High Caps" & Handicaps


Mas congratulates a 1-handed shooter who has just scored 298 out of 300 on a
MAG-40 qualification in Utah. Reloads are faster if you have 2 hands... Photo: Gail Pepin

By Massad Ayoob. May 29, 2023

Physically-challenged gun owners are perhaps more cruelly "handicapped" by magazine capacity limits than anyone else. Here are some of the widely overlooked reasons why.

The history of anti-gun politicians practicing Band-Aid therapy for cancer by passing magazine capacity limits—and ignoring the terrible side effects—goes back more than a score of years. While most gunfights don't require the defender to fire more than 10 rounds, some do. In recent years, LAPD has seen about 5 percent of their shootings go over 16 rounds per officer, and NYPD, 3 percent.

Those which exceed 10 rounds are, of course, greater in number. Consider that some of those cops were backed up by other officers also shooting. Most armed-citizen cases involve a lone defender. And remember, the bad guys the cops have to shoot it out with, from New York City to Los Angeles, are the very same bad guys the citizens arm themselves against.

And now, imagine you're in that high-volume firefight on the end of the bell curve, have to reload a low capacity gun… and you're handicapped to boot.

Run … Hide … Fight?

The current protocol suggested by authorities for innocent victims present when a mass-murderer opens fire is the continuum of "Run, Hide, Fight." Run away, and since you can't outrun a bullet, hope the killer targets some other poor, helpless SOB instead of you. Hide, hopefully where he can't find and murder you, or behind something so solid he can't come through it after you, or shoot you through it. Only after that, they suggest, should you fight. .....

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