In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned

They say "The negative's burden is to just disprove the affirmative in today's debate." I agree, but I will say that they have not met their burden, because they conceded all of the evidence I brought up in the 1AC. They have done nothing to disprove my case - they have only talked about why arbitrary action is bad. We win the entire 1AC so this will be an easy vote for the Affirmative. They concede that their failure to provide counterexamples means that my argument is no longer arbitrary. Extend that if it really was possible that my plan could have the opposite effect of what I said it would, they would have provided counterexamples or statistics showing places where gun control has been ineffective or creating a plausible scenario where gun control leads to more death. They concede that using reliable sources reduces arbitrariness, so their claims about my case being no better than a dice roll would only apply if I had provided no evidence. You cannot simultaneously reject both the 1AC and the 1NC because they did not refute any of the 1AC, and the only way that you would not accept the 1AC as being true is if you believe that the 1AC is arbitrary, which is the thesis of the 1NC. If you reject the 1NC you must accept the 1AC as being true for the purpose of this debate. However, they have conceded that the 1NC is false. They completely dropped my argument about how their denial of the existence of truth invalidates the entire 1NC. For this reason you should disregard the entire 1NC and evaluate the debate on the basis of the 1AC alone, in which case the only logical conclusion is to vote for the Affirmative. I agree that arbitrary action exists - but not all action is arbitrary. Their alternative is inaction, and I counter that by saying that inaction is bad. Inaction caused Imperial China to stagnate culturally and technologically, leading to China losing its place as the world's greatest power and eventually succumbing to European influence. President George W. Bush's inaction on an intelligence report warning of an imminent terrorist threat was one of the factors that led to 9/11. Inaction on climate change could result in the end of human civilization. If you accept their claims about inaction being good, then you would have to embrace inaction by not voting on this debate. The very act of voting on the debate proves that you reject inaction and you should not vote for a team that advocates it. On the issue of values and whether this is a question of policy: The word "ought" does not always refer to a policy action, but my assertion that this is a question of policy is supported by the word "banned" being in the resolution, and the fact that the resolution clearly proposes a change of policy. Only governments and other policy-making organizations have the power to ban things, so this should be an issue of policy. In their definition of justice, they say that "justice is giving each their due - this causes human life to exist because each is due their own life." Because they have conceded that my plan saves 20,182 lives per year, there will be more justice in a world with the plan than without it, because there are 20,182 more people who will get the most important thing they are due - their own lives. On the issue of values, they concede my points about why preservation of life is a higher value than avoidance of arbitrary action. They only attack the use of net benefits and utilitarianism. They say that utilitarianism justifies sacrificing lives for the greater good - but that is not relevant for this debate because they have not claimed that anyone would die as a result of banning guns. They claim that utilitarianism justifies slavery - but that is not true. Slavery causes extreme misery for everyone who is enslaved. It leads to death and hurts the economy. Utilitarianism makes everyone's happiness equally valuable, and slavery reduces the happiness of everyone except the small percentage of people in a society who own slaves. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, personally debated in favor of the abolition of slavery (1). As for their conclusion, if you accept the worldview of the Negative you are actually increasing the amount of arbitrariness in the world. What could be more arbitrary than rejecting an affirmative case based on nothing but the claim that everything is arbitrary? Debate judges do not have the power to actually ban handguns in real life, but they can vote on this debate, which is a real action. The only real action you would take is to determine who you think won the debate, and since the Negative admits they are arbitrary and I provide evidence that I am not arbitrary, it would be more arbitrary to vote for them. The Negative's argument implies they believe that all Affirmatives in policy debates are arbitrary, so if you vote for the Negative, you would be rejecting my case just because I am the affirmative - which is the very definition of arbitrary! So even if you accept their framework that minimizing arbitrariness is the highest value, you will still be voting for the affirmative because the only real action you will be taking when you vote is to vote on a debate round - not to actually ban handguns. By voting for me, you reduce arbitrariness, so I win both on my framework and on theirs. 1. http://www.thefamouspeople.com...