Gun Magazine Capacity Limits

Magazines store the cartridges for a gun. In many cases magazines for semi-automatic firearms and handguns allow for 5 to 10 cartridges or rounds. The problem is that today, guns can easily be customized to carry larger magazines, allowing for more rounds. Still, capacity limits have been used in the US to restrict the amount of rounds individuals have in their guns.

The logic around capacity limits has been questioned and painted as ineffective for a number of reasons. The first reason goes back to the conversation of illegal vs legal firearms. Magazine capacity limits seek to legally restrict the amount of rounds in a gun, largely applying to legal gun owners and carriers. However, manufacturers can still produce high capacity magazines, and illegal gun owners can access these through a variety of means. What’s more, gun and violent crime are closely tied to illegal gun ownership. If an individual owns an illegal gun, the stipulation of a capacity limit is highly unlikely to be relevant to their gun use because it wouldn’t be legally owned.

Some have also called into question the idea that magazine capacity limits can prevent mass shootings. In relation to Columbine and Sandy Hook, Kleck argued that capacity limits are ineffective because the killers could have simply used multiple guns with ordinary ammunition capacities and reload when the cartridge was empty. He also argued that these mass shootings were planned in advance so the killers would have carefully thought about how to maximize the guns and cartridges they had. He argued that this also meant that capacity limits couldn’t have prevented them from using alternative strategies to cause damage in a one-off massacre.

Despite these arguments, a number of researchers have suggested that bans on large capacity magazines is most effective in relation to studies of the 1994 crime bill. A 2020 study found that assault weapon bans were associated with fewer fatal mass shootings, but the relationship wasn’t statistically significant. However, a simultaneous ban on large capacity magazines showed a reduction in fatal mass shootings. So, limits on magazine capacities can decrease the amount of fatal mass shootings given that shooters choose gun features that allow them to cause the most damage.

Safe Storage

A significant amount of guns are stolen from legal owners and used illegally for criminal purposes. But the purpose of safely storing a gun is twofold: to ensure people and children who are ill-equipped and potentially reckless from accessing the gun and causing harm; and, to prevent gun thefts by removing it from open spaces where it is evident that an individual is a gun owner. There is one key point that safe storage in the US fails to consider: many gun owners only got them to protect themselves. The issue is that safe storage hampers their ability to protect themselves should an individual break into their house, which may actually lead to violent crime through gun theft. This is important because in 1994, a national survey estimated that there were 2.5 million defensive gun uses against criminals, 73% of which were in or near the victim’s home. Here gun rights advocates have argued that this could actually increase the violent crime rate as gun owners wouldn’t be able to defend themselves. The thing is, gun ownership has decreased since 1994. So, the amount of defensive uses will have naturally decreased. Also, the report of defensive uses doesn’t account for instances when the claim of self-defense was misused, and how many people were repeat ‘defensive’ shooters. So, although many purchase guns for protection, the bulk of the population don’t own one and largely remain safe. In this case, outside of the contextual considerations of gun ownership in rural areas, it would seem that defensive arguments for gun ownership aren’t as relevant as one would think.

With respect to protecting children, Kleck found that gun accidents rarely involve preadolescent children, as in 2003, 51 of the 730 fatal gun accidents in the US had victims younger than 13. Although this was the case, my critique here is that it doesn’t consider how many incidents weren’t fatal, and the idea that safe storage mitigates accidental or intended injuries and property damage. It’s impossible to know how many of these cases were prevented through safe storage, but one could surmise that if there was no obligation to safely store guns that more of these incidences would happen in addition to increased gun thefts. So although the focus and argument is on how safe storage may actually increase violent crimes as legal owners can’t defend themselves, I would argue that it protects people against accidental injuries and killings, and also decreases suicides among non-owners in households. This outweighs the defensive purposes given that gun suicide is a slightly larger issue than gun homicides.

Assault Weapon Bans

Another approach is to ban assault weapons. There isn’t a universal definition for assault weapons. However, gun experts suggest it’s a high-powered semiautomatic firearm that allows for larger magazine capacities and rapid fire. Semi-automatic guns can fire one shot per trigger pull, but the cartridge is automatically reloaded without additional effort by the shooter. The velocity at which each round is fired is far more powerful than a handgun, often leading people to categorize assault weapons as military grade guns. Some assault weapon ban advocates have suggested that they can easily be turned into fully automatic weapons, allowing them to be fired like machine guns.

