Stricter Gun Control

Thank you for the challenge, I accept. I have previously debated the topic of gun control. Unfortunately, I lost that debate due to poor conduct on my part; I became too excited and lost my cool. Hopefully, there will be no repeat of this. I look forward to a spirited and civil debate!As I carry the burden of proof, I will start in this round and forfeit my final round, as agreed.Please find my original debate here: http://www.debate.org...I have borrowed my first round largely from there, but am happy to take the debate in different directions or whatever if you don't like the format._______My first case study for precedence is Australia.Historically, Australia used to permit gun usage, and although certain additional conditions were in place, for a long time it was a similar situation to acquiring a firearm in the US. However, in the face of rising gun violence and paranoia about communism during the cold war, the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is) implemented controls on military-calibre rifles. In the 1970s these were once again relaxed. However, guns were still a problem. In 1996 the Port Arthur Massacre saw the deaths of 35 people, including very young children, and the wounding of many more(1). The assailant used two military-standard rifles. He was apprehended the following day and is currently serving 35 back-to-back life sentences, plus 1 035 years in solitary confinement with no visitation provisions and no chance of parole, which is almost unheard of in Australia(1).The government took this issue seriously, and instead of advocating for more people to own guns or running away from the issue, it grabbed the problem by the balls and initiated a gun buy-back scheme which has been tremendously successful(2). In addition, it initiated sweeping reforms to get rid of the gun culture in Australia. Handguns were banned, high-powered rifles, rimfire, anything semi- or fully-automatic, and on those firearms that ARE still legal, there are very strict licensing arrangements, capacity restrictions and storage conditions. Initially, the public was outraged as gun-owners criticised what was ostensibly an infringement on their liberty(3). However, the reforms worked: Port Arthur was the last straw. In the preceding 18 years, there had been 13 mass-shootings, 112 shooting-spree deaths and more injured(2). Since the gun laws were implemented, there has not been a single massacre in Australia(1,2,3,4,5). Gun death-rates have almost dissolved. In 1988 the gun-homicide rate was around 123 per year. In 2011, that had fallen to twenty-five and these were mostly attributed to accidents and mishandling(6). The suicide rate fell dramatically from about 492 a year to 247(2). And the rate of handgun homicide is now less than 0.01 per 100 000 people(7). Australians are safer as a result of these gun laws, and after the initial shock abated, the public is now almost ubiquitously supportive of the government's controls. The information tells us that murder, suicide, injury and armed robbery decreased sharply following the reforms, and has stayed low. However, many people were not convinced that it was the laws themselves that had changed this, and an article was written by two female pro-gun activists, claiming that it was in fact feminism and the saturation of Australian media with the disgusting rhetoric of pro-gun activists in America that had actually changed public opinion, and not the gun laws themselves. So, the University of Sydney conducted a series of statistical analyses of all of the available data(4), including population parameters, and whether the incident was a suicide or murder. They then controlled for things like population (Australia has a small population, so in order to be comparable with other countries like America and the UK, very careful controls were used to ensure the data compensated for this). They also controlled for type of gun used (ball-bearing and air-rifles were included in the data set, which would have to potential to skew these results, however it happens to be the case that there are no known instances in Australia of fatalities by either of these types of weapon, so the data is not compromised).They concluded that these effects were directly attributable to the new legislation, to a high degree of confidence and statistical significance. There was absolutely no evidence of substitution (that is, people opting for knives, poison etc instead of firearms) for either homicide or suicide; both fell as a proportion of gun incidents, but they also declined overall, indicating that those without access to weapons did not opt for another means of suicide/murder. After all of the aforementioned controls were applied, this was still statistically significant (p<.05).This study was landmark and politicians wanted to know why gun buybacks wouldn't and haven't worked in the US. They identified three points(8):a) US buybacks tend to be small in scale.b) Guns are surrendered voluntarily. This is a problem because people just end up not surrendering the ones used in crimes.c) Replacement guns are far easier to obtain in the US. These three points are all addressable.Finally, "guns don't kill people, people kill people" just isn't justifiable. The American Journal of Medicine has released a comprehensive study detailing that there is a positive correlation between gun ownership and death rates(9); owning guns does not abate crime. In fact, it worsens it. The empirical ruling is that people kill people, with guns.I am more than happy to agree with the position that guns are fun. I've been shooting myself and thoroughly enjoyed it. But this discussion is about whether weapons are good for society. The facts say, "no".1. [http://en.wikipedia.org...(Australia)]2. [http://mic.com...]3. [http://www.theage.com.au...]4. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...]5. [http://andrewleigh.org...]6. [http://www.gunpolicy.org...]7. [http://www.gunpolicy.org...]8. [http://www.nationaljournal.com...]9. [bit.ly/1rCe0MX]