Duelling should be legal

== Resolutional Analysis ==My opponent agreed that a duel required only two consenting adults. My opponent cannot add additional requirements, such as (1) that police be present, (2) that the duel take place in an abandoned field, and (3) that the weapon be limited to swords. My opponent is engaging in “moving the goalposts” or a “No True Scotsman” fallacy. The name “No True Scotsman” comes from the following example. One person argues that a Scotsman would never attack an unarmed person. The second person pulls out a newspaper proving that in the past, a Scotsman did attack an unarmed person. The first person responds, “well no true Scotsman would do that.” The fallacy is that the original argument was over whether Scotsmen attack unarmed people; the argument was not whether “true Scotsmen” attack unarmed people. It is fallacious to narrow the grounds of the debate when one is losing so as to avoid arguments. The original resolution was whether “dueling should be legalized.” There were no qualifications. The law was to read: “dueling is now legal. Dueling is defined as the use of organized violence between two consenting adults.” My opponent moves the goalposts if he now changes the law to be, “Dueling must occur with swords, in front of police officers, and in a place far removed from populated areas.” This change is tantamount to a resolution that says, “Killing another human being should be legal,” and Pro clarifies in Round 2 that he meant “only in cases of self-defense.”Pro has clearly responded to my outline of arguments in Round 1 by simply moving the goal posts. This is not allowed. The original (unqualified) resolution still stands.C1: No way to prove consentUnder the original resolution, there was no requirement that there be any witnesses to the duel. If the two duelers are the only two witnesses, and one of them is dead, then the killer’s word is the only one that matters. People can engage in murder and then claim they were dueling as a defense. The only person that can contradict that the victim gave “consent” is already dead [i.e. the victim himself].This problem has already happened in the context of Stand Your Ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws have made it difficult for prosecutors to win murder cases because the killer can simply claim that the victim was the aggressor and the only other witness to the crime [the victim] is dead. [1] As a result, prosecutors find it harder to convict murderers because it is so easy for defendants to assert self-defense claims under the Stand Your Ground law. According to State Attorney Harry Shorstein, the Stand Your Ground law has influenced the District Attorney’s office in Florida to refrain from filing charges or to file reduced charges in a number of murder cases. [2] In addition, police do not even pursue murder investigations when they cannot contradict the killer’s version of events. According to an analysis by the Orlando Sentinel, some murder cases in Florida now receive 20 plus hours of police work, while others now receive ZERO hours of police work because the police cannot disprove the claim that the killer was “standing his ground.” [3]The same thing would happen with “legalized dueling” – killers would simply claim that they had the victim’s consent to fight. If the killer stabbed the victim with a knife, the killer would simply plant another knife on the victim and claim they were dueling with knives.Another problem with dueling and proof of consent is duress. A murderer could say, “duel me or I’ll just shoot you anyway.” Even if my opponent’s restrictions applied, it would be impossible to prove duress if the victim were killed in the sword fight. Thus, dueling would become a very effective tool for murderers.C2: gang shootoutsDueling will allow gang shootouts to happen in broad daylight with no repercussions. This is already a problem with Stand Your Ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws apply equally to both criminals and normal citizens. “Chief Assistant State Attorney in the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida, Jay Plotkin, illustrated this problem when he said, ‘unfortunately, you can't write a law that says only good citizens can use deadly force to protect themselves ... If a bad guy is defending himself against another bad guy, the law applies to him, too.’” [4] Elizabeth Megale writes in the American Journal of Trial Advocacy, “imagine two rival gang members cross paths on a public sidewalk where they each have a right to be, they each have a right to stand their ground. Either gang member can . . . claim to perceive a threat from the other, and acting in self-defense, use physical force against the other.” [5] The same thing will happen with duels.One of the main problems with this is that if an innocent bystander is killed while a person is legally exercising force, the killer cannot be charged for killing the innocent bystander. The court case Smith v. State