Gun Control Advocates are Severely Misguided

. http://www.youtube.com...http://www.youtube.com...Demonizing Pro-Gun AdvocatesObviously I cannot claim that all Gun Control Advocates hold the same beliefs, nonetheless my experience in debating with them as well as the ones I've seen in the news tend to be misguided. For an example of the demonizing of gun owners by several prominent gun control advocates, please watch the above youtube videos. I have also witnessed this on gun-control facebook pages, where the blame for tragedies such as Newtown are often placed on the NRA. In "Dershowitz: NRA Are Buying Their Facts - Piers Morgan Tonight" please watch the whole thing or skip to 2:10 where he talks about how gun owners don't care about the lives of our children. In "Heated Debate - "You're An Unbelievably STUPID Man Aren't You! " Piers Mo. .. " Please watch the whole thing or skip to 6:30 where Piers Morgan claims that Larry Pratt doesn't care about children. The "Common Sense" fallacyNext, my opponent as well as nearly all gun control proponents love to use the term "common sense" to promote gun control legislation. This is one very common and massive fallacy on their part. The gun control debate is heavily embedded in statistics. I am currently going to school for statistics, and if you talk to ANY professional statistician, they will tell you that you cannot rely on "common sense" or "gut feeling" when interpreting data. The idea that gun control is "common sense" is blatantly false. Determining the positive or negative effects of gun control measure is EXTREMELY difficult and complex, and drawing immediate conclusions without critical review is almost always counterproductive. An example of this "common sense" fallacy is comparing the murder and crime rates of the United States against other developed countries such as Britain and Australia. At first glance, Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan and other practically gun free nations have far lower murder rates and the immediate conclusion is that guns in America are what causes us to be so violent. Drawing causation from correlation is a difficult and tedious, and this conclusion is made far too quickly. Before simply conlcuding that guns increased the murder rate in America, we must consider other well-known variables that contribute to violence in a country, such as black-market drug trades and higher wealth inequalities. For example, according to the United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime, the central United States consumes more cocaine than all of Europe, and the wealth inequality in America is about twice that of most developed European Countries. To simply assume correlation without factoring in additional variables is misleading and ignorant. . http://www.unodc.org... (displays murders and murder rates between countries). http://www.dailyfinance.com... (Displays wealth inequalities across the globe). . http://www.unodc.org... (displays drug trafficking by route and approximate quantity). Gun Violence FallacyNext, the improper fixation gun-control proponents have on preventing gun violence. My opponent has proposed several sources displaying how more guns leads to more gun violence and death. I should note that both the Atlantic as well as the Violence Policy Center (ESPECIALLY vpc. org) are extremely anti-gun, and therefore caution should be used before claiming the studies they propose have merit. But more importantly, even if their studies are accurate I believe they should be immediately dismissed because they focus only on gun violence and not net violence. Please pay extra attention to the upcoming arguments, because they are absolutely critical to my position. Our ultimate goals should be to reduce as much suffering in the world as we possibly can. This includes reducing the TOTAL people killed, total rapes, total assaults, total robberies, total suicides, and total accidents. This means if we have to promote gun violence to reduce overall violence, I argue we should promote gun violence. Whether this is the case or not is actually quite controversial. When addressing the effectiveness of gun control measures, it is quite literally cherry picking to only pay attention to gun related violence. Reducing gun violence does not immediately gaurantee that we reduced the net violence. Americans very commonly use guns for self-defense, and we must factor in criminal substitution for other methods of violence. Therefore in order to prove that any given gun control measure had any positive effects on reducing violence, gun-control advocates must show a statistically significant decrease in accidental death rates, suicide rates, and violent crime rates after factoring in additional variables that may have affected each statistic. Granted very few people bother to read the statistical analysis of this topic, nor are they likely to understand them, however the universal focus on reducing gun violence could be and has been counterproductive to reducing the net suffering. This is why the National Academy of Sciences mainly concluded that most gun control proposals (as well as right to carry laws) have had little to no effects positive effects on crime and suicide rates. . http://www.nap.edu... I haven't read the entire above source, however they have ultimately concluded that the Assault Weapons Ban, Background Checks, Gun Buybacks, and even child protection programs have had virtually no effect on reducing violence or suicide rates. They also have some information regarding right to carry laws if anyone is interested.