Tournament Debate: Gun Rights

RegulationFirstly, I would like to point out that I never said we should ban 3D printing, all I said was that we should regulate who owns them so that it wouldn't be possible for criminals to mass-produce 3D printed firearms. Again, this isn't 'extreme authoritarianism'.Of course someone could make their own 3D printer, but remember that these are highly sophisticated industrial robots that would require an immense amount of skill and technology to build.The logic is fallacious anyhow, to use an analogy; people can build nuclear bombs (if they knew how/had the materials), yet it is a non-sequitur that we should therefore not regulate who owns nuclear bombs.My opponent goes on to cite the case of the 2011 Utoya Massacre, but he forgets all the massacres that have been allowed to happen because of a lack of gun control. Out of all the massacres in the USA since 1982, the vast majority of the time the perpetrator has obtained their gun legally (1). It stands to reason that if gun control was increased, then less potential murderers would be able to obtain guns and hence there would be less gun massacres.Purpose of gunsCon is confusing what a gun is made for and what a gun should be used for. A bomb is made to be blown up, but that does not mean that we should blow it up. Most people accept that a gun shouldn't be used to kill people, but that does not escape the fact that this is the primary purpose of guns, it is what they are made for. Anyone can see this by examining the development of firearms since medieval China.I agree that guns can be used for different purposes, and if that is the case then there is nothing stopping them from obtaining a gun license. Gun control promotes the usage of licensing, and if one doesn't plan to use their gun dangerously, then there should be nothing stopping them from obtaining a license for it.CorruptionMy opponent states that:'a Government that is able to assert total control over its populace will "stick" (that is, remain in power) indefinitely, for billions of years and possibly until the end of time itself'Which is evidently incorrect. The USSR was one of the most authoritarian states the world has ever seen, yet that did not 'stick'.The reason for this is that other governments would seek to step in and end the authoritarianism, either indirectly or directly, so the chances of the USA becoming totally authoritarian and remaining so indefinitely are minuscule, considering pretty much the whole rest of the world would object to it.It is farcical to prevent life-saving regulation now in order to plan for what will happen millennia in the future. We have no idea what the world will be like in 100 years and so it is foolhardy to pretend that we do.Finally, Pro ends by saying:'A sufficiently moral populace will mean a "good" majority that will be able to keep the bad apple members of the populace in check. An armed populace enforces justice; a good majority will be protected by its power which it has through weaponry. A bad majority will destroy itself, and rightfully so.'Yet this calls to mind the fact that US society has had effectively no gun control for 200+ years and there is still plenty of crime and 'bad apples' within society. It is clear that gun ownership of the moral majority does nothing to prevent the acts of the immoral minority, otherwise US society would be a veritable paradise which it certainly is not.Ultimately, these fallacies arise when people attempt to categorise people into the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys', despite it rarely being as simple as that. I would like to thank my opponent for this debate, I have enjoyed it a lot and I hope he has too :) (1) http://www.washingtonpost.com...