In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned.

Hi Edward, thank you for your introduction. I am now going to lay out my points as the proposition side of this debate. P1: The contradiction of handgun self-defense. A study mentioned by Michael McLaughlin of The Huffington Post found that civilians rarely use guns to protect themselves, and that intended victims of property crimes engaged in self protective behavior with a firearm only 0.1% of the times they were targeted by a criminal. Handguns are often thought of as the prime self-defense tool, offering a quick way to fend off a criminal. However, this is simply untrue, in fact, not owning a handgun is safer than owning one. "Gun safety studies have found that a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a family homicide, suicide or accident than to be used in self-defense." (NYT, 12/12/15) Handgun self-defense has no basis in fact, and we will further explain these handgun deaths in our next contentions. P2: Murder. Handguns were used in 55.6% of the more than 110,000 homicides from 1990 to 1997, more than all other weapons combined in that period. If this seems outdated, look to 2012, where handguns in the United States assisted people in murdering about as many people as all of the other weapons combined, according to the FBI. On average, if someone is shot and killed, it will 4 out of 5 times be handguns. Other countries, because of their strict gun laws on handguns, have much, much less handgun death. The U.S. has over 10,000 gun homicides, compared to Canada"s less than 200, Germany, Italy, and France"s less than 100, and Japan"s less than 50. Judge, I don"t think we need to explain how homicide is bad, but we can tell you this: banning handguns will lower the homicide rate dramatically. P3: Suicide. Subpoint A - Handguns make suicide easy. The deadly link between handgun ownership and suicide was decisively established in a 1999 study of California handgun purchasers showing that the suicide rate during the first week after the purchase of a handgun is 57 times higher than for the population as a whole. During the first year after purchase, suicide remained the leading cause of death among handgun purchasers. 6 out of 10 times suicides are committed with a handgun, and in fact, handguns are used twice as often as shotguns and rifles for suicide, according to the Violence Policy Center. People living in households containing handguns are nearly five times as likely to commit suicide compared to households not containing handguns. This happens because guns make suicide too easy. Public health experts say ready access to firearms makes it easier for people to act on suicidal thoughts. And about 85 percent of suicide attempts that involve guns are successful, compared with less than 3 percent of those involving drug overdoses. Over all, guns were used in about half of the 41,000 suicides in 2013. (New York Times, 12/14/15) Subpoint B - Banning handguns won"t make people flock to other methods. No, Judge, people won"t try to commit suicide in other ways and flock to other weapons. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that people who are determined to end their lives will find a way to do so, 90 percent of people who survive suicide attempts do not eventually die by suicide. (NYT 12/14/15) Judge, we can"t fix this suicide problem by simply restricting handgun use, putting background checks, or not doing anything at all - the only solution we have is to completely ban private handgun use. P4: Accidental death. Handgun accidental death is very common. There were 500 unintentional handgun deaths in 2013, according to the US Center for Disease Control. This happens very commonly in our society. Once a week, a toddler shoots another person with a handgun. (NYT, 12/12/15) There are many examples of this. A three-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio shot and killed a one-year-old boy after picking up a handgun that had been left unattended inside a home on April 12, 2015. The infant was rushed to hospital with a gunshot wound to the head but was later pronounced dead, reports the Associated Press. Investigators were trying to determine where the gun came from, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters. Williams said there was at least one adult home when the incident happened. "It"s a sad day for Cleveland," said Williams. "This fascination that we have with handguns, not just in this city but in this country, has to stop. This is a senseless loss of life, " he finishes.