Your guide to semi-automatic rifles

[Matrosov]

23. Magazine capacity is perhaps the most important factor

All of those weapons can fire as quickly as you can pull the trigger and all of them can hit and kill a human with ease inside of, let's say, 200 to 300 yards.

With that in mind, the most effective way to deal with the AR15 and other assault rifles would be to ban semi-automatics in general.

Since that's unlikely to happen, the next step would be to attempt to decrease the effectiveness of these rifles. Well, you can't decrease the rate of fire without making them something other than a semi-automatic rifle. You can't decrease the effective range without drastically shortening the barrels, which in turn would make them easier and easier to conceal. You can't decrease the lethality of the bullets without maybe switching from rifle to pistol calibers (because pistol rounds generally have less energy than rifle rounds). But even a small caliber handgun can kill...

On the other hand, magazine restrictions would at least have a major influence on how many people you can hit in a certain amount of time. A ten-round magazine forces you to reload twice before you can fire the same number of bullets as in a thirty-round magazine. A five-round magazine forces you to reload five times before you can fire thirty rounds. The more you have to reload, the more time your victims have to escape and law enforcement has to move in.

Unfortunately, many laws restricting magazine capacity make exemptions for older high-capacity magazines, so any future laws would also have to demand that existing high-capacity magazines be turned in to law enforcement in order for those laws to be effective.