When you buy a new firearm, it usually comes with one or two magazines. For a brand-new gun owner, that might seem like plenty. After all, if you're only using one magazine at a time, how many do you really need? There's no magic number that every gun owner should have, but there's a good argument for owning more than whatever happened to come in the box. Extra magazines make range trips easier, give you backups when something isn't working correctly, and allow you to rotate