Mental health evaluations should be required in order to buy a firearm

Thank you again for your response! Arguments 1. Justification of Self Ownership Thank you for clarifying. Now that I understand your point, I agree and have no rebuttal. 2. Justification of Property Rights Suppose someone chose to trade cigarettes to a 10 year-old. Theoretically you could make your argument, but it would be kind of silly. It's the same way with guns, but guns are even more dangerous, so it would make sense that we should have some requirements for gun ownership as well as cigarette ownership. As we can see from most shootings, an age limit would be ineffective, but a mental health limit would. Likewise, it would be like a soldier trading a machine gun to a civilian. It would be downright dangerous. 3. Restricting the Trade of Guns Terribly sorry, but I seem to have addressed this point in the previous argument. I hope that you will understand, as they are inherently interrelated. 4. Mental Illness Cannot be Defined Objectively I agree that there are many ways to define mental illness, but if they are looking for specific criteria, I couldn't imagine it being too difficult. There could even be psychologists whose sole job is to examine the criteria laid down in order to get a gun. I think this a case of it being made more complicated than it is. 5. Private Alternatives To directly quote my opponent, "a free market won't just hand out guns to every crazy who comes and asks for one." As I've mentioned many times throughout this debate, Jared Loughner, Nidal Hasan, and Seung-Hui Cho all purchased their guns legally. I sure hope that we can agree that they are all crazy. So maybe not every crazy person is getting a gun, but these ones did, and as a result of just those three people having guns, 52 people were killed and 69 injured[1][2][3]. This is not something that we can leave to capitalism. I love capitalism when it works, but pure laissez-faire does not work by itself, and that's what we have the government for. And I think you misunderstood my slavery reference, so I will attempt to explain it. Basically, you were arguing that businesses would be ethical without government intervention. I used slavery as an example of when businesses were not ethical without government intervention. 6. Preventing Gun Violence is Impossible I will admit that I must have misunderstood you when I wrote my three sentence "rant" in which I happened to mention spying once as slight hyperbole, but I feel as though I was justified in assuming that you meant government security. You see, you have an extremely idealistic view of the free market. But what you have to understand is that the free market allows choice, and security can be really expensive. As a result, many places forgo the security such as the campus of VA Tech, or perhaps a Safeway parking lot. Government security is much more effective, but as I said earlier, it could lead to a police state or something of the like. The only way to truly prevent gun violence is to attack the root of the problem. Now, your rebuttal of my burden of proof argument is almost silly. You said, "Reducing gun violence is not a goal in itself, the real question is whether the policy is just and will improve society." Now, technically, yes, that is my proposition. However, I was under the pretense that it was a given that reducing gun violence would improve society. If you would like to argue that reducing gun violence would, in fact, not improve society, by all means, be my guest. As for the nuke comment, that is an excellent point, and I'm glad you brought it up. If everyone could get their hands on a nuke, this country would be utter chaos and we probably would all be dead within a few weeks at most. That's why we regulate nukes. This is not the free market saying that they want to be responsible. This is the law saying that civilians can't have nukes. Likewise, if we didn't give guns to people who it would be unsafe to give guns to, there would be less gun violence. Finally, the last point you made was, "I'm going to focus on actual outcomes instead of statistics." Well, I would hope you would, because then you might realize that a whole bunch of people died at VA Tech, Ft. Hood, and Tucson. That's an actual outcome of what happens when this doesn't exist. Now seems a good time to take a step back and take a look at what is practical. My opponent put forth some very idealistic ideas that, though honorable, are simply not practical. As great as it would be if the free market would do all of that, that's putting a lot of trust in a whole lot of different organizations. That provides a tremendous amount of uncertainty. When there are lives at stake, that sort of uncertainty is exactly what needs to be reduced. Perhaps it would be effective if it was implemented along with my program, but by itself, it just relies on too much that we can't control as a whole. It's just not practical. I won't pretend that my arguments are as loquacious, eloquent, or verbose as those of my opponent, but mine are practical. Practicality is key when lives are at stake. Even for a strong libertarian, one should understand that the government does keep people safe. That's why we have speed limits and that's why you can't buy a nuke. Why, then, should they not be able to regulate the sale of guns in order to save lives? I see no downside, and with that, I rest my case. Thank you to my opponent, and best of luck! 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org...