It seems the mass murderer in Florida did not use magazines of a capacity over 10 rounds. This presents a minor difficulty for gun control advocates seeking a ban on ammunition magazines with a capacity of over 10 rounds. From miamiherald.com:
The “weapon and bullets were not high quality and were breaking apart,” one of the legislators, state Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, told the Herald.
Cruz went in with only 10-round magazines because larger clips would not fit in his duffel bag, Book said.
Given the general ignorance of reporters on firearms technology, and of Democrats in general, I would not rely on this information until we have corroboration. Democrat Representative Lauren Book seems to have experience with child abuse and anorexia (she has written two books).
The only expertise she has exhibited about firearms is that she sponsored a bill to punish parents if a minor obtained a firearm that was not locked up. The bill would have applied the same rules to BB guns or air guns.
We should know soon if only 10 round magazines were used. The use of 10 round magazines undercuts the drive to outlaw magazines of higher capacity.
Debaters are always able to manufacture hypothetical situations that support their position. Marco Rubio is supposed to have said that the use of 10 round magazines supported the need to ban magazines that hold more rounds.
The reason? Because the mass murder would have been even worse with magazines with greater capacity! From time.com:
Rubio visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school and a few days later met with its teachers. He said he was told that several people were able to escape because 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz stopped and reloaded the rifle he used during the Feb. 14 attack.
The Florida Republican, who was challenged by survivors and family members during a contentious meeting broadcast on CNN on Wednesday, said this is “evidence in this case that it saved the lives of some people.”
We have one of the highest casualty mass murder school shootings in our history, supposedly with 10 round magazines. That is taken to be evidence to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. No matter how bad an event is, a hypothetical can always be made to say it could have been worse.
This is a typical debate tactic for infringements on the Second Amendment. The laws proposed seldom have much to do with the crime being used to push an emotional argument. It is an opportunity to pass legislation that would never pass with calm reflection.
Those who want the public disarmed control most of the national media. If a murderer uses magazines of more than 10 rounds, the push is to ban magazines of more than 10 rounds. If the murderer uses magazines of 10 rounds or less, the push is to ban magazines of more than 10 rounds.
This is Goldilocks gun control. Guns are always too big (.50 cal) too small (concealable) too powerful, not powerful enough, too effective, not effective enough… guns are never “just right”.
Recall the State of New York attempted to ban all magazines that held more than seven rounds, in their infamous “SAFE act”.
People who want the public disarmed have one position. It is guns are bad, and you should not have them. If you think that is incorrect, ask them what their limit on restrictions would be.
Rifles are used in a tiny amount of murders in the United States. The number of murders with rifles have had an upward blip the last couple of years as the national media has made mass murderers who use semi-automatic rifles into instant celebrities.
Expect little change in the calls for a ban on magazines with a capacity over 10 rounds. Facts do not matter to those pushing for a disarmed population. Facts tend to be impediments to emotional arguments.
Nearly all infringements on the Second Amendment have passed legislatures with little regard for facts.
©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Ironic, a democrat from a place called plantation.
One of the most inane remarks ever made on TTAG.
Yeah but it’s Dale Gribble. You were expecting an enlightened epiphany?
FLAME DELETED
The source of this childish article is Ammoland which is an even more absurd sight that The Lies About Guns, regularly carrying Alex Jones-style pieces laden with nonsense about the UN coming to take away your guns
Lies About Guns? Isn’t that the Bloomberg sponsored site?
Smarter than you, obviously, along with your clique of whiners about ammoland and ttag. You sound like a bunch of jew-hating hoplaphobes.
It wasn’t inane it was accurate. Dems opposed emancipation and to this day they keep blacks in their voting plantation even as they threw them out of work / opened the borders.
Maybe you should change your handle to TinyBallSack, or Sucketh Garbagus For Votes.
Ironic, a democrat from a place called plantation.
I can follow the logic.
Yeah, Dummycraps do spring from the Plantation both as owners and slaves.
Actually makes perfect sense since democrats have been the party of slavery all along.
I would take anything Marco Rubio says with a grain of salt. “I absolutely believe that in this country, if you are 18 years of age you should not be able to buy a rifle. I will support a law that takes that right away,” Rubio
This will cause the media to start demanding a ban on 10 round magazines. The next shooter will use 5 round magazines, and they’ll call for a ban on those.
You’re not wrong. I got into it with someone that said if you need more than one round for anything, whether it be target practice, competition, hunting, or self defense you need to turn your guns in. Articles and videos showing multiple assailants were called fake news.
So, by his logic, you should only need 1 round for a 32 round USPSA stage? Nice 0 score there.
