Colorado gun control lawmaker doesn't realize magazines can be reloaded

Saturday, April 06, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: gun magazines, reloading, myths

(NaturalNews) It is a concept that seems basic - almost rudimentary - even for a child, but apparently one leading left-wing gun-banning congresswomen didn't seem to realize during recent televised proceedings that gun magazines can be reloaded.

Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado has been a leading congressional sponsor of a federal ban on high-capacity magazines for years, even calling it one of her top priorities. With that said, you would assume, then, that this esteemed member of the House would at least have a base of knowledge about how such devices work - right?

Well, if you assumed that you'd be wrong.

Ignorance may be bliss but not when it comes to gun rights

At an April 2 forum on gun control that was hosted by The Denver Post, "the senior congresswoman from Denver appeared to not understand how guns work," the paper said.

When she was asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 bullets would be an effective deterrent to gun violence, this is what the brainiac said:

"I will tell you these are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those know they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available."

These shiny brass-and-lead things, see, are bullets, and, you know, once you shoot 'em, well, then, um, you know, they're gone and with them, um, the clip thingies too.

What is she babbling about? She doesn't know - and that's the problem.

Per the Post:

What she didn't appear to understand is that a magazine can be reloaded with more bullets. According to the Shooter's Log, only early on were magazines for AR-15s designed to be disposable, but the military changed that and now magazines are used several times. In handguns, a magazine is designed to be reused hundreds of times.

The paper said that, following her ridiculously uninformed comment, people in the audience at the Post forum "chuckled." I'll bet.

One voice of reason in the room, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, spoke up as the audience continued laughing. He urged anyone who had never actually shot a firearm to "get to the facts...Let's be educated as we make this decision."

That would be nice.

Needless to say, critique - and ridicule - of DeGette's ignorance is going viral. But the National Rifle Association's characterization was both brief and spot-on.

"Two words - pretty stupid," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

Republicans in Colorado also responded - because they likely couldn't hold their tongue if you doubled their salary.

"It's extremely alarming that Rep. DeGette is running federal legislation to ban magazine clips, when she doesn't even know what a magazine clip is," said spokesman Owen Loftus. "Rep. DeGette's comments show that Democrats are more concerned with appeasing their radical base, than standing up for responsible, law abiding citizens."

This is what ideological opposition to gun rights looks like

In classic understatement that could only come from someone in Washington, D.C., DeGette's spokeswoman, Juliet Johnson, issued a statement Wednesday, saying her boss misspoke (far be it from the congresswoman herself to, you know, defend herself, so she hides behind her spokeswoman).

"The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to 'magazines' when she should have referred to 'clips,' which cannot be reused because they don't have a feeding mechanism," Johnson said. "Quite frankly, this is just another example of opponents of common-sense gun violence prevention trying to manipulate the facts to distract from the critical issue of keeping our children safe and keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals. It's more political gamesmanship that stands in the way of responsible solutions."

Please. And another thing - "clips" are slang for "magazines," so they can be reused too.

This is really just another example of a liberal, left-wing, gun-banning idiot being clueless in general about firearms and the issues surrounding them, which is by choice, by the way. If she really gave a damn about the chief civil rights issue of our day - the right to protect ourselves - she would better educate herself about guns, the Second Amendment, and why it was important enough to our founders to be second on the list of the Bill of Rights.

Sources for this article include:

http://blogs.denverpost.com

http://revealingpolitics.com

http://www.dailycamera.com