The United States Ought to Ban Firearms

Americans use guns for self defenseCon starts off by bringing up the self defense argument. Con brings up statistics to show how many times that a gun was used for self-defense purposes. The *amount* of times guns were used in self defense is irrelevant; what *is* relevant is whether having a gun increases the owner's safety or not. Even if guns are used in self-defense successfully many times, as long as *on balance* possessing a gun causes more deaths than it saves in self defense, this argument is negated upon weighing analysis. A study done in Philadelphia had two groups: one who possessed firearms and one who did not. At the end of the study, those who owned firearms were 4.5 times more likely to be shot than those who did not own firearms [1]. Thus, Con's reasoning that owning a firearm brings safety to the owner via self defense is negated by the fact that it makes them *more* likely to fall victim to violence. Gun bans in the past have been followed by increased crimeCon gives examples of crime and violence rates in places when there is a firearm ban and when there isn't. The examples show an increase or crime when there is a firearm ban, and a decrease of crime when there isn't. The problem with this is that the evidence merely proves correlation, and not causation. The only evidence that is relevant in this debate is causation, as whether guns *cause* an increase or decrease in crime is the question. The evidence that Con gives does not isolate gun bans as the cause of the change in crime. This rise and fall of crime could just as easily be do to how much law enforcement gets payed, the effectiveness of law enforcement, education level, culture, population density, urbanization degree, religious characteristics, policies of the criminal justice system, youth concentration, modes of transportation, poverty levels, environment, organized crime, tourism, job availability, recent immigration/migration, percentage of drug use, prison release rates, and two thousand other factors. Con doesn't prove that the evidence is a result of a gun ban and not the two thousand other factors that would affect a crime rate. Con just doesn't prove anything here. Hurts the economyAlthough the banning of guns would lead to unemployment for many people, which would lead to economic repercussions, the highest value in this debate is lives. Even the prevention of a few hundred deaths would alone outweigh the economic harms. So although this is true, the impact is miniscule compared to the impacts of lives saved. But more interestingly, the social cost of firearms is fairly high. Through homicides, accidents, and various other harms, it is estimated that firearms cost society (at the most conservative estimate) $600 per household [3]. Considering that there are 124.6 million households in the US [4], firearms cost society around $74,760,000,000 or $74 billion dollars. This obviously outweighs the $6 billion dollars that Con brought up. And my statistic is still the most conservative amount, the highest being $1,800 per household. Which is would be three times the amount of money, but I don't need to get into that since $74 billion is enough to negate this argument. Will create a bigger black market for gunsCon argues that only law abiding citizens will be deprived of their firearms, whilst criminals will still have them since criminals don"t obey laws. This will then create a black market for firearms, thus increasing crime and violence. The problem with this, and the difference between the banning of alcohol and the banning of firearms, is that firearms have to be manufactured in a factory, or at least in large quantities. Banning firearms would entail manufacturing firearms illegal, and thus the supply of firearms would, in essence, end. Thus, criminals are only left with the weapons that are already in the system, and as these start to dwindle the value of them will rise, resulting in extremely high prices for firearms, which has been shown to happen in research [2]. And since the majority of criminals are poor, they simply can't afford to pay for the firearms, or at the very least are deterred from acquiring them. Instead they will use what is available, knives and clubs, of which is much less effective at carrying out crime than a firearm. If anything, the banning of firearms only helps end the already existing black market on firearms, but it definitely does not cause or expand the black market. Simply undemocratic, and leads to a police stateCon argues that most Americans are against an all out ban, thus it is unlikely that most citizens would comply with a forced ban. The problem with this is that, logically speaking, most people are law-abiding citizens. Thus, most people will abide by the law. Regardless, arguments like these shouldn't be brought up in the debate because this debate is meant to discuss more of the concept of a firearm ban. Saying that most people don't agree with it isn't exactly relevant, and not what we should be debating. Otherwise, I could just bring up statistics about most people disagree with abortion, thus we ought to make abortion illegal. If this would be allowed to be a valid argument, then there would be no point to debating the specifics of what makes abortion good or bad, or even knowing what abortion is in the first place. Arguments like these just aren't what we should be discussing. Con's second argument, that a gun ban would have to go through the judicial system is entirely irrelevant because it is an argument based on whether a gun ban *would* happen, rather than whether a gun ban *should* happen. And this also goes back to my previous point, its just not valid conduct wise to throw out unpopular views on the basis that they are unpopular views and would never happen, as this isn't indicative of whether it is a *good* policy or not, or *should* be implemented. Ruins the entire point of debate. Anyways, that's all I've got. Peace and Love[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[2] http://home.uchicago.edu...[3] http://home.uchicago.edu...[4] http://www.statista.com...