High capacity ammo clips don't mean much. Five 10 round clips hold more ammo than three high capacity 15 round clips and are just as easy to carry.

Anyone that is crazy or desperate enough to commit this type of crime is not detered by the size of the clip.

What is causing this problem is a disparity of force, not ownership of weapons or capacity of magazines. Why are all of these shootings occuring in "gun free zones"? The idea of making areas gun free is to make them safer, but the opposite occurs because criminals simply don't obey the law. Creating gun free zones without enforcing them with armed law enforcement creates a kill zone, not a safety zone.

Those are magazines, not clips.

Real men use drums

What a pointless article. Also love the "unbiased" quote from the Brady bunch. FYI the Va Tech campus is a GUN FREE ZONE, which means you gun control lovers once again have blood on your hands for disarming the citizens.

This is a one-sided article with an agenda. Typical.

People such as Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are basically idiots. The perp reported had a vest full of magazines; it doesn't matter much whether the mags held 10 rounds or 30 rounds -- he had plenty of ammo because he carried it. It takes only a couple of seconds to change mags.

The real and obvious problem here is that VA Tech is one of those ridiculous "Gun Free" zones; hence, no one there was legally permitted to defend themselves. Contrast this situation with the one that occurred in Salt Lake City, where a Bosnian suffering from SJS was cut down by a bystander who was carrying his sidearm.

This is a horrible situation, without a doubt, but can we please, for once, blame the SHOOTER and not the gun? When there is a fatal car accident, we never blame the car. When there is a stabbing, we do not blame the knife. Let's put the responsibility where it lies and not start saying that hardware is at fault. A highly defective person is at fault.

It's a shame some of the students or teachers weren't armed- this would ended very quickly, with no where near as many innocent dead.

We as a nation could legislate against handguns and magazines all we want and will NEVER legislate criminals, stupidity or nut jobs out of exisitence.

How exactly do you "spray" bullets when only one fires when you pull the trigger? The Brady Campaign preys on your ignorance of guns and gun laws to pull in donations and further their agenda.

Brian Ross and Dana Hughes can't even get their facts right about the 94 AW law nor can ABC fabricate a legit connection between high capacity magazine availability and this crime.
Just the usual liberal bias against gun ownership.

You can't blames guns for what has happened. It is the people behind them that is the problem. If they had some proper guidance as a young adult then maybe this would not have happened. I have heard this before, but it is true.."Guns don't kill people, people kill people"

It was the person who comitted this crime that is to blame, not the instruments they used. Would it be a trucks fault if someone went on a spree running over pedestrians? Why are you focusing on the object used, and not the person who commited this horrible act?

It's not the gun that kills, it’s the person behind the gun. The 10-shot capacity only increased the price of pre-ban goods, and did little to limit availability.

Having said that, limiting handgun capacity is a band-aid compared to the number of cheap assault rifles available to anyone without a past record. Goto a pawn shop or online and you can find Russian and Chinese SKS assault rifles for $100 with multiple clips. Past massacres had people carrying several handguns and multiple magazines.

Limit the availability/sale of cheap guns to limit weapons being used in crimes. Everyone (good citizens that is) has the right to bear arms, but make it a significant financial choice than a grocery item at Walmart. Heck, tax the hell out of firearms and give special permits or tax refund to those in special/ high risk occupations. My thoughts go out to those involved in V.T. and others who experienced similar situations.

-A handgun owner and student-

A "magazine" is a place in a firearm where ammunition is stored before being moved to the chamber for firing. A "clip" is a piece of metal used to hold ammunition in position in the magazine, or to facilitate loading. A "detachable magazine" is a magazine that can be easily removed to attached to a firearm. The law you reference above refers to detachable magazines with a capacity greater than 10 cartridges.

Since the Virginia Tech shooter had multiple guns, and multiple magazines, I'm not sure why you think this particular issues is more relevant than, say, the illegalization of concealed carry allowing the victims an option of comparable self-defense.

Once again- a monster goes amok and immediately they start "blaming" guns and gun control. Let us focus on the real evil. Those sort of individuals that perpetrate deeds such as this.

Pray for those victims and their famlies. Their heartbreak will be unimaginable.

Get ready for the media-driven "guns are bad" backlash.

Congress did not renew the assault weapons ban because it was doing nothing to prevent crime. It did not effect the crime rate at all and you could still get most anything you wanted.

