Editorial: No reason for 30-round clips
Workers remove flowers and candles, placed in front of Oslo Cathedral in memory of the victims of the July 22 attacks, early Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011. Credit: AP Photo/Haakon Mosvold Larsen
There was a national memorial service in Norway last Friday for 68 people shot dead at a youth camp July 22, the day that country joined a mournfully long list of places now known for mass murder.
Included among them are Tucson, where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded; Fort Hood, Binghamton, Virginia Tech, Columbine and the Long Island Rail Road, which all share one other distinction with Utoya, the island in Norway where Anders Behring Breivik opened fire last month.
The shooters in these tragedies all used high-capacity, 15- to 30-round ammunition magazines in their deadly sprees, magazines that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) -- whose husband died and son was wounded in the 1993 LIRR massacre -- wants Congress to outlaw.
Banning the sale or transfer of magazines with a capacity of more than 10 bullets won't save us from madmen. But there's no good reason to make ammunition readily available that enables them to do maximum damage. The magazines were banned from 1994 to 2004; they should be again.
In a manifesto written before the bombing and shootings he's confessed to, Breivik said he bought 30-round magazines "through a small U.S. supplier" who mailed them to Norway.
The ban will be a hard sell in Congress, but McCarthy and her 109 House co-sponsors are right to try. Outside the military and law enforcement, there's no legitimate use for such extreme killing power. hN
