Gun Control Reform Activism

I would, however, still argue that I am perhaps not entirely wrong, and I do agree with your impulse to reduce the carnage that we cannot entirely eliminate, which is why I remain so focused on capacity and speed of reloading, because those are the two characteristics most relevant to reducing the scale of carnage a weapon can inflict.

Yes, people could 3d print their own high-capacity removable magazines, but that doesn't negate the wisdom of banning them.

A ban on a weapon holding more than say 6 rounds, using the capacity of a common revolver for the purpose of debate, would also be vastly easier for law enforcement to identify and infraction of upon sight than anything like "semi-automatic with removable magazine". It's more practical to enforce, in my opinion, at least in the context of most popular weapons currently in circulation, because even at a distance, every single one of the weapons in the pictures in your OP (at least in which a removable magazine is visible at all) would be immediately identifiable as likely in violation of such a ban.

That Kel-Tec KSG in the second picture, by contrast, is NOT semi-automatic, AND does NOT have a removable magazine, yet does have a 14+1 capacity, chambered in 12 gauge. Your proposed ban language would leave this weapon unregulated, despite the very clear threat it poses, because it focuses exclusively on mode of operation and means of reloading, without consideration of capacity.

Similarly, I would submit that the amount of time it takes to reload a weapon (of any capacity) is of secondary relevance to its capacity.

Reduced capacity necessarily means more frequent chances to neutralize a shooter while they are busy reloading. A 15 or 30-round breech-loaded fixed magazine still presents a greater threat to public safety than a 6 round removable magazine-fed weapon in this regard. Simply because its user can engage more targets before needing to reload. Additionally, the attractiveness of a high rate of fire, which is of course related to your scenario of dumping X rounds in Y minutes, is proportional to capacity. The fewer rounds your weapon holds, the more carefully you're probably going to want to expend them, because empty equals vulnerable, no matter for how short a time.

Like I said before, I'm not particularly opposed to banning semi-automatic weapons, despite not thinking it's particularly necessary or would really make all that much of a difference. I mean, let's face it, a pump action rifle or shotgun can be cycled in well under half a second, which is why I'm displeased with the idea of that 12 gauge KSG remaining legal under your proposed language while my .22LR with a 10 round magazine would not. It has the effect of banning the less dangerous weapon while doing nothing about the more dangerous one, because the language of your ban is poorly focused to achieve the purpose.

And in fact I quite agree with banning removable magazines, simply because speed of reloading is, I would argue, the second most relevant characteristic to a weapon's suitability for assault, and similarly to the amount of carnage it can inflict, next to its capacity.

I just maintain that capacity is far and away the most relevant, easy, and productive thing to address.

And lastly, you're probably on to something with the deficiency of my observation about adequate understanding of firearms.

Our remaining disagreements would tend to suggest that there's more involved than basic understanding, as your understanding of firearms seems pretty clearly adequate to responsibly use them. But simply knowing how to responsibly use them does not necessarily equal correctly identifying the relative importance of their various characteristics, so perhaps my extension of that observation to your argument was imprecise, albeit perhaps not entirely incorrect.

In any case, it was unwarrantedly dismissive of your knowledge, and for that I apologize.
My frustration at poorly crafted laws sometimes gets ahead of my temperance.