If you think that the AWB sunsetting had ANYTHING to do with the availability of high capacity magazines, you're sadly mistaken, uninformed, or pandering to hysteria.

Gun control doesn't prevent incidents like these.

Of course, given that the police and administration allowed this thing to go on for 2-3 hours, it isn't as if the gunman didn't have enough time to load and reload as much as he wanted.

Never understood the problem with large capacity magazines, or the weapons that accept them. They are objects that cant do anything on their own. You have to have someone intent on doing harm with them, before they are a problem.
That being said, I am just as dangerous with 3x10rd mags as I am with 2x15rd mags.

Yes its possible that the VA Tech shooter used high capacity magazines, but its not a given. In such a safe "gun free" zone, you can take all the time you need shooting at innocent people because all the law abiding citizens won't have guns, and no one is shooting back at you.

Is the high capacity ban about saving lives? Surely you jest! How about banning tobacco. Its kills FAR more people every year than guns ever could. Oh thats right, its not about saving lives, its about $$$$

This incident only happened a few hours ago, not all the facts are in yet, and already the issue of 'high capacity magazines' is coming up. These incidents occur not because of the presence of guns, they occur because a disturbed individual wants to hurt others. More damage was done & deaths occurred in much less time because of Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the A.P. Murrah building than in this shooting. Stop focusing on the weapons, and deal with the real issue - the criminals. Let's get all the facts before making this another sensationalized anti-gun issue.

"It's not one or two shots at a time when you're putting 20 bullets, spraying them into a classroom or into a dorm room," Hamm said."

The size of the clip, or magazine, has nothing to do with rate of fire. You "spray" a room with a full-auto rifle, which are already illegal everywhere.

One adult with a CCW allowed to carry on campus would have been able to take care of the issue, if it was not a 'gun-free' zone. Of course the CCW holder would obey the law and not be carrying on campus. Go figure. I wonder why crimminals are attacking safe zones????????????????

Unless you plan on outlawing semi-auto handguns the size of the magazine doesn't mean anything. Ten bucks says this guy had regular magazines and not "high-capacity" whatever that is supposed to mean.

But that was a silly statement on my part I am sure - of course you want to outlaw semi-autos and no about all guns.

One adult with a CCW allowed to carry on campus would have been able to take care of the issue, if it was not a 'gun-free' zone. Of course the CCW holder would obey the law and not be carrying on campus. Go figure. I wonder why crimminals are attacking safe zones????????????????

The magazines (not clips) were available during the ban on them, as anything that had been manufactured prior to the ban was grandfathered in. The "ban" banned nothing and was democratic showmanship at it's worse.

You can't ban firearms in the US, they are a constitutionally protected right. Again, the shooter is at fault, not the tool he used.

The magazines (not clips) were available during the ban on them, as anything that had been manufactured prior to the ban was grandfathered in. The "ban" banned nothing and was democratic showmanship at it's worse.

You can't ban firearms in the US, they are a constitutionally protected right. Again, the shooter is at fault, not the tool he used.

Lets stick to facts for a side story. This article implies that the person guilty of this used large capacity clips and assault style weapons. all unknown @ this time. As an earlier post stated - lots of small capacity magazines can sould like one large capacity. The Magazine size limit was no clips 10 or over could be manufactured for sale in the US. this didn't stop the existing quantity to be resold.
As to the description of spraying requires large capacity clips. Two handguns with 9 round clips would sound like 18 rounds going off rapidly. If the person was truely Spraying fire into classrooms then Large capacity clips were the least infraction. Automatic weapons as seen in hollywood flicks spraying fire downrange were banned in 1934 for private ownership. either the person had a license for the weapon (unlikely)or modified (in violation of the law) the weapon to fire automaticly.
Again I ask to stick to facts and not jump to conclusions about what may have exasperated the situation to promote a political agenda.

The magazine size in this case is irrelevant, as the shooter had plenty of time and space to simply walk back and forth between classrooms. He could've used a WWI bolt-action rifle; it wouldn't matter one way or the other. The real problem was the complete failure of the college administration to lock down the campus, as well as the students' inability to respond to this murderer. If one a single one of those students had a concealed carry permit -the kind the college prohibits- the death toll could've been much lower. What a tragedy.

