Okay…my blog is not a political blog, but…  sometimes, I can’t keep my mouth shut!  I noticed at the Republican national convention, the platform contains a provision for unlimited capacity for bullets in guns.  The true name for these are automatic rifles or, when I was in the army, they called them: machine guns.  Gangsters used them in Chicago during Prohibition.  The Thompson sub machine gun had a circular pan that could hold 100 bullets.

Remember, the guy who walked into a theater and pulled out a gun with  x bullets in it.  Or, how about the guy who shot Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords using a handgun that held  x   bullets.  One of the reasons they were able to harm so many people is because they never had to re-load.

I promised not to be political–this is a blog about courts and crime.  I can write about this because I’ve worked for over 30 years as both a prosecutor and Public Defender.  I’ve been involved in dozens of murder cases involving guns.  One thing I can tell you from my experience–most murders are not thought-out like the theater shooting or the shopping center where Rep. Gabriel Giffords was shot along with many or her staff.

The vast majority of shootings are random, spur-of-the-moment occurrences.  Here’s an example:  a couple years ago, I was appointed to defend a young man who was accused of shooting a gun.  He was riding with several other young men in a car with a sun roof.  As the car turned a corner, my client stood up through the sun roof and fired once at a crowd which was standing on a street corner.  When asked why he shot, he replied, “I thought there was a rival gang member standing there.”

The result was that he hit a totally innocent young girl, paralyzing her from the neck down for life.  She had nothing to do with a gang.

Here’s my point:  On a whim, a momentary desire to shoot a rival gangster, the young man ruined a girl’s life.  What would have happened in this case if he’d possessed a weapon with an unlimited capacity to hold bullets?  He shot once and hit the girl.  If he’d been able to shoot thirty times, with thirty bullets, he’d probably have hit dozens of other innocent people.

This scares me when the Republicans want to promote unlimited capacity in guns to hold bullets.

What’s the reason for this?  Is it based on the idea that other citizens can also possess guns with unlimited capacity?  If so, how many bullets would they need to take out one shooter in the theater?  Or to take-out the one shooter of Gabriel Giffords?  Wouldn’t one or two bullets be enough?

Please, tell me what sense this idea of unlimited capacity makes to anyone?  I don’t get it.