The catalyst for a restriction on magazines with too few rounds, minimum limits!
Uh, guys?
This kid doesn’t seem like the most resourceful type…
I don’t even have ten-round magazines for ARs in my shop… just standard thirties, forties and occasionally drums…
Yeah, I know they exist but it does make me skeptical about this story when I consider that it would have been even a little inconvenient for this kid to order the mags online and have to wait for them.
🤠
How do you even GET 10 round magazines in Florida?
You can get 5 (restricted for hunting) 20, 30, and up. but 10?
I’ve got a couple of Lancer 10’s I had to special order.
A little like Bill Clinton talking about the Orlando nightclub shooting. Dozens dead but it could have been “so much worse” if others had been armed in the club.
8 dead and thirty wounded over Presidents Day weekend in Chicago. I know it’s just an oversight on someone’s part that people aren’t marching in the streets to demand “something be done” to stop urban gang violence.
Noting that the picture accompanying this story is for 22LR mags…
Oh, they are, their “solution” however, is to turn 2.2 million Illinois gun owners into felons overnight rather than crack down on the ganbangers.
It doesn’t matter if it was 3 round mags. They want to get rid of firearms. They’ve effectively gotten rid of full auto now they’re working on semi auto.
They are not going to win but they’ll soak the streets in blood before they are finally destroyed.
I’m highly suspicious of this report. First…the size difference between a 10 and a 30 isn’t very big in terms of fitting into a duffle bag. Hell…I can put a 30rd Pmag in my cargo shorts pocket. 3 or 4 30 rd mags….even 10 of them would easily fit in a duffle bag. Also…let’s say he had 6 ten round mags total…..would that be really easier to fit in a duffle bag then 2 30 rnd mags?
Also….10 rd mags are not that common down here in Florida. If he bought them at a store they carry mostly 30rd pmags. Sure..you can buy 10rnd ones….but it just doesn’t make sense that this kid who wanted to kill as many people as possible and planned it out to the point of pulling a firearm would not use 30 round mags.
I also believe this is the same source who said the gun jammed. Again highly doubtful for a Smith & Wesson that only had 30-50 rounds just shot through it and practically brand new. Most likely some moron saw it laying there with bolt open after last round and thought it had “jammed”.
I had a friend who bought a new Smith & Wesson AR that jammed within the first few rounds of ownership using a Magpul magazine and Federal ammo. It was the 2nd Gen S&W too.
It is very possible and S&W AR’s are cheap for a reason. They aren’t that good at least based on my anecdotal experience. You get what you pay for.
Same. M&P Sport jammed on the second 30 rd PMAG with Federal Lake City ammo running through it. Had to send it back to S&W before I ever fired it because the rear takedown pin needed a punch and a hammer to get it out and wouldn’t go back in without significantly more force that I was willing to try. But hey, that’s why it was $549 at time of purchase.
Some are better than others. I’ve heard good things about the entry level models but they may be hit or miss.
I was issued a Smith MOE edition for work and probably put 2k rounds through it with 0 malfunctions.
Ruger probably makes some of the best entry level ARs, and their upper end piston guns are great too.
My S&W Sport hasn’t missed a beat with a lot of cheap Wolf steel case, Wolf brass which isn’t as good as the steel and Guardian cheap Turkish ammo. For the price it is an okay AR. One could spend a lot more and not get more function. I’ve heard horror stories about $3000 ARs that couldn’t successfully burn through a 30 round mag without a failure and not run steel at all.
Great point – what type of duffel bag can hold a rifle but not a 30 round mag? And if he had more than one bag, was it a sandwich bag that could not hold the 30 rd?
The Evil lying prog media would call a coin purse a duffel bag if it fit their Marxist agenda.
I agree, Jim. If you have the room for a taken down (or not) AR in a backpack or bag you’d have room for at least eight 30 round mags. I don’t buy he used 10 rounders because of a lack of space.
Dunno, I had a friend who took a brand-new AR to an appleseed shoot, it jammed constantly. He had to borrow a backup gun from an instructor.
During the lunch break the instructors determined it was underlubed & took care of it.
Anyways, if the shooter was new to ARs and hadn’t really used the rifle before, it’s a possibility.
It’s possible the kid was running it bone dry, or with the tacky shipping grease not cleaned off. He wasn’t particularly gun-savvy.
Highly suspicious? I am straight up calling bullshit on this report. 10 round magazines are actually hard to find.
I question who originally made the report, who examined the evidence, and what agenda they are following (other than a pursuit of the truth).
