Be it resolved that no gun laws should be passed restricting the right to bear arms

1. 2nd Amendment Says "Shall Not Be Infringed": The 2nd Amendment says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Who could live with that? Would you want grade school children to be able to take weapons of mass destruction to school? Is it okay to take sarin gas into the subway? Should your least favorite religious denomination get to stockpile cruise missiles, ICBMs, suitcase nukes, mustard gas, military quantities of LSD, and weaponized anthrax? Should drug dealers arm themselves with grenades and machine guns? Unless you answer yes to all of the above questions, you favor infringing the right to bear arms. The 2nd Amendment unambiguously says that should all of the above should be legal. That would be intolerable. We can't live with it. So, apart from a little lip service, we properly ignore it. Changing it would be good, to bring the law into conformity with practice. Doing it the other way, bringing practice into conformity with the 2nd Amendment as written, that would be crazy. 2. The Original Justification for the 2nd Amendment: The idea was that if the country were invaded, all the men of fighting age would grab their muskets and come to the defense of their country. Each man's domestic weaponry was to serve as military weaponry. A well-armed and well-trained citizenry was to serve as the nation's defense. For that to work today, one of your neighbors would need a couple of Abrams tanks, another would have to own a battleship, and you'd need a runway for that stealth bomber parked in your back yard. Not practical. The kind of guy who now shoots up a schoolroom full of kids would be able to do too much damage in that kind of world. Today's well-regulated militia is a professional standing army. The original justification for the 2nd Amendment just isn't practical in today's world: - We citizens don't have the weapons necessary to defend the country. - If we did have them, we would do intolerably greater damage to ourselves than we actually do with the weapons we're allowed today. - Our professional standing army obviates much of the need for armed citizens. Therefore, not only would the 2nd Amendment be intolerable if enforced, its justification no longer applies. 3. The 2nd Amendment Doesn't Justify Access to Small Firearms: The 2nd Amendment says anybody can have any weapon. "Shall not be infringed. " If we only let people have certain select weapons, then that right isn't based on the 2nd Amendment. Something else is going on. Our right to bear small firearms must then have some other basis. I posit that there is a right to defend ourselves and our property, an unenumerated right protected by the 9th Amendment. We have a right to own equalizers. This isn't part of my argument. It's just an example, one idea of how such a right could be defended. You can disagree with this idea and still vote Con. But you should agree with this: The right to own small firearms---to the extent that such a right exists---is not based on the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment says "shall not be infringed," which is obviously not what's going on. If the 2nd Amendment were in play, the BATF would just be the BAT. 4. Weighing Benefits and Harms: So, if our right to bear small firearms isn't based on the 2nd Amendment, what is it based on? The government weighs the benefits and harms of weapons ownership. On the one hand, we may not agree with their decisions (apparently we can take knives on planes again, but not bottled water) but we wouldn't want it any other way. We don't want children taking weapons of mass destruction to school. We don't want the Westborough Baptist Church to have a weapon that jams transmissions of the Jerry Springer Show. We do want someone to decide which weapons are, on the one hand, powerful enough to serve for defense and hunting and sports, but, on the other hand, not so powerful as to be unsafe in circulation. Somebody has to make that call. We reserve the right to gripe when we disagree the call, but somebody still has to make that call. 5. Benefits and Harms of Small Firearms: Public slaughter of school children and theater goers seems to be getting more popular in our culture. Therefore, it seems to me reasonable to limit access to high-capacity rapid-fire guns. I can defend myself with a six shooter. Some people might prefer faster guns with more rounds, but we have to, as a society, weigh how fast and how many rounds is reasonably safe. Given the increasing frequency of the public slaughter of strangers, somebody has to draw a line. Semi-automatic guns with thirty-round clips are not sacrosanct. If the legislature decides that banning such guns will save enough lives without making citizens unduly vulnerable to predators, that won't be an unreasonable decision. Personally, I'm for it. I think if you shoot ten kids you should have to reload. Every time. 6. The Resolution: The resolution is that no gun laws should be passed that restrict the right to bear arms. That means that, even if the harms of some guns outweigh the benefits, we shouldn't restrict those guns. That's not a reasonable position. Our gun laws are a hodgepodge of rules that don't make a lot of sense. For instance, your gun can't be .50 caliber unless it uses black powder. One very powerful gun was legal until somebody started using it to blow open safes. Our current statutes aren't sacred; they weren't handed down by gods. There's no reason that they shouldn't be adjusted as circumstances change. Pro isn't going to be able to prove that our current laws are perfect, or that they can't be improved, in some circumstances, by increasing restrictions on some kinds of guns. Conclusion: - We couldn't tolerate the 2nd Amendment as written. - Our current gun laws are clearly not based on the 2nd Amendment. - There is nothing perfect or unchangable about our gun laws, no reason not to change them as circumstances warrant. - Sometimes, increasing restrictions may provide a net benefit to the public. Therefore, it is not true that we should fetishise our existing set of gun laws by treating them as unalterable even when alteration would benefit the common weal. Therefore, the resolution is refuted.