concealed firearm license holders.")
They (concealed carry permit holders) have to be if they don’t want to lose the right to carry concealed. They also spend more time at the range—when they can get ammunition—than your average police officer or even military personnel. You’d be surprised how little range time is required of those paid professionals. Talk to a police officer sometime. Ask how much time on the range is required of him/her. Even your serious hunter spends more time at the range or in the backyard with his rifle honing his shooting skills than all but the most dedicated paid professional. And if you think a police officer doesn’t get flustered or scared in a shooting situation, how do you explain the situation you brought up about the Empire State Building shooting?

To adress [sic] Rights, they also come with responsibility, I'm willing to bet, and also willing to listen if someone can give me opposing facts (real facts, not fox [sic] news, MSNBC news or any other slant/paid/sponsored research by any side; I only want true unbiased research and facts) that there are more deaths from accidental shootings, suicides and crimes of passion from registered gun users than there are against innocents/crime victims/bystandards [sic]. So if, as a society, we can't stop the real issue or show the responsibility as a society to stop a negative action (again, where are most guns accidents?) then don't we also have the right or even responsibility to regulate that action? 

Yes. Rights do come with responsibilities. Perhaps that is why so many are willing to give them up.

I’ll not do your research for you but the FBI (See Table 1 of their Crime in the U.S. Report.  ) and others have many of the numbers for which you are looking. Although they do not break things down into registered and non-registered gun users, there is a table that shows the type of weapon used in 2011: Table 20. Of note is that while the number of lawfully purchased guns has skyrocketed (millions background checks performed in recent years Total NICS Background Checks Monthly 1998-2013 (It's a PDF file)) the rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter has declined considerably. In 1992 the rate was 9.3 per 100,000 while in 2011 (the last year reported) it was 4.7. That's from Table 1.)

No one is taking away guns rights, the only proposition is to regulate them. Which they are already regulated and unless you think every fam [sic] should own a nuke like N Korean then you would agree. 

Wow! Quite a strawman you’ve erected there! Who said anything about nukes? Also, what part of "infringed" are you having difficulty with?

 I'm sure this will draw some incoherent ire but I am willing to listen and consider true facts. As a hint, anything that can be disproved with a simple google search should not be use [sic] in a civil discussion.

Posted by Anonymous to Compass Points at 4/10/2013 12:40 AM

Allow me to define "incoherent" for you: anyone who disagrees with me. As for your hint, I agree. Show me how any one of the proposed bans on magazines and “assault weapons” or enhanced background checks would have prevented any of the mass shootings we have suffered in the last few years without harming the ability of law abiding citizens to obtain the firearms they want (not what you deem they need) and don’t lead me to any of the biased reporting of the Brady bunch, the UN or a Soros instrument.