Y'all know I am not a gun person. So to educate me what is a 100-round magazine used for usually? Do you own any? Have you used them?

I know even less than you and why I am chiming in, is from my perspective, I remember Sara Palin mowing down..... what was it now?  Wolves and Deer or something?  It was horrific.  By plane with an automatic weapon.  Many animals did not die immediately .  What does Sara care?  She thinks this is God's playground for her.  I remember that.  

The only time I've actually seen one used ... was at a gun range.
It was on a truck-mounted configuration, and looked like fun to shoot.

A 100-round magazine adds a hefty weight to any firearm.
I've seen ones designed for handguns, and it's ridiculous.  The weight would make it unusable for most people.

On a genuine firing-range, fair enough. Otherwise?

I have never wanted and certainly never needed to own so much as a paint-ball gun and of the very, very few gun-owners I have ever known, one has some antique firearms, another is a farmer and a third shoots clays. None of them would need guns with 100-round magazines; and game-bird and clays shooting use shotguns anyway.

I think such a weapon is really designed for battlefield use.

It's not for hunting - unless you are one of those stupid, cruel cowards who think it "sporting" to spray wild animal herds with bullets. From what I have gleaned, genuine hunting or culling uses double-barrelled shot-guns or single-shot rifles with small magazines, depending on the animal. The principle is always to kill the animal outright, or at least despatch it as quickly and humanely as possible. (I believe genuine anglers have the same principle with fish caught for eating - other fish are returned to the water as uninjured as possible.) 

"Self defence"? With a battlefield weapon? Against whom?

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As for Sarah Palin, I have heard of her but that's all. If she did that in my country no real shooter would want to know her. The Police would though. Even with no suggestion of endangering people, conviction might not result in prison but almost certainly a very heavy fine, destruction order on her confiscated weapons, and revocation of her firearms licence.

Thank you Rosie!

I was aware Palin is or was a politician, but that was about all. What's her political or professional background?


Essentially yes, a very large magazine is to allow shooting as many animals - or people - as quickly as possibly. 

And if people, kill them before they shoot back, which is why I  suggested it's a weapon of war.  

By contrast a clay-pigeon or game-bird shotgun holds just one cartridge per barrel at a time (1 or 2 barrels). I don't know how many rounds a hunting-rifle holds, but I don't think it's many.

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The name Alistair Cooke (1908 - 2004) may well be familiar to you. British-born he later moved to America and took US Citizenship, working as journalist and broadcaster. His 15-minute Letter From America was a weekly BBC Radio feature, explaining some aspect of American life and society to UK listeners. These often showed the deeper social context to significant news items, beyond the simple political analysis of a current-affairs programme. Others would illuminate some part of life we might have glimpsed distorted by films and TV shows (from America, too), but otherwise not known or understood.

A few years ago after the BBC reported on yet another college-campus shooting had other countries mystified what's gone wrong and why guns are so readily available, it also re-broadcast a much earlier Letter From America. In it, Cooke explained that infamous Fourth Amendment. From what he said, a lot of the gun-worship you cite seems based on not really understanding the original "right to bear arms" was made before the recently-established United States of America could form a regular, properly-trained and equipped, professional Army. I'd guess too, a lot of people in remote areas then, often had to hunt wild game for food, not sport even if some at least were merely trigger-happy. It certainly did not set out to turn the nation into a vast private arsenal.

Someone on another forum reckoned the Japanese rejected trying to invade the USA in WW2 because they knew they'd be met with rifles and pistols pointing out of so many houses. He quoted that as a senior Japanese officer's opinion. I suspect that a misunderstanding by a rather naïve contributor who didn't see the more serious obstacles - the sizes of oceans and continents for a start - and did not understand the appalling "reprisals" used against resistance-fighters and their communities by the Axis armies.

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The ghillies (gamekeepers) of the Scots Highlands shoot deer, which are wild but culled for both management and meat. I think they will also put sick or injured ones out of their misery, if they find them. This can entail selecting an individual animal and patiently tracking it across many square miles of open, very wild countryside they need know extremely well so as not to endanger themselves, in order to be within range, then by professional pride and humanity doing their utmost to fell it cleanly, with a single rifle bullet.

I remember reading an article by one such ghillie, in a hill-walking enthusiasts' magazine. He was very scathing about the wealthy sports shooters who pay a lot of money to pretend to be country gentlemen and come on shoots, but don't have sufficient skill to shoot very accurately. That often leaves the poor ghillies and others having to follow an injured animal that might have run a considerable distance before it collapsed, to kill it properly.