The Virginia House of Delegates approved an assault weapons ban on a party line vote Friday.
Fairfax County Democratic Del. Dan Helmer’s bill would end the sale and transfer of assault firearms manufactured after July 1, 2024. It also prohibits the sale of certain large capacity magazines.
“This bill would stop the sale of weapons similar to those I and many of the other veterans carried in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Helmer said.
Self-defense pistols require higher mag capacity for 2 reasons.
One reason is because the goal of shooting an attacker isn’t to kill him from blood loss in 40 minutes. It’s to stop him from killing you in 5 seconds, meaning it generally requires multiple hits to physically stop them.
And the bigger reason is because precise shooting under stress is really, really difficult. In a 2-way shooting scenario with 5 rounds the most likely outcome is you miss all 5 shots. You carry 12-15 rounds in the mag not so you can shoot someone 12 times - you do it so you have 12 chances to hit.
It’s also one of the reasons you don’t hear about people with concealed firearms taking out mass shooters very often. Anyone with a lick of training knows they’re going to miss most of their shots and that they’re more likely to shoot an innocent bystander than the shooter.