On edit:

To clarify - if you open fire in a crowded school hallway, your ratio of "people injured" to "shots fired" is very likely to be greater than one, depending on the ammunition.

But I"m asking how a single ordinary handgun can shoot this many bullets over a short period of time, without the person having to take time to reload.

You don't have to fire 16 bullets for 16 people in a crowded space to be shot - or more generally "wounded" in some way from not being shot, but from the ensuing panic.

Bullets are hard. People are soft. That's why it's important for shooters to know what is behind their target.

If you fire the right type of round into a person in a crowd, it is going to go through that person, and into other people. Hollow points, not so much. Some ammunition is designed to go through things. Some ammunition is designed to expand and create maximum injury and momentum transfer.

But could you quote a news source saying that 16 people were shot, specifically?

I see reports like this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-dead-after-shooting-kentucky-high-school-multiple-victims-reported-n840171

Two students were killed Tuesday and 18 other people were wounded when a 15-year-old boy armed with a handgun opened fire inside a Kentucky high school, authorities said.

That is 20 casualties, 2 fatal. But it doesn't state that the 18 other people were shot, either.

You can fire a gun in a crowded space and get a fair number of injuries, and not actually shoot anyone. I doubt any of the reporters were counting shell casings. If 20 people were taken to hospitals, that does not distinguish between people injured FROM BEING SHOT, versus people being injured from a human stampede, trips and falls, etc..

So if there is a source that says "X people were shot", based on actual knowledge of that fact, instead of, say, a news blog that assumes X injuries means X shots fired, that would be of interest.

Note how it distinguishes between the 16 who were wounded after a shooter opened fire, and four others who "sustained various injuries."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/us/kentucky-high-school-shooting/index.html

Sixteen people were wounded, two of them fatally, after a shooter opened fire Tuesday morning at Marshall County High School, authorities said. Four others sustained various injuries.



The story below differed by 1, with a total of 15 students hit by bullets.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dead-17-wounded-kentucky-high-school-shooting-article-1.3773847

Of the 13 other students struck by bullets, four remained hospitalized Tuesday night. Three were in critical but stable condition and the fourth was in stable condition, police said.


Five other students suffered minor injuries in the mad dash for safety.

Then it is not a question of the gun, so much as the magazine.

Here is a Glock semi-auto handgun with a standard 15 round magazine:



Manufacturer's page here:
https://us.glock.com/products/model/g40gen4mos


Here is a Glock semi-auto with an extended magazine:



It holds many more rounds.

The ability to use an extended magazine is by no means specific to that model of handgun.

they could mean a semi-automatic with an extended magazine. Not the kind of gun most lay people think of when they read, "handgun."

Sorry, Googled where they said they saw him empty and drop, not reload.

But yeah, I haven't seen numbers of specific bullets *fired*.

Not too many people use revolvers.

They could mean a bog-standard plain Glock with a standard 15 round magazine with which, yes, you can injure more than 15 people.

What do you think of when you read "handgun"?

Growing up we had two revolvers and a 9mm semi-auto, which were my father's service weapons. My brother restored them a few years back, but we were never too keen on actually shooting the revolvers, because the mechanisms were pretty finicky.

But that first gun pictured above is the normal sort of thing that you'd walk into, say, Cabela's and buy - and it comes with a 15 round magazine right out of the box.

which I think held six bullets, and each bullet had to be fired separately.

The 9mm was a "souvenir" weapon which, as was common practice, "acquired" during the war - WWII.

The guy that shot Archduke Ferdinand to kick off WWI used a semi-auto pistol.

This was a standard US service pistol since 1911:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911_pistol

The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. It served as the standard-issue sidearm for the United States Armed Forces from 1911 to 1986. It was widely used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

The default model holds 7 rounds, but you can easily get an extended magazine for it too:

I think there'd be even more pressure for gun control.

Are you saying that people didn't used to own semi automatic pistols until recently?

