December 5, 2023

Polls reveal most Americans favor laws limiting the capacity of firearms magazines to 10 rounds, and the New York Times reports that several generally pro-gun federal legislators have expressed support for such legislation. Surely, they argue, no one needs more than 10 shots to kill a deer or stop an armed intruder. Other than in war, their main purpose obviously is to murder large numbers of innocent citizens. So, they should obviously be outlawed. So goes the mantra, but it is far from the truth.

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In reality, such bans would have a minimal, if any, impact on criminal homicides, but they might well endanger the lives of law-abiding citizens and, in the process, might incentivize criminals to shift to far more lethal weapons that could eventually cost far more lives. And, in the process, they might make us accustomed to trashing our Bill of Rights.

Only in Hollywood do people shot with a 9mm bullet immediately fall to the ground dead. People have been hit more than 20 times with such bullets and survived the experience. While homeowners generally do not wish to kill an intruder—or intruders, as home invasions and other violent crimes are often committed by multiple armed assailants—or anyone else, to be successful, they must act quickly to do whatever is necessary to end the threat. And doing that often requires multiple hits.

There is also a serious risk of repeatedly missing the target under the stress of a gunfight. A study of New York Police Department shootings between 1998 and 2006 revealed that trained police officers hit their targets under the stress of a gunfight 18% of the time. On average, that’s just under two hits with a 10-round magazine. And that includes superficial wounds that have little chance of incapacitating the criminal.

Image: Keanu Reeves trains to be John Wick. YouTube screen grab.

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A similar study of 149 officer-involved shootings by the Dallas Police Department between 2003 and 2017 concluded that officers fired an average of 2.4 rounds in a typical gunfight and struck the suspect at least once 54% of the time. Half of the officers did not score a single hit when firing their handguns under such stress. A 2022 study reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health cited these and other data while noting that “high anxiety,” like being involved in a gunfight, is “a trait known to negatively impact on marksmanship.” 

Yet another study did the math, concluding that it takes 2.45 hits with a 9mm pistol on average to end a threat and 5.55 shots to make a hit. That adds up to 13.6 rounds fired on average to incapacitate an attacker, and that’s for just one attacker—which is hardly good news if you are trying to defend your family while limited to a 10-round magazine.  (It is true that homeowners can carry more than one magazine, but when awakened in the middle of the night by an uncertain noise while wearing pajamas, the likelihood they would think to do so is slim. They may well want their second hand free for opening doors or carrying a flashlight.)

It should be axiomatic that most homeowners have far less firearms training than professional police officers, so their accuracy under stress will likely be even less than the New York Police officers’ 18% hit rate. Limit them to a 10-round magazine, and perhaps they will hit a single intruder once or twice, which is less than the 2.5 hits that a study of more than 450 shootings with 9mm pistols over a ten-year period concluded were necessary to incapacitate the average threat. Add multiple criminals to the mix, and their victims will have little chance.

The flip side of self-defense is to look at those who commit gun crimes. The assumption that those who are determined to commit serious felonies will obey a new law limiting magazine size is about as logical as assuming posting a “No Guns Zone” sign will do anything beyond disarming honest citizens who might otherwise be able to intervene and, perhaps, stop a shooting.

Some ban advocates seem to think that a shooter must reload an empty magazine one round at a time before he can reengage. But criminals can carry multiple loaded magazines, which can easily be swapped in two or three seconds—about one second with serious practice.

Consider for a moment the worst mass school shooting in American history, which occurred at Virginia Tech in 2007. One of the two firearms used was a .22 caliber pistol fed by 10-round magazines. The other was a 9mm Glock 19, for which the shooter had purchased several 10-round magazines on eBay and additional 15-round magazines at local gun stores.