Gun control is good.

Complete gun-ban it is. I will state for the record that I don't actually support a complete ban of guns in the slightest, but for the purposes of this debate will continue to argue as though I do. Moving on! So to rebut your first point, I have to stop and ask if you're looking at what you're writing. Fort Hood was a FORT, an active one, with trained military personelle and guns in ample supply. That shooting very much makes my point that a shooter who has the drop on those he is shooting isn't particularly more threatened by an armed populace than an unarmed one. Fort Hood is a point for my side, not yours. It's true we don't technically know exactly how many criminals are repelled by the mere thought of guns, and for all we both know, that number could be very high indeed. But here's the problem with that: in order for us to assume that guns are deterring all sorts of crime, we have to assume that without guns, Crime rates in the US would be many many times higher than in other countries. We already have a crime rate that is just as bad as some developed nations, and worse than others. If guns are deterring anything, we're just a uniquely bad high-criminal population, and I, personally, refuse to believe that. But you know what crimes we DEFINITELY experience more of despite the presence of guns? Mass shootings. We lead the world in mass shootings many many times over, and have the least gun-control over any of these other countries. If guns deterred mass shootings, we'd have less of them, not more. Now to the brand new constitutional argument you introduce, I have this to say: I'm sick and tired of gun advocates taking this split-logic approach to the presense of guns in America. Think about it: If the lives we lose to guns every year are a noble sacrifice we make in the name of preserving our freedoms in the long run, that's fine, we can make that choice as a nation, just as we choose to keep cars despite the fact that they kill so many (though less than they would kill if unregulated, just as guns would kill less if they were regulated, but I digress) every year. Then, out of the other side of your mouth, you argue that guns are actually SAVING lives and we're not sacrificing anything at all. Which is it? Are guns a noble freedom-preserving sacrifice or something that serves public safety? While I realize this may seem like a false choice in practice, I'd like you to consider that for the purposes of this argument, if guns are saving lives who cares whether or not they somehow also keep tyranny at bay? And, if they aren't saving lives, how free are you if you're dead. We're just trading some supposed amount of all of our freedoms to take freedom completely away from tens of thousands of people every year. As to Hitler and the Taliban, I always love it when people bring these things up. Starting with Hitler, I could point out that he actually spent almost no time officially banning or taking away guns, and that Germany was not that abbundantly armed a populace prior to his seizing of political power, but for the sake of argument, let's say it happened your way. People had guns. Hitler sent armed forces to people's homes to collect those guns. People, when weighing the choice between having firefights which they would have lost against trained soldiers and losing their lives and surrending their arms, chose to surrender their arms instead. That's the reasonable human response. We're losing all these lives to gun violence every year, yet if we ever go truly facist, the fact that we've held onto those weapons aren't going to prevent a slow disarming of the populace backed by greater force than the populace can muster. Unlike the revolutionary war, the enemy would be right here on American soil, well backed up by bombs, chemical weapons, nuclear missiles, and death machines capable of crushing a civillian population from the land, sea, and air, all this to say nothing of drones. Do you really think your .38 Special or .356 Magnum is going to take down a tank or stealth bomber? You'll surrender your weapons if it comes to that, or you'll die, and then all the time we spent hoarding them during non-facist peace time will have ultimately resulted in totally unnecesary, tragic, pointlessly lost lives. And how about that Taliban? Afghanistan was and is saturated in guns, most of them held not by Taliban but by the civillian populace. Said guns did not prevent Tyrany at all did they? I'm going to close this round on something that caught my eye today. If you follow the logic of "Guns don't kill people, people do" Then "Cigarettes don't kill people, cancer does." Pretending that we would have the same number of casualties from guns or worse if they were banned is complete folly. We have hundreds of other countries to examine who vary in size, the presense of guns, crime, diversity, and everything else, yet our hands-off approach to guns has cost too many lives for too long. And if you address no other argument I've made in your final round, address this: Other countries have both freedom, regulated or banned guns, and low murder rates. If they can accomplish this, why can't we? Are we just worse people? I think not.