Unfair Advantage: Magpul PMAGs Used At Newtown

UPDATE: Credit where due: we'd like to acknowledge that our friend, media critic Jason Salzman, was asking prescient questions about the origin of the magazines used at Newtown as far back as last March.

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Magpul PMAG high capacity magazines.

A long-speculated and significant detail from the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings last December emerges today–and as reported by FOX 31's Eli Stokols, there's an important Colorado connection:

Adam Lanza, who went on a shooting rampage last December at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., carried out the killings using 30-round magazines made by Colorado’s Magpul Industries, according to a 48-page report released Monday.

Lanza used the company’s best-known “PMAG” (polymer magazine), a 30-round cartridge, to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders, the report said.

Colorado lawmakers this year passed five bills aimed at strengthening the state’s gun laws, including a measure that bans the PMAG and any magazine of 15 rounds or more.  Lawmakers cited the Sandy Hook shooting as a partial motivation for the laws.

Magpul, which is based in Erie, fought hard to stop the proposal, even threatening to leave the state should it pass (the measure became law in May and, as of November, Magpul has not yet moved although the company said it’s still planning it).

Here's the report in question from the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice. Search the document for the word "PMAG" to read about the high capacity magazines found in the possession of the Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza.

Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle used in Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, with Magpul PMAG magazine.

As one of the more popular brands of high capacity AR-15-type magazines available, it has long been a suspicion that the magazines used at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last December were made in Colorado by Magpul Industries, Inc. As Stokols reports, Magpul led the fight to stop the passage of House Bill 1224, legislation limiting the capacity of magazines sold in Colorado to a maximum of fifteen rounds. Magpul had threatened to leave the state if HB-1224 passed, but as of this month has controversially failed to do so. It's worth noting that HB-1224 wouldn't have prevented Magpul from manufacturing its high capacity PMAGs in Colorado–just their retail sale here. In Connecticut after the Newtown shooting, legislation passed this year limited magazine capacity to ten rounds.

We'll put the question to our readers: will confirmation that the high capacity magazines used to gun down over two dozen people, mostly little kids, at Sandy Hook Elementary last year were made in Colorado by Magpul, alter the debate over gun safety legislation in Colorado? Do you think it should? Whichever side you come down on the issue, this is a development that requires a rational answer one way or the other.

And maybe before that, some soul searching.

View the original article here

Magpul hasn’t always been silent about Sandy Hook, like it is now

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

After news broke Tuesday that the mass murderer at Sandy Hook used a 30-round magazine manufactured by Magpul, a (still) Colorado company, local reporters naturally tried to reach Magpul executives for a reaction.

But Magpul didn't return calls yesterday from the Boulder Daily Camera, Fox 31 Denver, or The Denver Post.

Rather than simply report Magpul's silence, reporters should have informed us of previous comments by Magpul executives about the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Asked in March, during an appearance on KOA radio, how he'd feel if one of his company's 30-round magazines was used by the killer at Sandy Hook, Magpul Industries executive Duane Liptak said:

Liptak: "Address the individual behavior and the criminal, not the instrument."

In a m4carbine.net online discussion forum about Newtown in March, Liptak wrote: "It's unfortunate that the 363 days last year that did not include a high-profile mass shooting by an insane individual received less attention than the 2 days that did."

In another m4carbine.net online discussion in March about whether video games are the cause of violence, Liptak wrote:

Liptak: "That's the issue. Instill a moral code, responsibility, and respect for others…and viola…your young man doesn't grow up to be a doucherocket."

Liptak promised readers of the online forum in Jan. that he (presumably through Magpul)would take action in the 2014 election in response to the Colorado Legislature's gun-safety legislation, which was arguably at least partially a response to Sandy Hook: "We're working on our 'Free Colorado' campaign right now, but we may not have it launched in time to stop this [gun legislation]. At the very least, we'll continue to push it through the 2014 elections. "

Liptak's comments about Sandy Hook on the radio and in the online forums contrasted with a more empathetic statement issued by Magpul Dec. 18, 2012 shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting:

We at Magpul are deeply saddened by the acts of violence in our nation, and our hearts and condolences go out to the families who have suffered such tragic losses. These acts of pure evil, committed by deranged individuals with no morals, nor respect for life, are enough to shake one’s faith in human nature. Still, amidst these criminal atrocities, things are brought back into perspective by the actions of those like the teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook, who, unarmed and untrained, put themselves in the path of this violence in courageous attempts to protect those in their charge. Actions like this, those by the passengers of United Flight 93 on 9/11, and the daily sacrifices of our service members and their families bolster our belief in the power of personal responsibility and humble us in our gratitude that such courageous and unselfish individuals vastly outnumber the villains in our midst.

View the original article here

Surprised Magpul Hasn’t Left Colorado? Don’t Be

Colorado-based gun accessory maker Magpul.

As the Boulder Daily Camera's John Aguilar reports:

State Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, read from the floor of the Colorado House of Representatives a message from the CEO of Magpul Industries, the Erie-based weapons accessory maker, that his company would leave Colorado if the Legislature passed a measure banning the sale of magazines containing more than 15 rounds.

Saine gave that speech in February, the Legislature passed the magazine-limits bill in March, and Magpul announced in April that it had started making certain weapons accessories out of state. But on Thursday — a full six months after the company made its much-ballyhooed break from the Centennial State — the parking lot at Magpul's headquarters in Erie was filled with cars, and a receptionist greeted visitors in the front lobby.

The company's seeming inability to once and for all pull up stakes and exit Colorado has gone from a point of curiosity among gun enthusiasts, who loudly backed the company's decision half a year ago to move, to a source of annoyance that threatens to hurt Magpul's reputation and business.

Magpul's threats to leave the state of Colorado to protect the company's "principles" during the debate over House Bill 1224 were repeatedly invoked by Republican lawmakers as proof of the economic harm the legislation would do to the state. Since then, we've seen that the GOP-forecast "boycott" of hunters visiting from Colorado did not materialize, and all of the wacky "unintended consequences" of this law, and the new law requiring background checks for most gun sales, have been proven false.

During the time after House Bill 1224 passed, Magpul reaped untold profits from the "emergency" sale of its products in Colorado before the new law took effect. In this way, Magpul followed a formulaic approach of hyping up new, proposed, or even imaginary gun restrictions to provoke panic buying of their products. There's an argument that much of the nutty conspiracy theory stuff about Barack Obama and the United Nations has served its purpose simply by boosting the sale of guns and related products.

Since nothing in House Bill 1224 actually stops them from manufacturing their products in Colorado, and Colorado is, even after House Bill 1224, a hell of a lot nicer place to live than Texas, we expect that at some point Magpul will announce they are "staying to fight" instead of "cutting and running." We would be shocked if Magpul actually left Colorado prior to the innumerable attempts Republicans are guaranteed to make next year to repeal HB-1224–since they can use threats to leave, "for real" this time, as leverage again just as they did this year. Hell, they can probably get away with that for at least a couple of years before nobody buys it anymore. Before then, Republicans could retake the state and repeal the law, Dave Kopel and the sheriffs could win their longshot lawsuit, or U.N. stormtroopers under dictator Hillary Clinton could make the whole damn question irrelevant!

This is the upside to being full of crap, folks. There's always something new you can say.

View the original article here