It took two weeks for this to leak out. Two weeks of non-stop media feesing frenzy, and this detail was kept secret. Do note we still haven’t seen the murder weapon, is it going to have a ban compliant stock on it, or something? We found out this guy carved Nazi swastikas into the gun within days, knew he had 150 rounds of unused ammunition, fired around 130, yet weren’t told that 1 in 10 objects he dropped that day were these silly little ban-state magazines, ostensibly used to fit the gun in a bag (which doesn’t make sense if the gun has a pistol grip)
I do not believe the shooting was a conspiracy so much as reckless endangerment to facilitate graft, but every single aspect of this story once the bullets started flying appears to have been carefully manufactured & controlled.
“Do note we still haven’t seen the murder weapon, is it going to have a ban compliant stock on it, or something?”
TTAG posted an article that included three images purporting to have come from the murderer’s Instagram account:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2018/02/robert-farago/guns-parkland-florida-spree-killer/
I’m not sure what a FL “ban compliant stock” would look like but, in one of the images, there is an M&P AR-15 dead center (sporting what appears to be a 30 rd mag.). There also appears to be the barrel and fore-end of another AR format rifle below and to the left of the M&P.
You probably know better than I what’s legal in FL. Please let us know if the AR in the photo meets FL requirements or not.
That’s not to say the M&P is definitely the rifle he used.
My point exactly; we have not been shown the murder weapon. Stuff on his antisocial media does not count, because the cops know exactly what was used.
So why aren’t they sharing? Is there gore all over the gun, or does it simply not fit the narrative? 10rnd mags for sure don’t fit the narrative, or what we knew the kid to have, which is why the article raises questions. Personally, I think it’s just the usual gun-reporting incompetence, as evidenced by other moronic statements like bullets falling apart, and shorter 20rnd mags the same length as the pistol grip were used to fit in a bag.
Is there audio available with more than ten uninterrupted shots out there (not that I’ll be listening), since I heard most recordings were also confiscated by the same police.
It’s a fair line of inquiry, considering how directly authorities seem to have contributed to this tragedy (I am holding off on saying they were truly complicit for now)
Just as a point of info, there’s no such thing as a “FL ban-compliant” AR-15, because Florida has no limits on AR-15 ownership aside from federal rules regarding barrel length and fully automatic. Ban compliant sticks would be funky things such as required in NY and CA.
Let’s not forget that the assault weapon ban-compliant firearm used in the Columbine shooting fired 96 rounds from 10-round mags while the non-AWB-compliant firearm fired 55 rounds total from a 52-, 32-, and 28-round mag.
Yeah from a freakin’ Hipoint carbine Jeremy. The goal is all guns get banned.Especially in my shite state of Illinoisistan…
Surprised 20 round mags weren’t used. They’re much smaller than 30’s, I’ve thought about using them for ultralight AR builds/loadouts.
Easier to go prone with too.
Yeah, which is why I have a few of them, but mass shooters never go prone to take shots. They always stay on their feet and I’m sure if they could find a way to carry 60 round drums or 100 round casket mags, they would.
But, it’s difficult to carry those types of magazines, they’re VERY expensive, and just don’t beat 20 or 30 round box mags.
In my time in the service we had m16’s. The most common mag we had was the 20 rounder. We started getting the 30 rounder, but in fewer numbers.
In every way in day to day handling the 20 rounder was handier in the weapon. Especially in thick brush. The only time I considered the 30 rounder superior is when those inconsiderate bastards starting shooting at you.
@ Jim Bremer- I’m suspicious as well. I’m thinking he had a S&W 15/22!!
1. The magazine size would make sense then.
2. The malfunctions would make sense, especially during reloads. 15/22s can be finicky.
3. He didn’t have money. Most of what he showed online was cheap air soft stuff. The 15/22 would be less than 1/2 the cost of even the cheapest .556 rifle.
No wonder the antis always push so hard after an event. They wouldn’t want emotions to cool and the truth to come out.
Half? Even on sale the best I’ve seen a 15/22 for is $300+tax. It’s trivial to get a M&P15 for less than 500, and that’s only because I don’t keep track of the prices of the junk that goes for less. I could have built a PSA build for 400 before the panic buying too.
Good points but the kid actually had money. He was getting money from his moms estate at the time…I believe he had aleady gotten 25k. One of the calls to the police was about I think the lady whom he lived with worrying about people taking advantage of him and his money.
Don’t think so. The rifle in his Instagram posts had a forward assist, which the M&P 15/22 lacks. It looks to be an AR-15.