The difference between University of Texas, 1969 and Virginia Tech 2007 is that students and police with their own, personal rifles were able to pin down the Texas sniper and stop his killing spree, while no one could lawfully be armed on the Virginia Tech campus--ergo, only the murderer was armed and was able to kill with complete impunity. Decent, law-abiding citizens, including those over 18, attending college must be allowed to defend themselves. No law passed in contravention of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental rights of every person to defend themselves should stand, nor should it be obeyed.

High capacity clips? I think the expert meant Hi-Cap magazines.

Granted he even knows what he is talking about.

The magazine size in this case is irrelevant, as the shooter had plenty of time and space to simply walk back and forth between classrooms. He could've used a WWI bolt-action rifle; it wouldn't matter one way or the other. The real problem was the complete failure of the college administration to lock down the campus, as well as the students' inability to respond to this murderer. If one a single one of those students had a concealed carry permit -the kind the college prohibits- the death toll could've been much lower. What a tragedy.

Politicizing already, it's a sad state when even the news media pushes an agenda right after a tragic event such as this.

Even guns that can only shoot one shot are already prohibited on VA Tech campus. The students and teachers were defenseless against this criminal. When will the schools finally realize that law-abiding people MUST be allowed the means to defend themselves. This is the SECOND TIME THIS YEAR that some nut has gone on a shooting spree at VA Tech.

Why was this gunman capable of killing 32 people? Because no one could stop him. Had Virginia Tech allowed students to carry concealed firearms without fear of expulsion, he may have been killed before he had a chance to fire more than a couple shots. The Brady Campaign wants to get rid of all our guns. What they fail to realize is criminals will get guns one way or another. They also don't realize Gun Free Zones are actually Victim Zones and lunatics that are bent on murder are not detered by a law prohibiting guns in a school.

So, it better for someone to carry a bow and 50 arrows, than 2 15 round MAGAZINES, I guess.
The native Americans killed a lot of cowboys with a bow and arrow, just as Custer.

It is a disgrace that you are using a terrible incident to promote your anti gun agenda. If students were allowed to have guns on campus then this might very well have never happened or if it did it could have been stopped by a student with a gun. The same thing is with 9/11 where people are not allowed to carry guns on airplanes but if they were allowed to then the terrorists might have thought twice about hijacking the plane or at least people on the plane with guns could have stopped it. The issue here is the right of self defense - for a person to protect himself as he cannot be protected by the police.

One person with a CCW could have stopped this event from the beginning. Unarming the general population just turns everyone into a helpless victim. There was just a law passed in the house that outlawed CCW on campus.

Anyone crazy enough to go on a killing spree will find the magazines of choice, even if there is a ban on them. Again, here is the battle of availability, banned items being available to those willing to go around the law.

One person with a CCW could have stopped this event from the beginning. Unarming the general population just turns everyone into a helpless victim. There was just a law passed in the house that outlawed CCW on campus.

If some of the ex-military students (presuming they might be the majority of the students old enough to buy a handgun) and teachers had been permitted to carry concealed weapons on campus, how quickly might this have ended?

One person with a CCW could have stopped this event from the beginning. Unarming the general population just turns everyone into a helpless victim. There was just a law passed in the house that outlawed CCW on campus.

This event started at 7:30 AM the last shootings occurred at 10:00 AM.
The school told students to stay in class and not move.
The result was classrooms packed with locked down victims.
If students had been told to leave campus after the first shooting the loss of life would have been much lower.

Everywhere guns are banned, law abiding citizens will not have guns. Criminal types do not obey the laws and areas where guns are banned will just provide the criminal with more unarmed victims who can only run or hide from the terror.

If some of the ex-military students (presuming they might be the majority of the students old enough to buy a handgun) and teachers had been permitted to carry concealed weapons on campus, how quickly might this have ended?

The problem wasn't that someone had a high capacity clip, which there is every indication that he didn't.

The problem was that only person with a gun was a law breaker. All the law abiding citizens had dutifully disarmed themselves, and dutifully trusted the authorities to protect them, and dutifully did things that allowed them to be killed in large quantities.

Oh my! Yes, of course, let's blame the inanimate object. It's so much easier than to blame the human who pulled the trigger.

Brian Ross and Dana Hughes seem to be like little children. I really hope that they do not own firearms.

I agree with what Rob says.

