The most disturbing trend in the gun-control conversation is that the most uneducated people on the topic are the ones in charge of policy. Take for instance Congresswoman Diana DeGette and her demonstration before the Denver Post editorial board:

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I’m the Prime House Co-Sponsor on the ban on the high capacity magazines and I believe that as this bill works through it has an excellent chance of passing. Like the background checks, the magazine ban has a very solid national support around the country and it only makes sense. For most purposes having these, these magazine clips that have, that have more than 15 rounds in them, there’s really no purpose for those except for shooting targets or shooting people.

[…]

To your last question: ‘What’s the efficacy of banning these magazine clips?’ I will tell you, these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them. So if you ban, 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 be shot and there won’t be any more available.

I’ve grown up with guns my entire life. I shoot regularly. They are not “magazine clips.” Clips and magazines are two different things. Let’s explain this to the lolpoliticians generation in video form:

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As Revealing Politics notes:

DeGette demonstrated her lack of knowledge as to what a magazine (not a clip) actually is: a reloadable container that houses ammunition, and can be used and reused. Her bill doesn’t ban the ammunition that is loaded into a magazine, and therefore her misconception that once high capacity magazines are shot they will “decrease dramatically” exposes the complete lack of understanding of the very thing she is trying to legislate.

I dislike Democrats’ new phrasing of standard magazines as “high capacity magazines.” They are not “high capacity” magazines. They are standard, factory magazines. Magazines are interchangeable, easily convertible, impossible to monitor, and number in the millions.

DeGette’s argument against these “high capacity magazines” is the same argument from law enforcement on why they should possess them. That the criminals have them isn’t a good enough reason against why law-abiding gun owners shouldn’t — especially as they are their own first responders when up against said criminals. Since the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 (which also had the arbitrary 10 round limit) violent crime rates have declined. According to FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2011, there were a little over 300 cases of rifle-related deaths and over 1600 cases of knife-related deaths. Democrats target rifles and their magazines because they’ve predicated loss of life directly on said rifles and magazines. Fort Hood and Virginia Tech (which saw greater carnage) were carried out using handguns.

What would these proposed laws of this sort have done to prevent Newtown? Absolutely, positively nothing. Even Connecticut’s former AG acknowledges this. Ban magazine capacity to ten rounds and those with intent to harm will simply purchase more magazines. It only takes a second to reload. It only takes only a couple of seconds to reload a revolver sans speed loader. Adam Lanza reloaded four times during the massacre and he reloaded before he finished emptying a magazine. Move to ban the amount of magazines purchased and individuals will simply fabricate them in their garages. Move to ration ammunition and Americans will manufacture their own. Of course, all of these steps are an absolute obliteration to our civil liberty of self defense. It’s disarmament of the innocent by incrementalism.

The anti-Second Amendment lobby is made up of two types of people: individuals who know absolutely nothing about firearms and individuals who exploit their ignorance by conflating terms to stoke desire for a full-on ban.

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