AWB Would Not Have Prevented The Tucson Shooting

As usual, this site the ghouls at the Brady Center follow hot on the trail of a murder; in this case they are arguing that, had the federal assault-weapons ban not been allowed to expire, the Tucson shooter would have had a hard time buying the magazine he used in the gun with which he shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It is certainly not true that, as Salon put it, “Weapon in rampage was banned under Clinton-era law”The weapon in question, a 9mm Glock 19 pistol, was not banned; neither were the 31-round magazines the shooter used. What was banned was the manufacture or importation of new magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds.

That is not hair-splitting, inasmuch as high-capacity magazines for Glocks were and are commonplace — almost as commonplace as Glocks themselves — and remained so even while their manufacture and importation were banned. Most Glock 9mm magazines are usable in any Glock 9mm pistol, regardless of model. Glock makes at least four different 9mm pistols at the moment — 9mm being one of the most common calibers — and a high-capacity magazine sold for almost any of those could have been used in the Glock 19. Third-party manufacturers make them as well, and have made them for years and years, meaning that AWB or no AWB, finding one is not very difficult. The only difference the AWB is likely to have made is that the shooter would have had a used magazine instead of a new one (assuming he did in fact have a new one), and he probably would have paid five bucks more for it.-[source]