Gun Control Advocates are Severely Misguided

http://www.youtube.com...Firstly, recall that we are arguing that gun control advocates are misguided, and this is indirectly related to their views on the statistics of gun violence. We are not necessarily arguing over the statistics unless gun control advocates believe in a false or misleading conclusion. Just to clarify, the definition of misguided was: Based or acting on error; misledDemonization of Gun OwnersMany gun control advocates demonize gun owners as uncaring that so many people are (supposedly) dying because we have access to firearms. This is seen from the views expressed by Piers Morgan, Alan Derschowitz, and if you simply visit the facebook pages for the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, stop gun violence, the coalition to stop gun violence, and so on. This is completely false, millions of gun owners have children and care about their well-being, they simply believe that firearms (which are properly stored and handled) don't endanger their children and the lack of an armed person does. Whether or not this view is correct is debatable, but nonetheless the assumption that gun owners and the NRA doesn't care about children is acting on an erroneous view of gun owners, which by the definition is misguided. Perhaps not all gun control advocates are misguided in this regard, but even so some of them are. Hemenway and AustraliaNext, your source for David Hemmenway's comment did not yield any results, otherwise much of his work has been criticized by pro-gun experts as being biased as well. Australia is also a difficult case because the total homicide rate and firearms homicide rate were decreasing before and continued to decrease after the 1996 firearms act, and the gun ban does not appear to have accelerated the decrease in their murder rates. Hemenway could be arguing that the inevitable increase didn't happen because gun were banned, and others have argued that no substitution of firearms took effect, but if the total homicides and suicides were already decreasing then it would be hard to determine a rate of substitution. In any case, referencing Australia should be done with extreme care and it is a very, very controversial issue. But what is clear is the fact that, given that the government had to spend 500 million in order to receive questionable benefits, their gun buyback wasn't cost effective. Additionally, gun ownership in Australia was much lower than it is in the US, and therefore it is likely that far fewer people used guns for self-defense. http://www.saf.org...http://www.smh.com.au... (see "Statistics and Gun Laws")http://injuryprevention.bmj.com...Common Sense RebuttalTo bring "common sense" into the gun control debate is extremely counterproductive. You say background checks are common sense, and even how pro-gun expert Gary Kleck supports them. Theoretically they could be beneficial, but the problem with background checks is that just because a criminal doesn't have a gun doesn't mean they won't commit a crime, even if the criminal can't get a gun as a result. Next, we have to consider that the current background check system may actually be counterproductive. Background Check FlawsIt is well known that there are literally millions of gun circulating in the United States. In 2010, 2.1 million applicants were denied access to a firearm because they failed the background check, around 66% of which were due to previous felonies or fugitives of justice. Given the volume of available firearms in the streets and the inability to track straw purchases, these criminals would've only been inconvenienced, but it would not prevent them from getting a gun. How many of the 33% of law abiding citizens desperately needed a gun for self-defense and were denied? Essentially, no criminals were prevented from committing violence or purchasing a gun while some good citizens may have suffered.http://bjs.gov...Country Cross-Sectional AnalysisAlso, I brought up the firearm death rates and homicide rate differences by countries simply as an example as to how gun control advocates are misguided. They often assume that the vast difference in the homicide rates must be due to guns without considering other variables. Even if guns contribute to the total violence in America, given the wealth of other problems America has it is not going to be nearly as significant as they would like. Rather, the summation of my research suggests that guns can amplify or deter violence, but since these are going on simultaneously they tend to even each other out. http://bjs.gov...Gun Violence FallacyMy point of the gun violence fallacy was to show that the assumption that studies that focus solely on reducing gun violence or gun suicides are inherently flawed. Even if the substitution rate for using guns for other means is small, it MUST be statistically shown in the reduction of the TOTAL deaths. And given that millions of Americans use guns for self-defense, and some cases will be such that they would have died or seriously injured had they not had a gun, it becomes even more erroneous to assume less gun deaths means less deaths overall. In other words, if some gun control measure has or will save lives, it must be shown in the reduction in total deaths.Also, I read parts of the gun show loophole study, and nowhere could a section where it focused on total murders or total suicides, thus far ALL of the sources you've provided have focused solely on gun violence. None of them have shown that they found a statistically significant decrease in total homicides or total suicides, and therefore I argue they should be discredited because they fail to account for substitution and effects on self-defensive gun use. Final NotesI too have read quite a few articles on this issue, do not assume I'm uninformed. The fact that you have, thus far, only given sources explaining the effects gun control has on gun violence suggests, and the fact that you are referencing the disproven Kellerman study which concluded that guns are a risk factor for homicide, suggests you haven't studied very many professional, academic studies on this subject.One of the most disproven gun-control studies is the Kellerman study dictating the risk factor of guns in the home. How could you honestly bring that up if you've studied this issue as extensively as you say? http://guncite.com... (the critique of the Kellerman Study)I also mentioned the conceal carry section because it was an interesting read. The academic community overwhelmingly agrees that shall-issue laws have been neither beneficial nor detrimental to the net violent crimes, however virtually all mass killings have occurred within areas where guns are banned. http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us...http://www.nap.edu...To reiterate, I am arguing that gun control advocates are misguided, or that they have erroneous beliefs or are acting in error. The fact that nearly all of them focus exclusively on reducing gun deaths at all costs is acting in error, or that they are misguided. Additionally, I argue that practically all proposed American Gun Control Measures, with the exception of requiring a firearms safety test before buying a gun, will be or have been counterproductive or ineffective in reducing total violence. Lastly, you do not need to read my links. However if you do not you have to assume what I'm saying is true