held that in the context of Stand Your Ground laws, if the person was validly “standing his ground,” he could not be prosecuted for killing an innocent third party by accident. [6]C3: cheating during duelsIf there is no one at the duel, what is to stop one person from cheating? If they are both using guns and agree to walk 5 paces, pause for 3 seconds, turn and shoot, what is to stop one person from waiting only 1 second? Who would enforce violations of duel rules? Even if police were present, would cheating be prosecuted as murder? So if you count your “1-alligator, 2-alligators” too quickly, you are guilty of murder? That doesn’t seem to make sense.The unfairness to the victim from cheating and the potential unfairness to the killer for accidental rule violations militate against legalizing dueling in the first place because it is not administrable in a fair way.C4: assuming you buy my opponent’s resolutional analysis, I still winThis is a big assumption, since it should be pretty clear that what my opponent is doing here is completely unfair. What he is advocating is beginning to look less like dueling and more like fencing. He could even add a requirement that “you cannot attempt to kill the other person, only injure.”But regardless, assuming that you have police oversee the process and only use swords, allowing people to murder each other is still bad because (1) it is a huge waste of police resources, (2) it is a net negative for society, and (3) it undermines the legitimacy of our justice system.First, police have better things to do than come watch people duke it out. Police would be forced to watch duels, even if the duel rules were that neither party could use lethal force. At some point, fencers – who admittedly are engaging in a rather boring spectator sport – can simply force police to watch them. Even if duels were rare, they hold no social value, so making police drive out to a deserted area and oversee a duel is still a waste of resources.Second, duels are a net negative for society. Utilitarianism posits that we should not adopt a policy if it has a net negative effect on society. In the case of a duel, either one party has broken the law or one party has slighted the other in some way that is not illegal. If the party has broken the law, it is better for society that the other party reports the violation rather than engage in the duel. Society has an interest in having its laws enforced that goes beyond merely securing justice for the victim (such as deterrence and incapacitation of dangerous people). What happens if one party has committed a serious crime (such as rape), and the victim decides to challenge the aggressor to a duel, rather than go to the police? If the aggressor wins the duel and kills the victim, society is worse off because now a dangerous person cannot be put in prison since the only witness is gone. The ability of criminals to escape crimes through duels weakens deterrence and undermines the incapacitative goals of the justice system.If neither party has broken the law, society has deemed the transgression to be minor enough that it is not worthy of punishment and therefore it is most definitely not worthy of death. Society loses out if people are killed over minor transgressions. Dead duelers leave behind grieving families. If the dueler is a primary wage earner, society must now support his or her family. Thus, duels are a drain on society. Society should not sanction a bad short-term decision that harms individuals and society in the long-term.Third, vigilante justice is bad for the legitimacy of the justice system. A society appears inhumane and “Wild West values” prevail if people do not go through the court systems to settle their disputes. Eventually, the stigma for turning down a duel becomes so high that duels become the favored means for settling disputes. Entire communities can castigate people who go to court, rather than settling their feuds through duels. This undermines our criminal justice system.Next round, I will raise one more argument. [1] Timothy Johnson, April 26, 2012, Media Matters, Firearms "Researcher" John Lott Fudges Gun Facts Again, http://mediamatters.org...[2] Zachary Weaver, October 2008, 63 U. Miami L. Rev. 395, Note: Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Law: The Actual Effects and the Need for Clarification, Lexis[3] Henry Pierson Curtis, Orlando Sentinel, June 11, 2006, Gun law triggers at least 13 shootings, http://tinyurl.com...[4] Zachary Weaver, October 2008, 63 U. Miami L. Rev. 395, Note: Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Law: The Actual Effects and the Need for Clarification, Lexis[5] Elizabeth B. Megale, American Journal of Trial Advocacy, Summer 2010, 34 Am. J. Trial Advoc. 105, ARTICLE: Deadly Combinations: How Self-Defense Laws Pairing Immunity with a Presumption of Fear Allow Criminals to "Get Away with Murder", Lexis[6] Jrank, Justification: Self-Defense - Risk To Innocent Bystanders, http://tinyurl.com...