Effective gun control is a good thing.

First of all, in regards to your statistics regarding the violent crime of the UK and the USA, I found a few problems: 1: Those statistics are from 2009. Our VC rate has decreased with the advent of the Violent Crime Reduction Act of October 2006 [0] and is thus lower now. The USA’s have increased. [1] The VCRA was, in part, gun control [2]. Maybes that is proof enough that gun control does reduce violent gun crime. 2: They show figures for violent crime. Not gun crime. They show rape, knife crime, bar fights and even fist fights. They are, thus, totally irrelevant to the debate. 3: You were wrong. The stats don’t take into account the population difference. With the figures provided there, the UK had 120000 violent crimes, the USA had 138000. (I realise mine were from 2010, but as I already explained, the UK’s crime rates have gone down and the USA’s have gone up. Had I found any more recent stats, it would have looked worse on America’s part. ) Secondly, my opponent’s attempt to refute my stats that show how states with more gun control average 43% less gun crime, was, well… odd. “Indeed, a certain degree of what's called "gun control" is called for, and what degree is up for debate. But Pro's position is complete prohibition. ” First off he concedes that gun control is needed to lower gun crime, yet he then implies either that more gun control will not result in even less gun crime, or that it will and that this is a bad thing. See? Odd. It seems to me that a large portion of my opponent’s argument was made up of the fact that my usage of gun terminology was slightly off. Apparently assault rifles are not the same as assault weapons. I did not know this. But pointing that out is pedantic, unnecessary and adds little more than a small measure of technical clarity to the debate. I hope that anyone reading this knows what I mean when I use the terms machine gun and assault weapon synonymously. I am well aware of the laws surrounding them; however I was not aware that such jargon would make a difference in this debate. On a related note, opp claims that assault weapons are not legal and “have been completely prohibited for civilian purchase since 1934. ” NOT TRUE. The law that banned them was terminated in 2004 and are now legal again. When that happened, gun crime rates jumped 1000 and have been on the rise since. Maybes read the whole Wikipedia article before citing it. [3] To move on to my musket analogy, this was used with the sole purpose of displaying how much the America of 2013 and the America of the late 1700s differ. Muskets may well be illegal now, but that doesn’t change the fact that had Adam Lanza had one, like the forefathers agree was a right, he would have killed maybes 1 person, if that, before someone hit him over the head with a chair while he was reloading it. I'm sure it wasn't the forefather's intent to give everyone an killing machine. The weapons available to the public today are killing machines. They felt they were experiencing a government collapse. Not an apocalypse. They don’t take 5 minuets to reload, they can kill over 2,000 people in 5 minuets. [4] When I said you can have a musket I didn’t mean it literally. Obviously. I was showing that the kind of abuse that this clause of the constitution experiences every day, 30000 [3] people a year die in America alone. The guns legalised by the 2nd amendment have changed so much that it can’t be taken so liberally as a right in this day and age. It causes too many deaths for it to be a human right. The forefathers wouldn’t support the weapons sold to civilians today. They’re not used to protect people, they’re used to kill thousands of people. Frankly I would love a world with no guns, but that would be a boring debate. The first school shooting in America was actually in 1891, March 30th. [5] (If you count a school shooting as 1 or more men entering a school and firing at students and teachers with the intent to kill without prior reason to do so. For example, only trying to kill one specific individual while coincidentally in a school does not qualify) The one you were referring to was actually done with tomahawks. [6] Gun’s can’t be trusted in the hands of untrained, unqualified citizens. At the moment you may need a sidearm while in areas like Compton, that’s perfectly reasonable, but with gun rights abolished, and more pressure put on illegal trade of guns, you won’t need a gun to defend yourself. Because 99 times out of 100, the person attacking you will not have a gun. The right of the state To move onto another point. My opponent questioned why the state should have a right above the people. The bottom line is, because they can be trusted. You say “I don’t trust the Government. ” Why? Have the police ever raped your family? Have the secret police ever shot someone you love for speaking out? Have you ever been robbed by the Military because they felt like it? Has Homeland security recently shook you down for money for their latest drug and terrorist exploits? I agree with you wholeheartedly on the miss-usage of police force site you referenced. I would convict those officers as much as the next man, but those are select circumstances. I realize it happens quite often, but more often than not, it doesn’t happen. The state is the reason you’re still alive. They have a genuine need for firearms to keep peace, enforce the law and keep citizens safe. What I’m working for is a society in which, as there are no legal civilian guns, and far less illegal guns, you have a massively lower chance of being shot. The logistics of this are not what we are arguing about, the police and the military need firearms to keep pressure on guns and to keep you safe. What good reason do you have for owning an AK? Vigilantly justice? That’s why the state should have arms and not the people. Because people having guns sees murders and gun crime in the tens of thousands. The state uses guns to reduce those numbers and keep pressure on criminal activity. Would you prefer that justice be taken into the hands of thepeople? I sincerely hope not. (If Adam Lanza had murdered a police officer, he would have got a pistol, that’s eight rounds. That is if he can kill an armed police officer while unarmed. I don’t see any logic in this argument) It seems to me that the people campaigning for guns today have no idea. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun…” [7] Or maybes, you don’t give that bad guy a gun in the first place? An all around more sensible solution that eliminates the need for any deaths whatsoever. All of my arguments about the constitutions age are with merit, and figures. They could not be applied to any of the rights in the constitution because the abuse of the others generally doesn’t lead to death on massive scales. And finally, capitalism hasn’t changed that much over the past 90 years. It has though over 200 years. Con has thus far failed to provide any well cited (most are horribly sourced) or well analysed arguments to combat my own. He has however, been a pedant in picking apart my terminology and analogies, and in doing so, has actually wrongly "corrected "me. To conclude, people having guns ends lives, the state having guns saves them (usually). It therefore makes sense to prohibit civilian fire arms does it not? Sources: [0] = . http://www.gunpolicy.org... [1] = . http://www.gunpolicy.org... [2] = . http://www.legislation.gov.uk... [3] = . http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] = . http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] = . http://en.wikipedia.org... [6] = . http://www.greencastlemuseum.org... [7] = . http://www.guardian.co.uk...