The Gun Lobby Is Trying to Trick Americans—Again
Rebranding large-capacity magazines as “standard” is just a ploy by the gun lobby to boost its profits.
No one would be surprised to hear that the gun lobby is ramping up its efforts to undermine gun safety.
Its latest game? Playing with language in a transparent attempt to convince Americans that large-capacity magazines—used to fire dozens of rounds in mere seconds—are “common” and “standard.”
An industry effort to convince us that 30-round magazines are “standard” for everyday Americans is classic Orwellian doublespeak in the vein of “war is peace.” Americans are smarter than that.
Large-capacity magazines (LCMs) go hand-in-hand with mass shootings. Magazines are how cartridges and bullets are fed into guns, and large-capacity magazines allow a shooter to fire many more rounds without reloading than would normally be possible. As a result, those in the line of fire do not have a chance to escape or bring down a shooter, law enforcement does not have the chance to intervene, and the number of lives shattered increases dramatically. Data shows that states without a ban on large-capacity magazines experience significantly more mass shootings and a higher death rate from such incidents than states with these bans.
In the 2011 Tucson shooting, for example, people were only able to intervene and stop the massacre when the gunman had to change magazines. Since the shooter had multiple large-capacity magazines, he murdered and injured more than he otherwise would’ve been able to. And this wasn’t just a one-off incident.
Perpetrators of many of the deadliest shootings in modern American history—including in Las Vegas, Orlando, Newtown, Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Parkland, Aurora, and Dayton—used large-capacity magazines. In the Uvalde school shooting alone, the gunman had more ammunition than what an average US soldier would go into basic combat with, including dozens of large-capacity magazines. If you can name the city where a mass shooting took place, it’s a safe bet that the shooter used a large-capacity magazine.
There’s nothing “standard” about these weapon attachments. They are banned for hunting purposes in many states. The only place these magazines are standard is in the military, where the focus is on offensive killing—not defensive action, and certainly not hunting or sport shooting. According to the NRA itself, self-defense situations typically use an average of 2.2 rounds fired—not remotely close to the 10 to 30 rounds a large-capacity magazine holds. The gun lobby is just repeating the phrase “standard-capacity magazine” in an obvious (and sloppy) attempt to rebrand tools built for “offensive” killing as normal.
The Firearms Policy Coalition uses the term in its lawsuits as it attempts to roll back lifesaving regulations. The NRA has been fighting state restrictions on LCMs for years, going so far as to assert that civilians should carry the same weapons as law enforcement officers. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) even published a report in favor of “standard-capacity magazine” language because, it argues, enough gun owners use them to make them the “national standard.” Unfortunately for the NSSF, that’s not the question at hand—large-capacity magazines may be widely used across the country, but that doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly shrunk in size, or that they’re less dangerous.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the gun lobby try to rebrand something dangerous, either.
Extremists have also attempted to frame permitless carry—laws that allow people who have never passed a background check or fired a gun in their lives to carry hidden, loaded guns in public crowds as soon as they buy them—as so-called “constitutional carry.” Their efforts have even reached Congress, with bills introduced in 2024 and 2025 to allow dangerous people to carry concealed guns nationwide, regardless of state laws.
But there is nothing in the Constitution requiring unvetted, potentially dangerous, and untrained people to be allowed to carry a gun in public. The data is very clear that impotent public carry laws increase homicides and make us less safe, yet the gun lobby continues to pressure lawmakers to put public safety at risk.
This not-so-subtle change in language—both for large-capacity magazines and for permitless carry—may not seem like a big deal. But by rebranding dangerous weapons and policies as “normal” and “standard,” the gun lobby is attempting to slowly shift public perception until we forget they were ever dangerous to begin with. Nice try.
This rewriting of facts is a slippery slope that we can’t afford to go down. Large-capacity magazines are not common or standard—they are used by mass murderers to gun down Americans. They have no place in our neighborhoods, at our grocery stores, or in our schools. And we can’t let the gun lobby get away with denying the truth.
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