Baltimore Police Are Recovering More Guns Loaded With High-Capacity Magazines, Despite Ban on Sales the headline over at thetrace.org proclaims. Wait. Criminals aren’t respecting the Free State’s ban on standard capacity handgun magazines? What are they? Criminals? It gets better/worse . . .
So far, the ban has done little to stamp out the use of big magazines by criminals, an analysis of law enforcement records by The Trace found.
Baltimore police confiscated nearly 450 guns last year with enough room in the magazine to carry at least 11 rounds — high-capacity, as defined by the state — more than during any period in at least the last seven years.
Twenty-two percent of all recovered firearms were equipped with a high-capacity magazine, a 4 percentage point increase over 2013, the year the ban was adopted.
So a gun control law had no effect whatsoever on criminal use of firearms. It made things worse? Well worse if you think that “high capacity” magazine are A) something you can reduce or eliminate amongst the criminal class or B) something worth worrying about.
Baltimore police say larger magazines have surged in popularity among criminals because they can squeeze off more shots without reloading — and increase their odds of a kill.
An investigation by The Baltimore Sun last year found that the number of corpses at the Maryland medical examiner’s office with at least 10 gunshot wounds had doubled in the past decade.
Doubled from what to what? I bet that stat — probably a single digit to a higher single digit deal — wouldn’t be half (50 percent!) as effective at promoting civilian disarmament. So it doesn’t get a look in.
Meanwhile, are we supposed to think Baltimore’s homicide victims would be less dead with less gunshot wounds? How many less rounds?
And would there be less rounds hitting home if the criminals committing homicide had respected Maryland’s mag capacity law? Might they, I dunno, reload? Or take out a second gun?
The Trace is on the case!
T.J. Smith, a Baltimore police spokesperson, said it was not uncommon for officers to pull up at crime scenes and find the street littered with spent shell casings.
Well there you go! There wouldn’t be so many shell casings, so many rounds fired, if only the bad guys obeyed the law before breaking it. While breaking it? Something. Or, as far as I can tell, nothing. Nothing about this law makes any sense.
Certainly not the inevitable reaction of those responsible for disarming law-abiding citizens. Which is, of course, give it time! Must try harder! It’s better than nothing! It’s other states’ fault! Like this:
“That’s disappointing,” Jen Pauliukonis, president of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence, said after learning about the increase. Her group advocated the ban, which was one of several provisions wrapped into the Firearm Safety Act of 2013.
“I hope as we work toward strengthening implementation and enforcement of the Firearm Safety Act that we still start to see over time a reduction in these numbers,” Pauliukonis said . . .
“It’s more than likely that the effects of the law just haven’t had sufficient time to show,” said the [MD AG’s] spokesperson, Raquel Coombs. She added that it is “possible that we are just now getting to the point where the number of [high-capacity magazines] is below what it would have been in the absence of the law.” . . .
Trace data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that the majority of out-of-state crime guns recovered in Maryland originate in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Neither state bans the sale of high-capacity magazines.
Anything to justify gun control. More gun control!
Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia are the only states that ban outright the ownership of high-capacity magazines, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Come July 1, California may join that list if a measure signed by Governor Jerry Brown survives a legal challenge from gun groups.
Once again we see gun control advocates doubling down on their failed policies. What’s double nothing? Nothing. And who’s actually following these mag cap limit laws? Law abiding citizens like the gentleman above, penalized, hobbled and infringed in the name of public safety.
“It’s always a growing concern any time you have bad guys and criminals on the street that have just as much capacity if not more capacity than
law enforcementa law-abiding citizen has,” [Baltimore police spokesperson T.J.] Smith said. But, he said later, “until there are consequences, I don’t know if the law is really going to matter.”
There. Fixed it for you.