Joe Huffman has a video of him shooting, doing reload practices. Joes a pretty damned good shot, but his skill in reloading isn’t anything anyone couldn’t do with just a bit of practice.
Now, in my discussion yesterday, there was a lot of talk that the AZ incident wouldn’t have happened or the body count would have been much lower had the killer not had easy access to high capacity magazines.
It appeared to me that these people really believe that the time it takes to reload is plenty for people to tackle the shooter. First, this assumes people are within 7 feet of the shooter and are already situated in a way that they can move toward him. Really?
Here’s a thought experiment. Walk into a mall into a crowded area. Light an M80 and drop it at your feet. What’s the mass reaction to the initial concussion? Right, people instinctively dart away from the loud sound. It takes training to overcome that instinct and run towards gunfire. Hell, I will run away and find cover or concealment and I’m armed.
Second, notice in the video how Joe’s gun doesn’t slide lock. If you reload before your empty, there’s no visual indicator that you’re out of cartridges. Even if the shooter does empty the pistol, are you looking directly at him or her? How can you tell that the gun is actually empty? Are you willing to bum rush someone who clearly has the ability to poke a hole in you and has already shown they’re more than willing to?
No, most people run away from the danger. So to assume that a mass shooter having to reload because he didn’t mind the life sentence / death penalty but worried enough about the 3 extra years for an illegal magazine fails on many levels. Access to weaponry is not restricted by laws any more than heroine is hard to come by because it’s illegal. Understanding that reality is not the same as saying “Well, we should just ignore the problem” any more than saying “My oil is leaking from my car so I guess I should stop checking my tire pressure as it doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it”.
Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that we’re going to be seeing any legislation make it through any time soon.