Ammunition
Ammunition is what firearms need in order to be useful. A new type of gun control gaining momentum is to limit the ammunition, because without it, a gun is not able to fire. When stricter gun control laws couldn’t be enacted, President Obama was able to get a small victory for availability of ammunition by tightening the EPA air quality standards for smelting lead – which is what the majority of bullets are made of – by 10 times the previous amount, and forcing the last American lead smelter to close. The NRA however is confident that new avenues will still ensure ammunition production
Also, Magazine capacity is also another topic brought up in the gun control debate, because the idea is that mass shootings wouldn’t be as likely if the shooter had to consistently reload their firearm. From a article from the NRA on January 8th, 2013, they reported that “Congress allowed the federal “assault weapon” and “large” magazine ban of 1994-2004 to expire because a study of the ban concluded that “the banned weapons and magazines were never used in more than a modest fraction of gun murders”. The flip side to this argument is that Sandy Hook might have been less likely to be as devastating if those laws were in place and the gun had a restricted magazine.