"Why are all of these shootings occuring [sic] in "gun free zones"? The idea of making areas gun free is to make them safer, but the opposite occurs because criminals simply don't obey the law"

Weapon-free zones are only safer for criminals. They know they can terrorize the individuals there without danger to themselves.

The president of Virginia Tech was last year just giving kudos to the fact that the Commonwealth of VA did not pass a law allowing adult students, professors, and staff to carry handguns on campus if they have a permit.

One moderately trained student, professor or staff with a pistol could have stopped or slowed down the attack.

The problem is not "high capacity magzines. The problem is we need to stop creating defenseless victim zones.

The president of Virginia Tech was last year just giving kudos to the fact that the Commonwealth of VA did not pass a law allowing adult students, professors, and staff to carry handguns on campus if they have a permit.

One moderately trained student, professor or staff with a pistol could have stopped or slowed down the attack.

The problem is not "high capacity magzines. The problem is we need to stop creating defenseless victim zones.

Any person hellbent on killing someone will find a way. Quit trying to blame high capacity magazines. I can tell you from personal experience they have saved far more lives than have been lost by their criminal use. I will say a prayer for those who lost their lives and their families.

The president of Virginia Tech was last year just giving kudos to the fact that the Commonwealth of VA did not pass a law allowing adult students, professors, and staff to carry handguns on campus if they have a permit.

One moderately trained student, professor or staff with a pistol could have stopped or slowed down the attack.

The problem is not "high capacity magzines. The problem is we need to stop creating defenseless victim zones.

At Columbined the perp broke 28 laws. If he had an outlawed "high capacity" magazine he'd have broke 29 laws. Guns dont kill people, People kill people

High capacity clips/magazines might not be an issue in the shooting, but automatic rifles used for "wild life hunting" are becoming a menace to our society. When will Congress stop being ruled by special interests like the NRA and start looking out for our well being. The ban on assault rifles should be renewed.

Ten normal capacity magazines will hold 100 rounds and can be carried quite easily. High capacity magazines are not all that necessary to bring about a high level of damage.

A standard pump-action shotgun holds only 5 to 8 shells and is yet far more lethal than a handgun.

Capacity is irrelevant. If someone wants to commit mass-murder, he will find a way.

Gun restrictions only keep guns away from law-abiding citizens. Telling a mass murderer that his gun is illegal is like telling a terrorist that his truck bomb is parked in a handicapped parking space.

If the students had been carrying their own weapons none of this would have ever happened. An armed society is a safe and free society.

So, because a real nut uses a high-capacity mag to commit a crime, the rest of the law abiding people in the country should be penalized? I am a competition shooter and use 15 round mags in that competition. I have never shot anyone (other than in war) and realize the responsibility of my abilities and equipment. Our civil rights are being whittled away a little at a time, so taking this one away from a citizen is just another step in making him/us serfs to the rich, who have always reserved the right of access to weapons to themselves, (see common English law) making sure they can keep control of the rest of us. Do we want to rule as citizens or be ruled by an elite, who tell us we are not capable or trustworthy to have weapons such as those that they reserve for themselves, saying that they and the forces under their control, i.e. the police and military, not WE THE PEOPLE are the militia referred to in the Constitution?

Prayers from the UK to everyone caught up in the shooting in Virginia. Please US consider banning guns a little. In the uk .22 air rifles is as big as it gets. 163 gun deaths in the UK ( in 2003) vs 30,000+ in the US. Are they really worth all that death.

Typical opportunistic sheister journalism.

No idea about the facts or any hint of unbiased coverage

Interesting how quickly the debate morphs into more or fewer guns. How quickly we depersonalize a tragedy into our nice pigeonholes of ideology. Why not talk about vilent video games next. 32 young people died in a horrific frightening way, and how many thousands who lost friends and loved ones were traumatized. Can we have one ouce of peace and respect for just one day?? I'm sorry this happened. I just can't imagine losing my little girl this way after pouring my life into her and sending her off to college. Every person there was a hope and dream.

Teddy Kennedy's '69 Oldsmobile has killed more people thatn my previously banned rifles and "high-capacity" magazines (what the misinformed and malintentioned media call "clips").

We don't need gun control. What we need is concealed carry permits and laws that make since. ONE person with a licensed CCW could have took out this scumbag....

"It's not one or two shots at a time when you're putting 20 bullets, spraying them into a classroom or into a dorm room," Hamm said.