A shedload wandered back from WWI and WWII:

https://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=305385

and they were available on the retail / gov. surplus market, just like any other weapon...

https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2013/3/20/the-1911-not-just-a-45/

NRA Outdoor Pistol competition bloomed in the 1950s and ’60s. Bullseye pistol was a game that required a .22, a .45 and another gun in “any center-fire” caliber. Usually that meant both .22 and .45 stages fired with semi-automatics and the center-fire stage with a .38 revolver.

Most men didn't go to Vietnam, and I doubt that most non-gun owners are all that familiar with semiautomatic pistols.

On familiarity, do you know why this beverage is named this way:





I am no longer a "gun owner", but I don't think you can watch any television crime program or movie without seeing a semiautomatic pistol in use.

The Colt 45 1911 model is a perennial classic.

But you can head right over to the Cabela's and watch semi-auto pistols fly off the shelves morning, noon and night.

I doubt the Kentucky shooter had any sort of weapon that was "unusual" or "new" among gun owners.

There are plenty of kids in your neighborhood with access to the same types of weapons, and can do the same thing. Most police carry them, so take a look next time you see a police officer.

grocery stores, department stores, Costco, or anywhere else that I shop. (And if I ever did see an aisle marked "guns" -- which I don't recall -- there'd be no reason for me to walk down it.)

I wouldn't even know where to buy a gun in Seattle, though I'm sure they sell them somewhere.

P.S. Out of curiosity, I just looked at the online Costco site. They have gun safes, gun cases, and gun cleaning kits, but no actual guns.

P.P.S. And if you had asked me, outside of this discussion, I would have figured the name Colt had something to do with horses.

I go there fairly often, since I do a fair amount of camping, and they have outdoor supplies. But half the floor space is devoted to guns and accessories, and they plunked that store down in one of the most dense population areas in the eastern US, with convenient access to I-95.
There are damned few places to legally shoot one in this area, but they sell like hotcakes anyway.


But I'm trying to understand the point here.

1. Yes, there are lots of places to buy guns in the greater Puget Sound area, and Seattle in particular:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/guns/@47.5993207,-122.4521667,9z/data=!3m1!4b1

2. No, you can't buy guns online from Costco. You CAN buy guns online with the proviso that the gun is shipped to a local gun dealer to run the NICS check and comply with whatever local regulations there might be.

3. Despite your personal unfamiliarity with them, semi-auto pistols have been available to the general public for decades. Before 1968, you could simply plunk down $40 and walk out the door with one, or mail order one.

4. No, it does not require any sort of unusual or "exotic" gear to quickly obtain casualties in the teens (whatever the exact number) by firing a bog-standard off-the-shelf common handgun in a crowded area. It does not require an extended clip or multiple clips or multiple firearms.

If you want to buy a semi-auto pistol online, you can go here:

http://www.cabelas.com/browse.cmd?categoryId=734095080&CQ_search=pistols&CQ_view=list&CQ_ref=~c1-Shooting~c2-Firearms

...add one to your cart, check out, and pick it up at a store location.]

The nearest locations to you are:

Tulalip
9810 Quil Ceda Blvd.
Tulalip, WA 98271-8243
360-474-4880

Lacey
1600 Gateway Blvd. NE
Lacey, WA 98516-4400
360-252-3500

Abbotsford
1818 McCallum Road
Abbotsford, BC V2S 0H9
604-425-180

Union Gap
1400 E Washington Ave
Union Gap, WA 98903-1661
509-941-2100

But this is just representative of one retail chain.

$900 bucks, a drive up past Everett, make a day of it and stop in at the Tulalip casino and play some blackjack, and you got yourself this:

http://www.cabelas.com/product/cz-scorpion-evo-9mm-semiautomatic-pistol/1961818.uts

available out there.

That's why there are so many debates here about assault weapons vs. automatic vs. semi-automatic. Only the "experts" understand the differences -- not the non-gun owners.

But that needs to change. I agree with the doctor. The issue isn't long gun or short gun or assault vs. non assault. It's semi-automatic guns that allow a shooter to easily mow down many people in seconds.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210141301

The questions posed in the OP were:

what type of handgun he used? Are there handguns that hold 16 bullets? Did he have to reload? How fast could this all have happened?

