The American Spectator

If you want a corrective to some of the anti-gun nonsense circulating since the Aurora shootings, there is no better place to start than this well informed piece by Robert VerBruggen.

On whether 1990s-style gun control laws would have prevented the shooter from obtaining weapons:

James Holmes passed a background check — his worst prior infraction was a traffic ticket — and although some of his acquaintances found him “creepy,” there is no evidence that he was diagnosed with any mental illness. Further, while it’s true that one of Holmes’s guns was a so-called “assault weapon” similar to an AR-15, this gun does not differ from standard hunting rifles in most of the important ways. Holmes’s rifle fires at a semiautomatic rate — one bullet for each pull of the trigger, unlike a machine gun, which fires continuously when the trigger is held down — and uses .223-caliber ammo. This ammo is frequently found in “varmint rifles”; it is on the small side even for shooting deer.

What about the magazine, which was higher capacity than was permitted under the now-expired assault weapons ban?

Mayor Bloomberg is wrong that these magazines have no legitimate purpose — I personally own an extended magazine for my 9mm pistol; it cuts down on loading time at the range if you fill a big magazine before leaving the house. But one can make the case, and many have, that high-capacity magazines make these kinds of shootings easier to pull off by decreasing the number of times that the shooter has to reload or change guns….

However, changing magazines can take less than a second — here is an extreme example of a fast change — and someone who takes as much time preparing as Holmes did will practice doing this. Further, Holmes’s choice of a drum magazine might have made him less effective — there are reports that the magazine jammed, as large magazines are known to do.

The whole thing is worth a read.