The size of the magazine, or clip, has nothing to do with the rate of fire. You need full-auto to "spray" a room, and those have been illegal for a very long time.

Well, here comes another draconian gun ban...
I feel sorry for the people affected, but not enough to give up my constitutional rights.

Right on John Spear. You can tell they really researched the topic when they call a magazine a clip. They learned everything they know about guns from hollywood.

i thought guns were prohibited on campus? so how was this tragedy possible? oh wait, criminals do not obey the law...

Peter Hamm is a bias member of an anti-gun rights group, he has no right dispelling "information" on firearms. Furthermore, if what you are reporting is true, the firearms used fed from magazines, not clips. The reason for this great number of casualties is due to the University's poor response coupled with the inability of the victims to defend themselves. There is no concealed carry of handguns allowed on campus, if there were maybe someone could have stopped this maniac earlier. Also, why did two hours after the original shooting, the gunman open fire again? Why wasn't the school evacuated? What wasn't the gunman caught? This is not about high capacity magazines or gun control, its about a poor response from the University.

Ted Kennedy has killed more people with his car than the overwhelming majority of gun owners have killed with their guns.

Jimmy NOT FUNNY!!! i dont know how you could say that after the Virgina Tech shooting..but i agree that it is not the clip size but how many the shooter had

A high capacity clip wouldn't be much good. They won't help you load more into the mags.

High Capacity Rounds are the Problem??

Yeah, Right. and...

-Pencils miss pel wurds

-Cars make people drive drunk

and --spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Seems to me, the problem was that the only person with a gun....Was the BAD GUY.....ding...Fries are Done!!!

Well Murder is illegal, why didn't that stop the killer in the first place? That just proves how well laws work. This is a gun free zone and yet that LAW didn't work to stop the killer. I am guessing that there were many other LAWs broken as well. All we will hear about from the news media is how "If only we had a law against _______ (certian types of magazines, certian guns, certian bullets, ect) things like this would not happen. That makes no sense because the killer ALREADY was BREAKING many LAWs! How will one more law stop that? It won't, it will just make more VICTIMS out of honest people that don't want to break the LAW by protecting themselves.

The gunman used 9mm handguns. Don't think that "assault weapon ban" or "30 round clip" discussions are relevant to this horrible tragedy. All it would have taken was one armed citizen to be able to respond to the danger posed by this maniac. Sadly, people like you continue to advocate stripping away our rights of self-defence. Shame on you all.

It has nothing to do with the weapons and number of bullets he possessed.It has to do with him.

Hey ABC news, you wouldn't be pushing an agenda here would you, say something along the lines of agreeing with HR1022 AWB2?

Mr. Speer is correct. When private citizens are armed, crime declines; criminals prefer unarmed targets.
Besides, having a high-capacity magazine is no more deadly than having multiple standard magazines, as another user pointed out. It takes only a few seconds for a shooter to switch mags.

It is not the capacity of the magazine. It is our society's unwillingness to deal with why our young people are so angry. While I feel terrible about what happened and for the families of those who died or were injured, I can't help but say that the gun control idiots will once again jump on their high horses.

It is obviously past due to ban all forms of assault weapons.

Leave it to an uninformed liberal to blame this tragedy on high-capacity magazines instead of the psycho that used them. Sarah Brady and the Brady Center to Control Handgun Violence want to do the same thing as the Nazis did at the beginning. Disarm the populace so they can not resist tyranny. Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Rudy Giuliani have the same goals.

the problem today does not lie with the gun used, the magazines used or the type of ammunition used or the type of weapon used. The problem is people who want to kill are going to kill. Its plain and simple. I have seen people killed with guns, knifes, shanks, bricks, rocks, tree limbs, cars etc. What does stricter gun laws do? NOTHING!! All they do is hurt the law abiding citizen. Do you think, that when new gun laws are inacted that criminals are going to bide by them? No. They will continue to do what they do.

Gun control didn't prevent this crime, so your response is MORE gun control? The lapse of the Assault Weapon's Ban which by all responsible accounts including the USDOJ did NOTHING to prevent crime certainly did not CAUSE this one.

We don't even know what weapons this idiot used yet, and already you are speculating and calling for more Victimization laws.

Note the blatent anti-gun bias in the charged wording of this article. Congress FAILED to RENEW a law that banned ASSAULT weapons.

Technically, the wording cannot be said to be "false", but it could