When it comes to assault weapons bans, research that opposes this is rooted in arguments about the practicality of assault weapons being used in mass shootings and violent crime. These arguments are most prominent from Kleck. Kleck suggests that the shooter’s ability to accurately aim and shoot is limited with an assault weapon given that only an expert is able to do this with an assault weapon. These are instances he has argued are extremely unlikely to be the case during a mass shooting or street related gun violence.

Assault weapons allow for higher capacity magazines (approximately 30). But Kleck argues that they’re routinely sold with magazines only allowing for 10 rounds. His belief seems to suggest that because it’s legally sold with a capacity limit that people won’t be able to easily customize it. In the scenario that they could, he pushes the rationale that shooters would logically use a revolver over an assault weapon because they can fire more rounds much faster, or carry more guns. The problem with this thinking is that Kleck and likeminded advocates rely on the statistical unlikelihood of shooters being experts of shooting high-powered guns. However, an untrained individual using a high-powered gun can still cause significant damage and kill many despite lack of aim, especially if fired in large crowds or enclosed environments. Statistically, the damage, if a victim is shot with an assault weapon, would be much greater than a regular gun. But Kleck’s logic seems to assess the likelihood of it being used as opposed to the realistic damage it could cause.

At the point that Kleck made this argument, assault weapons in mass shootings may have been uncommon. But in 2022, the very weapon Kleck and likeminded advocates suggested was “irrelevant to preventing mass shootings” caused extreme havoc in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. In both cases the shooters used AR-15 style rifles with high-capacity magazines. In Uvalde, the shooter had seven 30-round magazines, and only carried one rifle into the school. The shooting ended with 21 dead and 17 injured. In Buffalo the shooter’s AR-15 was modified (something Kleck ignored because AR-15’s aren’t sold this way) to accept high-capacity magazines, with the magazines that he carried allowing for 30 rounds and the result being 13 people shot and 10 killed. So, certainly mass shootings of this degree are unlikely. It could even be said that the use of assault weapons in these scenarios is also unlikely; but the question is, do we need a statistically significant finding to justify banning a gun that, if used, can cause this much damage? And if it can cause this much damage, what place does it have in society?

Kleck only provides anecdotal positions. In contrast, there are a number of studies that assess the impact of assault weapon bans. One of these is a 1999 study that assessed the impact of the Crime Control Act of 1994 assault weapons ban over a three year period in the US. Despite that fact that assault weapons were rarely used in violent crime, they found that criminal use of the banned guns declined. The study concluded that the ban may have contributed to a reduction in the gun murder rate and the murder of police officers by criminals with assault weapons. However, it failed to lower the average number of victims per gun murder incidents.

Another study on the Crime Control Act of 1994 funded by the Department of Justice found that the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with the guns banned was “mixed.” However, gun crimes involving assault weapons declined. Through the late 90s this effect was offset by the use of other guns equipped with large capacity magazines.

The mixed effects is supported by the research of Grant Duwe who found that after controlling for population growth, the assault weapons ban didn’t appear to have much effect on the number of mass shootings compared to a pre-ban period with the 10 years the ban was in effect. However, the number of people killed after the ban expired increased. In this regard, coinciding with the ban period, the lowest 10-year average in mass shooting rates was between 1996 and 2005. Likewise, a study published in 2020 by Daniel Webster and colleagues found that assault weapon bans were associated with fewer fatal mass shootings, but the relationship wasn’t statistically significant. As mentioned earlier, a simultaneous ban on large capacity magazines showed a reduction in fatal mass shootings, indicating that there is a relationship between weapon features (mainly ammunition capacity) and how many people are shot, because shooters select features that will allow them to attack as many people as possible.

Recognizing the mixed nature of the research, there are still patterns identified. Although the effect wasn’t significant, the following can be said: there were reductions in the gun murder rate (specifically involving assault weapons and large capacity magazines); there were fewer fatal mass shootings; and, the gun violence rate increased after the ban. This would suggest that there was some effect. The question becomes, if there wasn’t a significant reduction (but a reduction nonetheless) in the gun murder rate, was there a simultaneous increase in gun related injuries given that a ban on assault weapons removed an extreme fatal weapon off of the market? This could be the case given that criminals will simply replace it with less lethal guns. But overall, it would seem that a permanent ban on assault weapons and the destruction (and compensation) of current assault weapons could have some impact on all gun related crises.