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Robb

(39,665 posts)
Mon Apr 8, 2013, 08:26 PM Apr 2013

Catch .223: Newtown Parent Mark Mattioli Says Magazine Limits Won’t Work Without "Confiscation"

I thought there were some good points made here.

(snip)

Normally, this argument simply reeks of bad faith, but coming from someone like Mark Mattioli, it’s obvious that there are people who sincerely believe this fundamental misunderstanding of how laws work. There are no laws designed to eliminate all crime via voluntary surrender. We don’t make laws against heroin because we think criminals will look up that law and surrender their drugs, we do it so that when the police do catch someone with heroin, they can take it away from them before it kills someone.

Similarly, if extended magazines are federally banned the way they now are in Connecticut, those already in circulation would need to be registered by the law’s effective date. After that, with no new magazines being sold and manufactured, police could take them away from people who weren’t supposed to have them, eventually reducing the supply to those who had lawfully registered them.

We also make laws to adjust the behavior of law-abiding citizens. Regardless of the supply in circulation, there’s every indication that Nancy Lanza was a law-abiding citizen, and would not have sought banned magazines for her weapons. As the Newtown parents in that 60 Minutes interview pointed out, smaller magazines could have provided more opportunities for children to escape, as 11 of them did on December 14 when the shooter was reloading.

Megyn Kelly asked Mattioli about that possibility. “All right, so, again,” Mattioli replied, “false premise in that they’re not talking about confiscating the magazines, they’re out there. If we were starting out at point a and there were no magazines, but we’re not talking about that. There are millions, tens of millions out there, and criminals aren’t going to hand them back.”

This is the circular nature of the NRA’s argument in a nutshell, the Catch .223; they have constructed a political environment in which they lobby against any and all regulation, then when a compromise is offered, they argue that the proposed law isn’t strict enough to do any good. It’s true, a ban on high-capacity magazines would work best if all non-registered magazines were confiscated immediately, but even without that, as I explained earlier, police would be able to take them away from people as they encountered them, hopefully before they’re used to kill people.

Read More: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/catch-223-newtown-parent-mark-mattioli-says-magazine-limits-wont-work-without-confiscation/
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Catch .223: Newtown Parent Mark Mattioli Says Magazine Limits Won’t Work Without "Confiscation" (Original Post) Robb Apr 2013 OP
Gun registry and regular inspections and periodic background checks might be an alternative. Loudly Apr 2013 #1
Canada did it without confiscation. Warren Stupidity Apr 2013 #2
why is bank robbery illegal? CreekDog Apr 2013 #3
 

Loudly

(2,436 posts)
1. Gun registry and regular inspections and periodic background checks might be an alternative.
Mon Apr 8, 2013, 08:41 PM
Apr 2013

Why leap all the way to confiscation?

But I can't call upon someone suffering such profound grief to make an incremental argument.

I don't blame him a bit. I only wish it were that easy.

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