Anti-gun U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.), have introduced their Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act (S. 407 and H.R. 752, respectively), in yet another attempt to ban magazines that accept more than 10 rounds. Similar legislation has been introduced in previous Congresses, and has repeatedly failed since the expiration of the Clinton “large” magazine ban in 2004.

Firearms designed to use magazines that hold more than ten rounds have been around for more than a hundred years. Today they constitute a majority of all new firearms manufactured, imported and sold in the United States, for what the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), called the central purpose of the Second Amendment: self-defense.While gun control supporters claim that the magazines are unnecessary for self-defense, millions of Americans disagree, and the Supreme Court has ruled in Heller that laws are unconstitutional if they prohibit firearms that are in common use for defensive purposes.

Moreover, studies have shown that magazine bans don’t reduce crime. The congressionally-mandated study of the 1994-2004 federal “large” magazine “ban” concluded that its 10-round limit on new magazines wasn’t a factor in multiple-victim or multiple-wound crimes. A follow-up study concluded that “relatively few attacks involve more than 10 shots fired,” and “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” And a majority of law enforcement in the United States acknowledges that banning standard-capacity magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds will not increase public safety.

A person attacked in a parking lot, or at home in the middle of the night, will probably have only the magazine within the firearm. No one should be arbitrarily limited in the number of rounds he or she can have for self-defense.

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