Rate of fire restrictions

Over at The Gormogons, Gettoputer rightly takes a bunch of lefties to task for their poorly conceived "common sense" gun control proposals:

In closing, here's a freebie for any gun banners that may happen to read this post.  If 'Puter's hearing you correctly, your real problem with guns (aside from the fact that they are big and scary and mean looking) is that certain combinations of rate of fire and magazine capacity enable the criminal and insane to do massive damage in a short period of time.  Rather than advocating an outright ban of all firearms, or banning certain cosmetic characteristics that have absolutely nothing to do with anything, why wouldn't you simply amend the National Firearms Act to include the concept of "Covered Firearm?"  Covered Firearm would be defined as "a firearm with both a rate of fire at or over x rounds per minute and a magazine capacity equal to or greater than x rounds." Then you can haggle over the difference without debating the red herrings of bayonet lugs, pistol grips, caliber, color, microstamping, etc.

Note that 'Puter isn't advocating any of this, but he does seem to cut to what is the heart of liberal's concern.  Indeed, Gail Collins and "conservative" David Brooks in the New York Times seem to be advocating precisely that.

The problem is that this seemingly can't work.  Consider: if a proposal like this were to be seriously mooted, it's hard to see the limits set at higher than, say, 20 rounds a minute.  The problem is that just about anything will shoot with that rate of fire.  The venerable 1911 is so common as to be entirely unremarkable, even to gun banners - indeed, Heller v. D.C. specifically called out as unconstitutional bans of firearms that are in common use.  It's hard to find a more common pistol than a 1911 pattern.

And the rate of fire (assuming enough magazines are at hand) is going to be well over 20 rounds per minute.  While I don't think that I could do it, it's very possible that a skilled shooter could send 100 rounds per minute down range.

Heck, even revolvers with speed loaders will almost certainly give a higher rate of fire than any liberal would be willing to accept.

And so once again we see that there simply is no common ground.  'Puter is likely getting very near what liberal's actual position might be, and there's simply no There there.  Liberals would have to accept a rate of fire that is wildly higher than they'd like - and which would put the lie to any nominal goal of preventing Aurora type shootings - or essentially every firearm design after 1890 or so would have to be outlawed.

Of course, no new gun control laws are even going to be discussed, because while Democratsmay be dumb, they want to keep their Congressional seats.  Therefore we'll only hear huffing and puffing from those few who are in safe seats.  This will continue to give E.J. Dionne and company the Vapors, so grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.