"assault weapons should NOT be prohibited from law abiding citizens

Thanks to my opponent, and I'll launch straight in. Pro starts by challenging my point that the 1994 AWB effectively reduced homicide rates. Multiple responses. He doesn't actually challenge the evidence. If you check my [2] from the previous round, you'll see two rather stark images depicting major reductions in firearm and overall homicide rates that just happen to occur during this particular time period. There are no other decreases like that on either chart. The figures I gave all stem from those same charts. If Pro would like to contest the charts directly, he'll need to do so at some point, but as of now, the 39% figure still stands as reality. Pro provides no alternate explanation for this drop in homicides. I would argue that any other explanation is going to be a lot harder to prove, but it's something Pro would have to do. The data speaks for itself, I'm only providing analysis for why it exists, and so far it stands alone. He says that “'assault weapons' have always made up less than 5% of gun homicides.” I'd like to know which source he got that from, but it really doesn't matter. Even if you don't buy the data, even if 5% is all that's achieved, it's still a substantial reduction in deaths. Pro is cherry-picking from the Koper study. He left out the next paragraph: “However, the grandfathering provision of the AW-LCM ban guaranteed that the effects of this law would occur only gradually over time. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers. It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun violence.” The word “premature” is important here for two reasons. One, the data was incomplete at the time. My data comes from more recent sources functioning based on a wider set of data. Pro doesn't respond to either the Bureau of Justice Statistics or Pew. Two, his own citation is hurting his point of long-term effect. So long as the effects of the ban were unfolding beyond its 2004 end, its entirely feasible that the effect on gun violence outlasted the bill itself. On stocks. Pro drops the example I cited of Gian Luigi Ferri, who used the Hellfire trigger in his mass shooting, where he killed 8 people and wounded 6. But we don't need examples to know that something is dangerous. We realistically understand that allowing people to have legal access to and full use of a tank and its ammunition is harmful, and we don't need instances of actual abuse of a tank to recognize that the potential harm outstrips any desire. The reality is that a faster rate of fire means a higher likelihood of more deaths. Pro doesn't touch slide fire stocks. On detachable magazines. I am well aware of how the law works, and I am stating that the detachable magazine, which my first link showed is a trait of assault weapons and not all semi-automatic rifles, is more problematic than an internal box or fixed magazine. This speeds up the process of reloading. I'd like to see some response to the magazine capacity issue, since this is one way to increase the capacity beyond any size constraint. On folding or telescoping stock. This is really the only place where Pro generates any offense at all, and he really wants to have this both ways. He wants to say that 5 inches isn't much. On the other hand, in a home defense scenario, it makes it so much easier to clear each room carefully that it's practically necessary. I think Pro is making my own point for me. Whether we're talking about concealment or simply navigating tighter spaces, the folding stock is making it easier for the shooter. And since the shooter is going to be the first one with their hand on the weapon and likely with an element of surprise, the last thing we should be doing is making it easier for him/her to reach the target. On the pistol grip. I did provide a link to this effect, and no, the point was not that all pistol grips are going to increase harms. We're talking about the substantial ones, the larger ones, which are capable of reducing the recoil and allowing faster trigger pulls. Pro asserts that there's not much of a difference, but that depends entirely on the experience of the person doing the shooting. Even if the difference is small, that can still mean several more bullets fired with more accuracy. As for shooting from the hip, Pro just says this is really inaccurate. That doesn't matter. It's not meant to be accurate, it's meant to fire into crowds with little to no accuracy, hitting more targets at a rapid pace. Grenade launchers are regulated, but they still appear on rifles. Pro even admits that some people do have these, he just tries to say that the risk is so minimal that we shouldn't care. I would say that any reasonable potential for saving lives justifies this, and as Pro seems to agree with their regulation, I think we can both agree that this presents a possible concern that cannot be seen on other currently legal weapons. Pro provides a number of statistics that he doesn't directly cite (and I'd appreciate if he pointed out which of his links actually provides this statistics), but which are, once again, solely mitigating. The best he can prove from this is that a ban is not 100% effective, and that other weapons may take their place. But what he never shows, throughout his entire argument, is that these other weapons are as deadly or more so than assault rifles. I'll grant that most criminals are not going to be dissuaded by a lack of assault rifles (though the Pew research I cited earlier did show a correlation between reduced gun crime and the 1994 AWB), but if their capacity to do harm is sufficiently reduced, then there's reason for the ban. The “NO POSITIVE EFFECT” assertion is nothing more than that – an assertion, one his own arguments confound. In all of his arguments, Pro ignores my extensive list of shooters who utilized assault rifles. 20 of the last 143 mass shootings have involved the usage of assault weapons. Pro doesn't contest this. Hedoesn't contest any of the individual examples, except to say that an AR-14 is not an assault rifle. Even if you buy this, that only removes one example, namely the Tyler Peterson case. James Holmes modified his with a 100-round drum magazine, so his can be classified as an assault rifle. Pro is effectively conceding the remainder of my examples. Pro makes a non-sequitor about drunk driving. Yes, it's a problem. Tell me, does the fact that so many people die as a result of drunk driving suddenly make the purported <300 who die as a result of assault rifles unimportant? Should we stop caring about those lives because bigger problems exist? This appears to be Pro's assertion. Lastly, Anders Brevik. The view here is that examples like this prove that you don't need an assault weapon to do the same level of damage. In fact, he makes the point that the top 2 mass killings were both perpetrated without this. Of course, he then goes on to ignore all the details, like the fact that he did this particular shooting at a site with no armed opposition, the Norwegian Labour Party youth camp. In this particular case, yes, he killed a lot of people. But since all of the instances we've discussed have involved the ability to intervene (which Pro left untouched, despite the fact that it applies through the detachable magazines argument), the capacity to escape (this was on an island), and the ability to shoot people within a very short period of time (he had quite a while to accomplish this).[1] I'm not sure what Pro's #2 is because he doesn't state it, but I imagine it was a situation along similar lines. He can't just declare that these guns are equally effective to others based on individual instances with a lot of separate factors to take into account. Back to Pro. 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk...