We Should Have Stricter Gun Control

While her contentions are coherent with the right goal in mind (we both presume that decreasing crime and preserving human life and welfare are desirable ends), her arguments often sidestep important facts that may have been blurred along the way. She uses a point about statistical differences in conjunction with stricter gun control laws, but she forgets that there is a degree of interpretation that is involved in statistics -- we shouldn't readily accept it's consequences at face value. I will respond accordingly to the numbered format she has supplied, for the sake of clarity and convenience: ==================== Argument #1: Stricter gun control laws do not reduce crime. ==================== You argument here relies on statistics, and this is where my first criticism arrives. Statistical evidence can be incredibly annoying given that many arguments which use it do so in the lens of correlation, as is what happens in statistics. As you should know, the problem with relying on correlation is that there are often many variables that can be unknown or failed to be calculated, thus skewing one's understanding of the casual chains behind a certain statistical conclusion. This is how we can have different statistical evidence: I can reference you to a paper that demonstrates a high percentage of deaths in America was via guns[1] and that there is a strong correlation between gun-ownership and gun-homicide[2]. We should move out of this muck - such a debate about statistics would be obtusely long and complicated to the point of unbearable technicalities. I propose that instead of simply throwing statistics back and forth, we should examine the main claim here - that stricter gun control will not reduce crime (or it can even increase crime) and extrapolate a plausible reason for this. In other words, we should ask ourselves WHY stricter gun control won't at the very least help lower the crime rate. Allow me to break it down: You state that "stricter gun laws will either have no impact on crime rates, or it will have a negative impact on crime rates. " If so, then you should have some psychological or sociological justification for this claim; in other words, I want you to demonstrate to me how having a stricter regulation on guns will have no impact on crime rates. I propose that even a simple folk psychology thought experiment can expose the failure of such a claim. The basic question of how crimes come about is simple. There exists a group of people who desire something illegal (drugs), or desire something in an illegal fashion (rape). Given that they have a motivation for desiring whatever it is they desire, the more power they have the easier it is to get it. Guns greatly aid the criminal in obtaining what they want, and thus it would seem to be a simple task to conclude that thus more criminals will succeed in their actions and thus the crime rate will go up. Do note that I use crime rate in comparison to previous amounts of violence - if a state has an overall increase in criminal activity but at the same time employed an effective police force, we wouldn't say such a state was getting more peaceful. Rather, it was the presence of a police force that curbs the statistics, thus giving the charming but false presentation that the state's crime rate is lowering. ==================== Argument #2: Guns save lives. ==================== This is an fact that I have no motivation to deny. What I will complain is that this argument neglects the very fact that my position for having stricter gun control laws does not negate such a demand for innocent people to have guns in self-defense. The stricter gun control laws are aimed at diffusing crime rate by making it much harder for criminals to obtain it. After all, isn't it common sense that the more powerful weapon you have the easier it is for you to commit a crime (if you desired as such)? If one is a law-abiding citizen then he should have no problem purchasing a gun to defend himself. Therefore, your point about rape victims and whatnot is moot; in no way does my position entail the denial of self-defense via gun ownership. ==================== Argument #3: Guns are a form of liberty. ==================== Going along with the same motif in my previous argument, I will reverberate that my position does not deny the law-abiding citizen to own guns for self-defense, hunting, etc. Therefore, I see no need in refuting this point given that the main purpose of gun control laws is to decrease crime rates by making it harder for criminals to accomplish their tasks. ==================== Conclusion ==================== It would seem patently obvious to me that the only real avenue my opponent has left is to provide a satisfactory rationale for the claim that stricter gun control laws would, at the very least, have no significant impact on crime rates. As I proposed before, it is both more efficient and important to examine the psychological rationale of such a claim. I have proposed that such a claim is absurd - it is demonstrably simple to realize that if a criminal wants to obtain X, and he has the power to do so, he will likely do it (unless something else subjugates his motivation). By having a gun the criminal has more power and thus a greater chance of achieving his goals, which entails a crime. ---References--- 1. . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2. . http://www.unicri.it...