New Member Tournament: Gun Rights Debate

Thanks JMRTC = Right to Carry ARGUMENTS1) Increases risk and fearThe individual right to carry guns does not make people feel safe. A study done by Harvard shows that 59% of American citizens felt less safe if more people in their community were allowed to carry guns, 24% felt the same, and only 12% felt more safe [1]. About 90% thought that citizens should not be allowed to bring their guns into restaurants, bars, and college campuses [1]. It can be seen that people don't feel safer but are more worried about who might have a gun when they are sitting in a bar, or going to college. Their fears are not unfounded. Incidents like the highly publicized Virginia Tech massacre have been occuring every few years since 1990 [2]. More guns floating in society not only increases risk to individuals, but also increases their fear making us a more fearful society overall. Suicide attempts are impulsive. From a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, 24% of people who attempted suicide took less than 5 min from the decision to kill themsleves from the actual attempt while 70% took less than an hour [10]. The easy access to guns makes them highly dangerous. If guns weren't available, people will have more time to rethink. 2) Criminals obtain guns easilyPro says that criminals will break the law to get a gun. Let's consider how criminals get their guns: 46% of criminals in the US get them through a process known as "straw purchasing" [3]. The process is simple. A convict gets someone else to buy a gun for him [3]. It is difficult, almost impossible to catch. The criminal's friend or family member will simply buy a gun and give it to him. That is a disadvantage of the right to carry (RTC): people can buy guns for others by bending the law. Without an RTC, people who can legally buy guns cannot just buy a gun and pass it onto their friend who will then use it to commit a crime. 3) Increased domestic violence Pro says that there are training programs that help people use guns safely. But are they mandatory? Would everyone in the house have had the training? It is more likely that a gun kept in the house would fall into the hands of an untrained person who would either accidentally shoot their own family, or from whom the burglar can immediately snatch the gun away. 30% of victims were murdered by people known to the victim, 13% by family members, and only 12% by strangers [4]. This shows that it is over 3 times more likely for a victim to be murdered by someone they know and has access to their house. So the harmss of having a gun in the house outweigh the benefits of a small possibility that it could be used defensively against an intruder. A study conducted by UCLA involving over 9000 subjects concluded that having a gun at home is a risk for adults to be shot fatally or commit suicide with a firearm at a ratio of 1.41 [7]. This means a gun at home makes you about 41% more likely to be a victim of homicide or suicide. A separate study conducted by the University of Tennessee, Memphis concludes that "rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance" [8]. REBUTTALS1) Self Defense from PolicePro says "anything is possible." The question is: Is it likely? Likelihood is more important that possiblity when doing a comparison of benefits and harms. Pro also says that cops might abuse their power. Pointing a gun at them isn't going to help. The solution is to call 911, get other cops at the scene. It is far less likely that the entire department is corrupt. Cops are much better trained than the average citizen to use their guns so actually shooting a cop is out of the question. If Pro only advocates waving the gun at the corrupt cop hoping he will go away, the suspect will be taken into custody for pointing a firearm at a cop. This is absolutely not a benefit of the RTC as Pro tries to argue. If anything, it is a disadvantage. 2) Self Defense from Criminals(A) 534,000 cases of self-defense? That is 0.001% of the US population. Quite small. Guns are not likely to be successfully used for self-defense. The American Journal of Public Health conducted a study in Philadelphia and concluded that on average, guns did not protect their owners from assualt [6]. This is because attacks are often surprise attacks and the victim has no time to draw his weapon. A gun may falsely empower its possessor to overreact, instigating and losing otherwise avoidable conflicts with similarly armed persons. Gun owners also increase their risk of gun assault by entering dangerous environments that they would have normally avoided. Alternatively, an individual may bring a gun to an otherwise gun-free conflict only to have that gun wrested away and turned on them [6]. The study concluded that a person with a gun is four times more likely to be shot in an assault than one without a gun [6]. (B) Police protectionPro says that police can't guarantee the safety of citizens. But as I have shown, neither can guns.Warren v DC only stated that police had no special responsibility to protect any individual. It upheld that police did have a responsibility to protect the public at large. The ruling was in response to a victim suing the police for not checking the backdoor of the house even though the police had arrived at the front door. Instead of suing the police on a small technicality, the victims should have helped prosecute the criminals. The average police response time was 8 minutes in 1995 [9]. This is steadily decreasing [9]. It is better to wait for the police rather than use a gun and get shot in the process. 3) Crime DeterrentPro says that people feel safer. This isn't true. 59% of people felt less safe with more guns in the community, only 12% felt more safe. Pro's argument relies on the assertion that once criminals know that a person is armed, they are more likely to retreat. However, the criminal is just as likely to shoot the person if they think that they will be shot. Pro relies on the assumption that gun users are safe, responsible people with good training on how to use a gun. There is no way to guarantee this. Pro cites John Lott to say that crime decreases with right to carry. I don't have John Lott's book but I have evidence showing that Lott used fraudulent data. The Washigton Monthly reports that Lott produced a statistical model "Model 1", that showed that significant crime decreases when guns were banned. Errors were discovered in Lott's work. Lott admitted the errors and posted a new table with new results. However, his new results were similar to his old ones [12]. This was bcause, since Lott had no choice but to use the corrected data, and the corrected data erased his results, he decided to invent a different model ("Model 2") for use in this new table without disclosing the fact that he had switched to a new model specifically constructed to keep his results intact [12]. Lott then quitely removed the old model from his website and put the new model in. He used the new model with the old data as well as the new data to make it seem like he used the new model all along [12]. Lott also misrepresented the findings of the FBI [13]. John Lott has been discredited, he was caught using falsified data. RTC does not decrease crime.A study published in the Journal of the American Institute for Economic Research shows that RTC actually increases instances of aggravated assault [11]. 4) Sport Pro says shooting sports are safe. I disagree and negated his stats. He still asserts that shooting sports are safe with no new evidence. Shooting sports are not only dangerous, but what does it even matter whether or not they are safe? By itself, it is not a real benefit of the individual RTC. People could do target practice with replica guns and bullets. Just the fact that people want to play with real guns is no reason to allow people to carry guns while at home or in the community. Sources http://bit.ly...