Let’s ban “assault magazines”
I’ve served in law enforcement nearly my whole career, currently as San Francisco’s district attorney, and before that as chief of police in San Francisco and Mesa, Ariz., and as assistant chief of police in Los Angeles. I’ve seen firsthand the danger assault magazines pose to police officers and the public. In 2005, José Raul Peña took his 19-month-old daughter hostage and engaged SWAT officers in an extended gun battle using a shotgun and 9-mm handgun with a large capacity clip. During the 2½-hour standoff, 140 shots were fired, Peña and his daughter were killed and a SWAT officer who attempted to save the little girl was shot through the shoulder. Here, in San Francisco, Gian Luigi Ferri used 40- and 50-shot magazines to kill nine and wound six others in the 1993 101 California Massacre…
Large magazines serve no useful purpose in civilian life except to extend shootouts, magnify carnage and suffering and put the lives of law enforcement officers and civilians at risk.
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Fine, ban something that doesn’t exist you imbecilic fascist.
tom daschle concerned on January 13, 2013 at 5:47 PM
Really? How did someone so dumb become a DA?
BigGator5 on January 13, 2013 at 5:47 PM
Eat my shorts.
tom daschle concerned on January 13, 2013 at 5:48 PM
Time or Newsweek. Or Cosmo, since it’s a big, thick mother that you can beat the hell out of something with.
BacaDog on January 13, 2013 at 5:49 PM
Fixed it for you.
BigGator5 on January 13, 2013 at 5:50 PM
This guy is a dipwad. I too am a law enforcement officer and have been in the system for some 40 years. There has never been a day when I felt threatened by any honest citizen who had weapons equal to or better than mine. I have never felt secure with an armed criminal until he had been disarmed, regardless of the weapon or magazine size. Any LEO trying to claim otherwise is playing politics, and my LEO brothers and sisters, you all know politics is a bigger threat to your on-duty life than anything else out there.
MikeA on January 13, 2013 at 5:51 PM
Why does George hate Jamaicans? Is he racist?
tom daschle concerned on January 13, 2013 at 5:51 PM
Ban Juggs: those things come right out and assault you!
thebrokenrattle on January 13, 2013 at 5:55 PM
“Gascon” – French. Tells me all I need to know…
affenhauer on January 13, 2013 at 5:58 PM
I just figured out why Libs are so hip on banning these weapons and magazines: they have the word ‘salt’ in them. It isn’t the person pulling the trigger, it’s the high salt content.
So the obvious answer is to begin producing low or no salt magazines and firearms.
Problem solved.
catmman on January 13, 2013 at 5:59 PM
These people all assume that guns are only designed for killing people. If that is the case, I have been misusing mine for decades. Should I thank them for pointing out my error? I think that I will just continue to punch holes in paper targets and ignore the anti-gunners.
DAT60A3 on January 13, 2013 at 5:59 PM
Framing alert! Is “Assault magazines” the next scare term, or is he really just that stupid?
juliesa on January 13, 2013 at 6:03 PM
people like this guy just want to be the only ones with the guns. They don’t want to be shot at, it is risky.
on the other hand we have Walter Williams
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/13/walter-williams-americans-misunderstand-the-point-of-the-second-amendment/
r keller on January 13, 2013 at 6:04 PM
If he worked in L.A. then he should know about the role assault magazines played in stopping looters during the riot.
juliesa on January 13, 2013 at 6:04 PM
This guy is a Democrat from San Francisco where they banned Happy Meals.
Nov. 1, 2009 – San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announces a policy to allow unlicensed drivers to avoid an automatic 30-day impound if a licensed driver can drive away their car. Then-Police Chief George Gascón explained the policy was designed to help those “who can’t get a driver’s license because of their immigration status, as well as those who could not afford driver training.
Pure politics.
sharrukin on January 13, 2013 at 6:07 PM
Is this before or after we ban Assault TVs, you know, the ones that keep falling on kids. Or Assault Cars, the ones that kill other motorists? How about the Assault Chef Knives that socialists nannies in the UK want to ban?
Personally, I favor banning Assault Rick Rolling, but that’s just me.
2lbsTest on January 13, 2013 at 6:13 PM
How about we ban assault nanny-staters.
rbj on January 13, 2013 at 6:21 PM
Couldn’t agree more.
-Patrol Sergeant of 6 years
SnakeintheGrass on January 13, 2013 at 6:23 PM
Meh, who cares? I never read um anyway.
surrounded on January 13, 2013 at 6:25 PM
Chief of police? I shudder to think of your LEO qualifications.
rogerb on January 13, 2013 at 6:33 PM
Wow, Peña’s 9mm pistol had a 140-shot
clipmagazine? Just one of them?All these “gun experts” telling us what we need and what we don’t, and they can’t get their facts straight. Sure wants me to take their word instead of believing in my own experience.
Socratease on January 13, 2013 at 6:42 PM
The military term for them is R.E.M.F.
logis on January 13, 2013 at 7:10 PM
That assumes that the men and women of the Armed Forces aren’t going to be on our side, should it get to the point where armed citizens are rising up against a tyrannical government.
Bad assumption.
Bruce MacMahon on January 13, 2013 at 7:14 PM
Let’s ban assault police.
thirtyandseven on January 13, 2013 at 7:27 PM
This!
Noocyte on January 13, 2013 at 7:31 PM
Yes, and ban lattes, bicycle helmets and French restaurants too.
petefrt on January 13, 2013 at 8:06 PM
[Bruce MacMahon on January 13, 2013 at 7:14 PM]
It’s not a bad assumption, it’s a good one for his hypothesis, which was a worst case scenario. That the probability of the assumption being accurate is very low to zero doesn’t make it a bad one and history does show a smaller, outmatched force can still win.
Dusty on January 13, 2013 at 8:11 PM
Let’s ban journalists who assault logic and reason constantly with malformation and misinformation.
Why do I need a 50 rnd magazine?
A) Because I would like one, like some people have cars with pink interiors.
B) Because I don’t want to have to stop shooting every 10 rounds. At the range or in a need situation. (multiple muggers; gang bangers all around me ; gov’t gone awry; etc.)
C) Why not?
D) My firearm is designed for it.
E) Because I don’t necessarily want to carry a belt-fed weapon.
F) It cuts down on the recoil with the added mass.
G) If I’m close to a gun free zone and I start hearing gunfire…and my daughter is in that location….
The list goes on….
But reducing rounds in a firearm’s magazine, just because some nutjob has used them…foolish. There are millions of very nice magazines that have never been involved in any violence.
So now we are supposed to discriminate against all magazines because of the actions that a few were involved in?
I think Liberals just are racist, biased against my black guns.
ProfShadow on January 13, 2013 at 8:24 PM
Yeah, Gascon conveniently leaves out the capacity of the magazines Pena had.
The child was shot by a police officer, which he didn’t mention, either. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t read an article reporting that LAPD tried to persuade the coroner’s office to change their finding that the child was killed by a bullet from a SWAT rifle.
Stuff like that puts a damper on my trust of anything Gascon asserts.
Dusty on January 13, 2013 at 8:29 PM
Are ‘assault magazines’ printed on ‘assault presses’? You know, the high-speed rotary presses that the Founders could never have envisioned?
Hm… well, maybe we should ban ‘em.
PersonFromPorlock on January 13, 2013 at 8:52 PM