While gun control advocates confuse me in general this story has given me a major headache:
The ease of stockpiling ammunition once again became apparent after police discovered that the perpetrator of one of the deadliest mass shootings in Minnesota history had packaging for 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his south Minneapolis home.
Last Thursday, Andrew J. Engeldinger had a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, two 15-round magazines and several loose rounds when he killed four co-workers, a UPS man and himself after being fired from Accent Signage Systems. In addition to the ammunition shipping boxes, police found a second Glock 9mm handgun in his house.
Let me get this straight, Engeldinger had no more than 30-some rounds of ammunition when he shot up Accent Signage so gun control advocates are now calling to control large lots of ammunition purchases? The man had less than a box of 9mm ammunition on his person. Whatever stockpile he had at home is entirely irrelevant because he didn’t use it in commission of his crime. To use the often-beloved car analogy this would be like demanding stricter controls on the number of automobiles an individual can purchase after a getaway driver for a bank robbery was found to own 12 vehicles.
I’m glad we have people like Andrew Rothman in this state raising these exact questions:
Andrew Rothman, vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, said it’s not uncommon for people to make bulk purchases to guard against changes in gun laws and increases in ammunition prices in recent years.
“The shooter probably used 10 or 20 rounds of ammunition [in the attack] — is it really relevant how many rounds he had at home?” Rothman said.
Notice the stark difference between gun rights advocates and gun control advocates in this story? Gun control advocates are striving to find something to further restrict while gun rights advocates are asking what relevance the amount of ammunition owned by the shooter had to do with the shooting. I think this is why our society has slowly turned away from supporting stricter gun control, the people advocating such things fail to make logical arguments.
Those calling for ammunition controls have also failed to explain what good such controls would do. A person is limited in the amount of ammunition they can use in a crime. First of all ammunition isn’t weightless so the amount of can carry on their person is limited to the physical strength of the individual in question. Second of all a person can only operate a fixed number of firearms at the same time (two, if they’re operating a handgun in each hand) so the amount they can fire is limited by human anatomy. The story mentioned that controlling ammunition could give police an indicator that an individual is planning to do something wrong but they would be forced to interview every competitive shooter in the state (we go through a lot of ammunition). They would also be forced to interview ever person purchasing for a group buy or simply stockpiling ammunition because they found a really good sale. In other words the police would be forced to sink their time into countless wasted interviews. It would accomplish nothing besides wasting everybody’s time.
We should also consider the absurdity of controlling ammunition. Ammunition isn’t complicated to make, in fact there are reloading presses that allow you to make great quantities of ammunition quickly. If somebody is unable to purchase 10,000 rounds of ammunition they will simply make it or buy it from somebody who does make it (what a great agorist opportunity).
There is no logic in gun control and even less in ammunition control.