Desperate Los Angeles Bans ‘High Capacity’ Magazines
The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 Tuesday approving a city-wide ban on the possession of so-called “high-capacity” gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. That would be a standard capacity on even many small handguns. The councilman who wrote the ordinance, Paul Krekorian, said, “Mass shootings have become so endemic that we can all recite a litany of places where they have occurred: Columbine, Isla Vista, Chattanooga — they’ve become part of lexicon. We’ve become desperate to find some solution to the destabilizing effect of the fact that we have to fear these sorts of mass killings.” Desperate indeed. As gun blogger Nick Leghorn notes, the measure that gives lawful gun owners 60 days to give up their lawfully purchased property tramples on the Fourth Amendment and, we might add, possibly the Fifth — not to mention the Second. While city council members pat themselves on the back for “closing a loophole” on any gun owner in the city’s zip codes, they might want to look cross country to New York, where the state’s similar magazine ban was recently ruled unconstitutional.