Spin Control: How many rounds does one need for self-defense part of court’s ruling

A ruling this month by the Washington Supreme Court that upholds at least temporarily the state’s 10-round limit on gun magazines relies partly on a question of how many shots a person usually needs for self-defense.

Not more than 10, said seven of the nine members of the state’s highest court in upholding a 2022 law. But an issue raised by the two dissenting members forms an interesting basis for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given this is a Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms case, it’s unlikely that Vegas would set the odds of no appeal being filed at higher than 100-to-1.

The majority opinion rests in part on a determination of how many rounds are “used by law-abiding citizens for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” which is a component of the U.S. Supremes’ 2008 ruling that protects firearms under historic precedents.

It’s a hard number to come by. The majority cited a study suggesting the average number of rounds fired in cases of self-defense is 2.2, so 10 being well over that number is a reasonable legal limit to set.

In her minority dissent, Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud scoffed at that 2.2 number, suggesting the study where it originates has “significant shortcomings,” such as a small sample size, no peer-reviewed research and unclear metrics for estimating the number of shots fired when that information was not readily available.

If the state’s going to argue that point as part of the defense of the large-capacity magazine law when this gets to the nation’s highest court, it might want to look for something a bit more solid.

Determining the average shots fired in self-defense might be an extremely hard number to calculate. One might first have to figure out how to factor in the instances in which just producing a gun thwarted an attack.

A former colleague once told of being in bed one night and hearing an intruder outside his bedroom door. He grabbed his pump-action shotgun, chambered a round and said, “The first person who comes in that door will be blown back out of it.” The intruder left.

How many rounds did that take? None? One? Or the prospect that the intruder could anticipate multiple rounds in the shotgun?

News accounts and police reports of instances in which homeowners defend themselves against an attacker sometimes say how many rounds were fired but often list it only as “several.”

If opponents of the law were to offer a counter, they might easily produce a much higher number.

They could study instances of self-defense in prime-time network television, streaming services programming and action movies, calculating how many rounds are fired by good guys with guns defending themselves against bad guys with guns. An imprecise survey of shows watched since the court’s recent ruling suggest it would be upward of 100, as there is rarely a standoff scene in which good guys don’t go through at least multiple guns and multiple magazines returning fire and “laying down cover” before dropping a bad guy with a single shot.

Based on such demonstrations, one could argue that if everyone had single-shot firearms, those who use them would have more reason to be accurate, or at least more careful, with their ammo. But that question is not before the court and likely never will be.

Knowing the average number of rounds fired in cases of self-defense might be interesting, but it may not be a determining factor for the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold or overturn the state’s 10-round magazine limit.

The state court’s majority said that large-capacity magazines are not, by themselves, “arms,” because a semiautomatic firearm can operate with a smaller magazine. The minority disagreed, saying the large-capacity magazines are clearly protected under U.S. Supreme Court precedents that say the right to possess a firearm implies the right to possess ammunition and the device that holds the rounds that allow the gun to function. Both positions had some interesting citations in the opinion, which can be found on the court’s website.

If the U.S. Supremes agree with Gordon McCloud, there may be no limit short of the sky that the state can set on the size of magazines or other types of clips for semiautomatic weapons.