The answers are:

1. Any of MANY common ordinary pistols that are readily available at a range of prices, are commonly owned by many people, and accessible to anyone in their household, and have been for decades.

2. Yes, lots. One of the most common and popular models holds 15 by default.

3. No. You can obtain multiple casualties from single shots, shots into cinder block and resulting ejecta, etc.

4. As fast as you can twitch your finger anywhere from 8 to 10 times.

My only point was that you do not need to fire 16 rounds in order to obtain 16 casualties. Bullets will go through people and this was presumably a crowded venue, such as a school hallway. Bullets can also impact walls and produce ejecta, which will also injure people.

to have the answers all in one spot.

(And point taken, as to your last item.)

Play Pai Gow instead. They have a dealer who makes occasional mistakes.

I was passing through there one time on a drive from Seattle to Vancouver, and the dealer paid me on a losing hand and collected my cards. I actually didn't notice at first, since I was not paying attention having lost the hand. The lady next to me noticed, and flinched a bit as if to say something. Realizing what happened, I gave her a side-eyed look as if to ask "Do you have something to say?" and her mouth went shut.

from your visit to the rainy state.

I've been to Seattle four or five times, and it has always been clear with a good view of Rainier just waiting to blow you all off the map at any time.

Every SINGLE time I have ever been to Los Angeles, it has rained.

I shit you not.

Not much more in September. We save it up for the rest of the year.

But it is a real achievement for you to run into rain in L.A. I don't think I ever have.

But for reasons I can't figure out, whenever someone wants me in LA, it's been during the wetter part of the year there.

The mechanism of operation of semi-automatic weapons is extremely simple.

Watch this animation:



The rounds are held in a clip - like a PEZ dispenser - which has a spring mechanism to drive the rounds upwards.

First, you pull back on that upper sliding part to chamber the top round, which also positions the hammer in the firing position. The gun is now ready to fire.

With each shot, the recoil generated by the charge drives the slide back, ejects the casing of the fired round, chambers the next round, and cocks the hammer.

Here's a simpler and slower one:



There's no great mystery or technical voodoo about how these things work. There are a number of variations on that theme, but the basic idea of semi-auto weapons, whether pistols or rifles, is that the energy from firing the weapon is used to cycle the weapon to reload to the firing position each time the trigger is pulled.

The tricky part is that if you fire a couple of shots, and are finished firing, the gun is still ready to fire. To return to a safe position, you put your thumb on the hammer, pull the trigger, and use your thumb to - gently - put the hammer back into the non-firing position.

Full auto weapons operate on the same basic principle (again with a number of technical variations), with the exception that when the cycle comes back to the "round in the chamber" position, the firing mechanism is also actuated without having to pull the trigger another time.

Great. Now to figure out how to get anyone to regulate them.

Before Pez dispensers, some engineer-type had to figure out how to make them.

...is that it was originally marketed as an alternative to smoking, but kids got hooked on them. See what happens? It was all of those "non-adult flavors".

And then there was this....



Full-auto PEZ guns were regulated in the 1920's, but the semi-auto's can be easily converted.

(note the small print in the ad - comes with a REAL gun permit!)

Learn something new every day!

be reloaded quickly, especially in a chaotic hallway. Most handguns are semi automatic. You don't really see revolvers in Mass shootings. Same reason you rarely see bolt action rifles involved in Mass shootings. Which is also one of the arguments with gun legislation. They're slower, a lot slower.
A typical handgun carries a 15 round magazine, and you can put one round in the chamber. Not advised for fear of jamming, but not uncommon either. Handgun ammo is generally hollow point due to the job the gun supposedly performs. Stopping power. Hollow points expand on impact causing more tissue damage and increases lethality, while solid or tipped bullets are designed to go through a target, or penetrate more from a distance such as with rifles. Cops use hollow points to minimize collateral damage. Criminals use penetrating bullets to defeat body armor. Another reason body armor shouldn't be available for civilian purchase.

any moment now. Four kids are critically injured.. These are fifteen year old children.

Who supplied the gun to a child.