Gun Rights

I will argue that civilians should not be allowed to own firearms (i.e. have gun rights) from the utilitarian perspective-- if allowing people to own them causes a net negative effect on society, then gun rights should be abolished. Since this is a rather widely-accepted notion, I will only further justify this framework if Pro chooses to contest it. I have two contentions...C1) A ban on guns would reduce homicide ratesThe most obvious positive impact that a gun ban would have is a decrease in homicide rates. This is rather intuitive-- if we take away weapons which make committing homicide easier, then homicide rates will inevitably decrease. Gun rights activists claim that even if guns were removed from society, violent crime would still continue at rates which are close to current rates (i.e. "guns don't kill people, people kill people"), but this is patently false-- if it were true, then cities with lower rates of gun availability would have very similar homicide rates to cities with higher rates of gun availability, yet no such trend exists. Instead, there is a clear upwards correlation between gun availability and homicide rates, as demonstrated by a large number of studies conducted by reputable research institutions:"We analyzed the relationship between homicide and gun availability using data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s. We found that across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides. These results often hold even when the United States is excluded." [1]"Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide." [1]"Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003. We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide." [1]"Access to firearms yields a more than five-fold increase in risk of intimate partner homicide when considering other factors of abuse, according to a recent study, suggesting that abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners." [2]There is no denying it-- the prevalence of guns has a direct relationship with higher homicide rates. Guns simply facilitate killings that wouldn't typically happen without their presence. Such weapons were specifically designed to efficiently inflict fatal injuries-- due to their ease of use, versatility, long range, and other deadly features, guns by their very nature make murder *much* easier to commit; their mere presence in a tense setting can allow for what normally would have been a heated argument or fist fight to turn into a homicide. This combination of reliable statistics, observations, and reasoning leaves almost no doubt that a ban on civilian firearm ownership would lower homicide rates. C2) Gun rights are unnecessaryThe most common rationalization for gun rights is that people need them for self-defense. This is false for two reasons...1. People are generally incapable of effectively using guns for self-defense. According to studies conducted by the Violence Policy Center, there are a number of practical issues that make it nearly impossible for a civilian to ever effectively use a gun for self-defense. The vast majority of civilians are not well-trained enough to safely handle a gun even in ideal conditions (i.e. an enclosed shooting range); in an actually-dangerous situation, there are "extreme physiological and psychological effects that the experts, many of whom have on-the-street law enforcement experience with firearms, agree inevitably occur in an armed life-or-death confrontation (the only situation in which lethal force is justified in self-defense)," [3]. To suggest that the average civilian could actually successfully utilize a firearm for self-defense where it actually counts is absurd. There is no way that whatever minimal 'benefits' that could come from the self-defense aspect of civilian firearm ownership actually outweigh the increased homicide rates caused by it. And it shows-- "in 1998, for every time that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 51 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone." [3].2. Even assuming that people were able to use guns for self-defense, it wouldn't matter because a gun ban would take away guns from civilians and criminals alike (i.e. mostly everyone who could possibly pose the threat of homicide). It is simply due to a matter of economics. The vast majority of guns owned by criminals originate from legal producers [4], so if a gun ban were to cause those legal producers to cease in their production of guns, it would suddenly make it much more difficult for criminals to obtain guns. They would be forced to resort to much slower and more expensive methods. The fact that criminal gun ownership would inadvertently decrease with a gun ban, combined with the fact that most civilians wouldn't be able to use guns to ward off criminals anyways, renders the self-defense argument for gun rights to be completely refuted. ________________________________________________________________________________________It has been established that gun rights are a net-detriment to society, and should thus be abolished. [1] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu...[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[3] http://www.vpc.org...[4] http://www.pbs.org...