There has been, in recent years, a flurry of Second Amendment-related legal cases making their way through the courts, and one of the points addressed in these cases is the constitutionality, in mind of the Second Amendment, of bans on “high-capacity” magazines. While these bans make about as much sense as bans on bayonet lugs (which really was part of the 1994 federal assault weapons law) it’s still a sticking point for the would-be gun-banners out there.
One case, Duncan v. Becerra, challenged California’s magazine ban, and in that case, Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote:
The United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller established a simple Second Amendment test: The right to keep and bear arms is a right enjoyed by law-abiding citizens to have arms that are not unusual ‘in common use’ ‘for lawful purposes like self-defense.’… It is a hardware test. Is the firearm hardware commonly owned? Is the hardware commonly owned by law-abiding citizens? Is the hardware owned by those citizens for lawful purposes? If the answers are ‘yes,’ the test is over. The hardware is protected.
That “…not unusual ‘in common use'” bit is important. A study released in April by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) examines precisely this issue. The Detachable Magazine Report, 1990-2021, has decisively debunked the claim that magazines holding over 10 rounds of ammunition are, somehow, “not usual in common use.”
Anti-gun advocates may have run out of evidentiary road on the claim that magazines able to hold more than ten rounds are not constitutionally protected. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has released a comprehensive Detachable Magazine Report, 1990-2021 that unequivocally debunks their claims. This study analyzes manufacturer and sales data on magazines and magazine capacity over an extended period of time starting in 1991 (“[n]o reliable data exists prior to 1990 to estimate historic detachable magazines that may still be available for sale or in working condition”).
The NSSF study concludes that the “national standard for magazine capacity for America’s gun owners is greater than 10 rounds.”