It is scary that a former Navy Captain and American astronaut can be so f’n ignorant:
1) 5.56 NATO (.223) was adopted to be LESS lethal than the prior .30-06 of an M1 Garand.
2) Tactically, 5.56 NATO being LESS lethal requires the enemy to expend resources evacuating the wounded during battle. Being a much smaller round you can carry more ammo in battle.
3) In trying to buy the AR-15 apparently to show how easy it is to acquire one during this most recent debacle; He was previously declined because he still had Texas ID and was trying to buy a weapon in Arizona AND now that he has been able to make the purchase (with Arizona ID?) he has a 20 day grace period before he can pick it up. I guess it isn’t so easy after all…thanks for proving that Mr. Kelly.
4) A 10 round magazine isn’t designed for sport and a 30 round magazine designed to kill. They are both designed to feed ammo into the weapon…period. The time it takes a trained individual to fire three 10 round magazines and one 30 round magazine is virtually insignificant.
5) Though I think it is sad his wife was shot; she was shot with a pistol, with a cumbersome high capacity (in this case extended is not a misnomer) magazine by a psychotic idiot who didn’t know how to do an out of battery reload….no matter what size magazine he was using. It was not a high capacity magazine originally designed by the manufacturer for the pistol, such as a 15 round magazine for a Sig Sauer P226.
6) Not doing background checks on private party sales at gun shows and private party sales in other places is not a ‘loophole’ in the law….IT ISN’T THE LAW! AND If BATFE really wanted to monitor the legality of any sales, it would be substantially easier to do it at one place such as a gun show instead of each individual home where a private party transaction might otherwise occur. Also, once you require private party sales to do background checks, criminals are going to target those sales for thefts knowing from the start there is a weapon there to be acquired and posing as a buyer to gain access to it.
7) The false logic that makes you blame a gun, a magazine, a type of bullet etc. for a crime is the same false logic that makes a mass killer blame other people for their problems. Both are placing blame on something other than the actual source of the problem.
You know what’s easier than buying an ‘assault weapon’? Apparently passing laws based on emotion instead of logic and statistical fact.