Our team, our mission, our partners, and more. Plus: How to contact us. We report stories that would go untold. Generous readers sustain our work. The Business of Guns. The new products can reliably fire 40 or more rounds before requiring reloading.
The round rifle magazine has been the standard high-capacity magazine for more than three decades. These devices are used by the military and police around the world, and can be found accompanying popular civilian rifles like the AR Magazines with larger capacities, while available , are often cumbersome and unreliable.
Their size makes lying prone difficult. And the number of moving parts means they often jam. As a result, larger devices have remained more novelty than practical accessory for over a century. Spurred by the opportunity to land lucrative military contracts, American-based firearms accessory companies have developed a new generation of high-capacity magazines. The devices are compact, lightweight, and strong, holding anywhere from 40 to rounds, allowing their users to fire far more before having to reload.
Experts say these larger models are growing in popularity, and will soon dominate the civilian market. The new products have a cult following among gun enthusiasts looking for the best and most technologically advanced gear.
A review of police records by The Trace shows that the perpetrators of some of the most high-profile shootings over the last five years involved magazines with capacities over 30 rounds. In July , incensed by police shootings of unarmed black men, a former Marine with ties to the black separatist movement ambushed and killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The gunman, clad in body armor and a ski mask, was eventually killed by SWAT officers. Police recovered a Israeli-made assault-style rifle loaded with a round magazine. In October , the Las Vegas gunman used an arsenal of rifles equipped with , , and round magazines to fuel a stream of gunfire that left 58 dead and more than injured. When police finally breached the hotel room where the shooter launched his assault, they found stacks of the magazines strewn about his makeshift bunker.
The perpetrators of the mass shootings in Sutherland Springs, Texas; Parkland, Florida; and Christchurch, New Zealand; all possessed the latest generation of extended magazines. The Trace confirmed that all the magazines acquired by these shooters, excluding the one in Parkland, were manufactured by two U. Neither company responded to requests for comment. The time a shooter takes to reload his weapon can be critical in enabling victims to escape and law enforcement or others to intervene.
When shooters have high capacity magazines, more bullets can be fired before this crucial time period for escape or other intervention. In addition to their role in mass shootings, firearms equipped with large capacity magazines significantly contribute to crime across the country.
Alarmingly, data suggests that the use of firearms with large capacity magazines in crime has substantially increased since the expiration of the federal assault weapons and large capacity magazine ban in A growing body of research shows that banning high-capacity magazines can help to prevent gun violence. In particular, studies have found that the federal ban on large capacity magazines helped to prevent violence and the use of high-capacity magazines in crime during the 10 years in which it was in effect.
See our summary on Assault Weapons for more information. The law was adopted with a sunset clause, however, and expired in , despite overwhelming public support for its renewal. Thus, large capacity ammunition magazines and assault weapons that were formerly banned under the federal law are now legal unless banned by state or local law. Manufacturers took advantage of this loophole in the months leading up to the ban by boosting production of the magazines.
As a result, they continued to be readily available—and legal—nationwide even during the time the Act was in effect, except where specifically banned by state or local law. Additionally, because most magazines do not have any identifying marks to indicate when they were manufactured, it was difficult to distinguish those made before or after the ban.
To build a safer America—one where children and parents in every neighborhood can learn, play, work, and worship without fear of gun violence—we need you standing beside us in this fight. Despite these limitations, evidence indicates that the federal ban worked to reduce the use of large capacity magazines in crime. A Washington Post study analyzed data kept by the Virginia State Police and found a clear decline in the percentage of crime guns that were equipped with large capacity ammunition magazines after the federal ban was enacted.
Similarly, since the end of the federal ban, the Los Angeles Police Department has recovered significantly greater numbers of large capacity ammunition magazines, from 38 in to anywhere from to each year between and Bans on large capacity ammunition magazines—whether or not they contain legacy provisions that allow possession of previously owned LCMs—do not present a problem under The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
All of these jurisdictions except Colorado and Vermont also ban assault weapons. Hawaii prohibits the manufacture, transfer, and possession of large capacity magazines designed for or capable of use with a handgun.
Vermont restricts large capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds for use in a long gun, or more than 15 rounds for use in a handgun. Under federal law, a person can also buy these firearms from a licensed gun dealer after passing a background check.
Assault weapons are often the weapon of choice for mass shooters because they allow killers to fire off dozens of rounds in a matter of seconds without stopping to reload. Large capacity magazines are routinely used in handguns, and they help fuel the daily gun violence in impacted communities — specifically within communities of color in cities.
By using a large capacity magazine handgun, or in some cases an assault weapon, shooters can spray bullets through neighborhoods repeatedly shooting victims and increasing the likelihood that stray bullets hit bystanders. Assault weapons and large capacity magazines are also often used to kill law enforcement officers. The high rate of sustained fire puts law enforcement at an increased risk of injury or death.
On April 4, , three Pittsburgh officers were shot and killed in a shootout which lasted four hours. The gunman used an AK assault weapon to carry out his planned attack. On August 14, , six Philadelphia police officers were shot in an hours-long standoff with a man armed with an AR assault weapon. Assault weapons and large capacity magazines are routinely trafficked over the U. These weapons, which are illegal for civilian use in Mexico and many Latin American and Caribbean countries, fuel extremely large levels of gun violence.
In Mexico, for example, the expiration of the U. Unlike crime guns recovered in the United States, 18 assault weapons are often responsible for fueling much of gun violence in Mexico. For example, one study found that seven out of the ten most commonly recovered crime gun models in Mexico were assault weapons which would have been banned under the federal assault weapons ban, and all of the ten models were capable of being outfitted with large capacity magazines. Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean have faced an equally devastating impact of gun violence exacerbated by assault weapons and large capacity magazines trafficked from the United States.
For example, the U. In , after a string of mass killings committed by criminals with assault weapons, Congress passed a law banning certain assault weapons and large capacity magazines. Guns that were legally possessed before the effective date of the law remained legal.
Despite its overwhelming support among the public, the federal assault weapons ban only passed with the inclusion of a sunset provision, which allowed the bill to automatically expire after 10 years. In , when Congress failed to act to continue the ban, assault weapons and large capacity magazines again became legal under federal law. Members of Congress have continued to introduce legislation to reinstate and strengthen the federal assault weapons ban since the expiration of the law.
All of these efforts have thus far failed to pass despite consistent support from the American public and a series of high profile mass shootings carried out with assault weapons. The law included several loopholes that gun makers and dealers exploited to continue making and selling assault weapons that Congress intended to ban. As a result, many assault weapons remained available. Also, some gun companies copied assault weapons that were originally made by other manufacturers.
Functionally equivalent in all relevant respects to its banned cousin, the XM15, like innumerable other AR variants, remained legal. These same loopholes exist in many state-level assault weapons bans. They are chosen by shooters because they kill as many people as possible in a matter of minutes. The shooter in Dayton killed nine people and injured 26 others in less than a minute before being killed by police. This is not what James Madison intended when he wrote the Second Amendment.
Enough is enough. State Assault Weapons Bans Seven states and the District of Columbia have enacted state level assault weapons bans. State Large Capacity Magazine Bans Nine states and the District of Columbia have enacted large capacity magazine bans. State level assault weapons and large capacity magazine bans play an important role in reducing the number of weapons of war in our streets and helping to prevent gun violence.
Growing evidence suggests large capacity magazine bans in particular have had a positive impact on reducing mass shootings. Large capacity magazine bans have been found to reduce both the incidence of — and the number of people killed in — high-fatality mass shootings. One reason why banning large capacity magazines is effective at preventing gun fatalities is because of the lethality of the accessory.
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