Nutter to Congress: Ban high-capacity gun magazines

NRA to Nutter: Why don’t you go arrest somebody?

Nutter to Congress: Ban High-Capacity Magazine Clips. The Mayor takes to U.S. News & World Report to argue for what he calls “common sense” gun regulation.

We as a society will always confront evil in the heart and sickness in the mind. Bad people will do bad things, but we can and must take steps to deny these criminals the weapons of mass destruction that have ripped apart families across the country. While the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that Americans have a right to keep a gun in the home for self-defense, the court has also upheld laws prohibiting possession of guns by felons or the mentally ill.

President Obama has called for “common sense” regulation. Regulating magazine size is surely common sense. Large-capacity magazines can turn a semiautomatic pistol into a weapon of mass destruction, with some spitting out six shots per second. These are not a hunter’s weapons. They are meant to hurt or kill as many people as quickly as possible. Only law enforcement and the military should have access to this kind of firepower.

Since May 2006, eight Philadelphia police officers have been killed in the line of duty, six by gunfire. One, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, was felled by an assault weapon. Across the state in Pittsburgh, three police officers were killed in April 2009 by a man armed with an assault rifle and two other guns. In an urban environment, weapons fitted out with large-capacity magazines are in fact weapons of mass destruction.

Some will argue that the magazines are used in sporting competitions or are necessary for defensive purposes at home. The plain truth is that a magazine with 10 bullets, which the McCarthy bill would allow, is more firepower than our Founding Fathers might have imagined and more than enough to guard one’s castle. [US News]

And here, if you’re interested, is the NRA’s argument for why you should be able to have a semi-automatic with a bajillion bullets, for shooting robbers and such:

Why do honest Americans—private citizens and police alike—choose magazines that hold more than 10 rounds? Quite simply, they improve good people’s odds in defensive situations.

Cox also dogs Nutter’s record on law enforcement.

Since the ban expired in 2004, the nation’s murder rate has dropped 10 percent, continuing a long-term decline that began in 1991. Through 2009, the murder rate is at a 45-year low, and the FBI recently reported that it fell an additional 7 percent in the first half of 2010. Mayor Nutter’s city, unfortunately, has lagged far behind the rest of America, with a murder rate that returned to early ’90s levels in recent years. While Philadelphia politicians call for gun control, nearly two thirds of violent-crime defendants in Philadelphia over a recent three-year period avoided conviction. [US News]