Gun control works

Introduction My opponent has made it clear in his round 1 introduction he was planning on advocating for a complete gun ban with the exception of the government's right to own guns. He has failed to really connect his case study of a partial ban to one with full ban for private citizens. I'm going to offer my own arguments using some stats from Australia and than in the next round show the flaws in my opponents statistics. Australian Gun Restrictions Ineffective The Australian Bureau of Criminology and out 5 years after the gun restrictions my opponent mentions and has acknowledged that there is no correlation between the gun laws and the number of gun related crimes. http://www.ncpa.org... Since the 1980's gun crimes have been on a downward curve in Australia. http://www.aic.gov.au... These trends continued at the same pace even after the gun laws in Australia were enacted. So unsurprisingly when stricter gun laws were enforced, the trend continued at the same pace.the restriction of guns really shouldn't be associated with a lot of the stats my opponent brought up. These stats are just part of the same downward curve that we've been seeing since the 1980s. Just for comparison let's take a look at how Australia's crime rates compare to America's after these strict gun laws. "Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America's rate dropped 31.7 percent." "At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent." "Australian women are now raped over three times as often as American women." These quotes were taken from the following sources; http://www.ncpa.org... http://www.freerepublic.com... Violent Crimes My opponent points out many interesting facts. Things such as a reduction in guns leads to a reduction in gun crimes. Or he'll point out that a reduction in gun ownership reduces suicide by gun. That's very interesting and those results are obviously going to occur even to pro gun advocates. These stats are also irrelevant and fail to give the big picture. What should also be obvious is the following facts. When bad people know that an old lady or a fragile female doesn't have a gun on them, they are more likely to victimize them. There are bad people out there and they like crimes of opportunity. This is not me just theorizing either. The stats back this up. Since the stricter gun laws, sexual assault has risen about 30% and the violent crime rate has risen over 40%. Robberies have went up by about 6%. http://www.ncpa.org... http://www.freerepublic.com... There was a reduction of gun crimes, but that misses the bigger picture. Was stricter gun laws effective in reducing crime rates, and the answer is no. Suicide These gun laws get a lot of credit for reducing the rate of gun related suicides as well. Upon a closer examination, you can see that the rate of hanging suicides increased at the same rate that gun suicides decreased. (Baker, Jeanine; McPhedran, Samara (18 October 2006). http://m.bjc.oxfordjournals.org... (The link requires a small purchase to see the full document). Mass Murders McPhedren and Baker did a study that compared the mass murder rates with New Zealand and Australia. The 2 nations have a very similar socio economic status, but New Zealand has a looser approach to gun regulation. Despite the different approaches to gun laws and the similarity of the 2 countries both have had no mass shootings since 1997. It's pretty clear here that another force is in play concerning the reduction in mass shootings of both countries. http://papers.ssrn.com... Conclusion I'd like to apologize to my opponent for waiting until the last minute to post my argument and kinda rushing through it. I will focus on rebuttals in the next round. My opponent even without the rebuttals hasn't shown that Australia's gun laws have a significant impact on crime and he hasn't shown how gun restriction being effective, would mean an outright gun ban for private citizens would be beneficial in any way.