That thing that just went over your head was the point Nanashi. 🙄
It seems fitting, that a wacky (D) would sh_t so soundly upon the name of one of FL’s Grand Dames of liberal (D) environmentalism. People will remember her name for a record deadly shooting, instead of her friends of the Everglades.
The other way they could go with it is “10 rounds is too high! Ban everything over 5 rounds!” Which is what they would probably do if a national ban on 11+ round magazines passed. The slippery slope argument isn’t a fallacy when the things they propose aren’t going to work and aren’t even the end goal
Ban everything under ten rounds!
What the hell type of duffle bag couldn’t carry 30 round magazines? It does raise any interesting point, if we use the same logic as the gun grabbers (shudders), if the 10 round magazines hadn’t existed (to fulfill the commie states laws), this shooting couldn’t have happened. Ban compact low capacity magazines! Only large, high capacity magazines from now on!
If this is the case it blows the whole ten round capacity delusion the Left pushes as a part of it’s orthodoxy,now the new mantra will be single shots,Yeah I’m aware the Left’s ultimate goal is No Guns,PERIOD.
The round count and the rounds fired per minute do not matter when there is no armed confrontation. The only worry the shooter may have had was someone rushing him while he reloads.
Sadly, you are incorrect that this undermines the anti-gun extremist’s demands to ban magazines with more than ten rounds…it simply shows that all magazine fed guns need to be banned…….which is their plan anyway once they get standard magazines…and then 6 shots will be too much…..and then any rifle….and on and on….Thank you for Trump….he just needs to replace ginsburg, and kennedy, and maybe Roberts….that loser….
oh, and he needs to stop agreeing with the gun grabbers; don’t forget that little detail
If true, it could also be used by the antis to argue that 10 rounds is enough, that you don’t need greater capacity.
TTAG – Why are you not talking about this yet?
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5087/text
Assault Weapons Ban of 2018. Illegalizing [all] semi-automatics.
Cause it ain’t going nowhere.
@ Bob Smith
The Anti Left wants all guns banned right down to sling shots and pea shooters,even soda straws and spit wads.
I’d like to know why someone would have a grenade/rocket launcher on a shotgun, you’ve got a freaking shotgun what do you need the grenade/rocket launcher for.
I keep seeing people use the word “need”, repeatedly, as though it were relevant.
I’ll rephrase then – “you’ve got a freaking shotgun what do you have the grenade/rocket launcher for”
Overmatch!
Time to ban 10 round over capacity magazines; just for the children!
Excuse me, should have said “clips”. Gotta get the lingo right.
maybe it is time to ban children!
Planned Parenthood is in charge of that.
If we get the duffel bags banned then it doesn’t even matter what size mags he had because if there were no duffel bags he couldn’t put them in anything. Problem solved.
I seriously doubt he used 10 round mags, he would have had to go out of his way to find them. 30 round mags are ubiquitous, he supposedly fired 150 rounds, (5 mags), then escaped the school. I doubt he carried fifteen 10 round mags.
I’m calling BS on this news, a broke kid would buy 5 mags not 15 for almost the same price
Well whatever he had he killed 17. Doesn’t really matter does it…especially to the leftists? Going off on a tangent, stopped by Academy on the way home yesterday to replace a couple of bad magazines and some 5.56 ammo I had shot a couple of weeks ago. ALL of the PMAGS were gone…no 10, 20, or 30 round mags. Ended up buying some 30 round MFT mags. Next aisle over the .223/5.56 ammo was all but gone!! managed to get 200 rounds. of .223 ,55 gr. FMJ. 20 round box for $ 6.99 each. Cheap enough but, not what I was looking for. Looks like the panic has begun. Anyone else seen this??
Yes – Cabelas in Ohio is the same. I was in the store three weeks earlier (before the Parkland shooting) getting a scope mounted, and the difference in inventory and prices were night and day.
No magazines in stock, very little of what used to be a huge selection of .223 ammo, and the prices were higher for all of the common rifle calibers.
there was 2 calls to the fbi .. one of them was from Maryland saying he is collecting his weapons and the caller fearer he was going to hit a school.. could that have anything do with the clips ?
father of family he live with after moving out of the trailer said he knew he went hunting , is the Maryland caller the hunting friend where his guns were kept before the safe was purchased .. that father told him to get his guns they were his right ..
he did clean his guns one time in the safe..maybe he didnt lube them correctly the ammo was purchased while he stayed at trailer with his brother .. i think the answer to the clips might just be in that Maryland phone call
Well, it’s been five months now, as I write this comment. Has it ever been determined / verified that the shooter used 10-round magazines? Inquiring minds want to know, but the Internet search engines are strangely uncooperative…