Resolved: Guns should be Banned from civilians

R1: Gun Culture Gun culture is irrelevant. Do you think that culture compares to the deaths caused by guns? Clearly not and I will elaborate on this point further in my contentions. R2: Little Effect In Certain States We aren't talking about certain states. Even my opponent admits that a gun ban wont have much of an effect in certain states this means that it still will have an effect, just not on a large enough scale. We aren't just talking about Vermont. One example out of 50 states is not a valid reason to introduce a gun prohibition. It is evident that there are multiple factors involved. This is evident since there are other areas with exactly the same conditions (in terms of no gun control). You have to also look at the job and housing quality. Education is also a key factor since depending on the quality of education people may have weaker moral standards that do not coincide with our universal morality. R3: Guns are used for self-defense This is the main argument I expected from my opponent. Guns don’t kill people, children do. Cassie Culpepper, age 11, was riding in the back of a pickup when her 12-year-old brother pointed his father’s pistol at her. He believed he had removed the bullets, and so jokingly pulled the trigger. He was wrong. Since January 1st, there have been 11 reported gun fatalities involving preschool children as the shooter. Ten more toddlers have accidentally shot themselves or somebody else this year. And this statistic represents only data for which a toddler is the shooter in a death (71 children have been killed by guns since Newtown). The BBC originally reported on this phenomenon in 2009 when, in the span of 24 hours, two children were shot by their toddler siblings. In both cases, the deaths were a result of improperly secured weapons. A New York Times’ piece added to the controversy showing that, due to idiosyncrasies over what constitutes a ‘homicide’ or an ‘accident’, child firearm accidental killings happen roughly twice as much as they are reported in national databases. These deaths, quite obviously, could have been avoided had any adult, at any point in time, exercised even a modicum of discretion concerning the availability of their firearm. Our outrage towards these deaths should be proportional to how senseless they are, how utterly avoidable they were. We put child-locks on our medicine cabinets, secure our pools with gates, put on helmets during bike rides, and we give our 12-year-old boys a rifle to play with in the backseat of a truck. Wouldn’t want him to get bored. After all, the only way to stop a bad child with a gun is a good child with a gun. Would you kill children just so people could defend themselves? These are only the examples involving children. I will mention the examples involving everybody in general as part of one of my contentions. R4: Illegal guns/ Pro's of CCW Whilst these guns my be illegal it would be extemely difficult to gain possession of these guns if they weren't sold legally. Nearly 200,000 guns were reported lost or stolen last year, according to federal data. The following table shows the number of guns reported stolen and the number of guns reported missing in National Crime Information Center. Statistics include firearms reported stolen by private individuals and Federal Firearms Licensees. Here is a link to the table: (http://www.governing.com...)It contain the precise statistics of guns stolen in each of the states. I do not doubt the credibility of my opponent's statistics although my statistics prove that with a gun ban guns will be much harder for people to posses - both legally and illegally. C1 - AccidentsThis contention links in with my previous rebuttal regarding self defense although in this case it is more general and applies to not only children. Car crashes killed 33,561 people in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011, the most recent year for which the Centers for Disease Control has data. But this year gun deaths are expected to surpass car deaths. That's according to a Center for American Progress report, which cites CDC data that shows guns will kill more Americans under 25 than cars in 2015. More than a quarter of the teenagers—15+ - who die of injuries in the United States are killed in gun-related incidents, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. An analysis by Bloomberg three years ago found shooting deaths in 2015 "will probably rise to almost 33,000, and those related to autos will decline to about 32,000, based on the 10-year average trend.""Comparing the two national icons, cars and guns, yields “a statistic that really resonates with people," says Chelsea Parsons, co-author of the report for the Centre for American Progress. Resonance is certainly needed. There are about 320 [million] people in the United States, and nearly as many civilian firearms. And although the actual rate of gun ownership is declining, enthusiasts are keeping up the number in circulation." The Economist C2 - The risk of mass shooting Knowing that my opponent is from America, I am almost certain that they have heard of at least one of the mass school shootings in recent years. There have been over 150 school shootings in the last 50 years in the USA alone! That is not an exaggeration and I will provide multiple sources for this statistic just to remove any doubt from voters and my opponent. Now, lets compare that to the UK. The Uk has had 1 school massacre in the last 50 years and this was considered to be one of the deadliest firearms incidents in UK history. I didn't need to do much reasearch to realise that this school shooting was a lot less severe than the ones in the USA in terms of deaths. In this horrific event 1 teacher and 16 children were shot (not all of them were killed). Now let us compare this to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. This resulted in 20 children killed fatally shot and killed. 6 adult member of staff were also shot and killed. Adam Lanza (the shooter) then added to the death tally by commiting suicide on the scene of shooting. As well as this there were 2 non fatal injuries too. Although this may not be entirely relevant to this particular contention, the mass murderer also shot and killed his mother before the shooting. This is another reason as to why guns should be banned. Even with tighter regulation this will not completely elimate the possibility of this happening. I doubt that my opponent is pro school shootings. Since he is 15 and goes to school himself I would have thought that even one school shooting would have pursuaded him to be pro a gun ban. One school shooting is not worth having a gun for self defense. If you had the choice to keep guns for self defense or save those kids (and adults) who were killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting what would you choose? By being Con a gun ban this essentially means that you would choose the guns over the children. C4 - Effect on homicide ratesGuns in the home are far more likely to kill a family member or friend than an intruder because as far as homicides go, you are far more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. According to an article in University of Chicago Law Review by Frank Zimring, a criminology expert at UC Berkeley, more than two-thirds of killings are caused by spouses, lovers, friends, or neighbors. Zimring examines crime statistics in Chicago and breaks the numbers down by type of weapon, number of wounds, and location of the wounds. He finds that when the wound location was clearly intended to cause death, the use of a firearm instead of the next deadliest weapon (a knife) increased the chance of death of the victim by a factor of 5. This is called the "instrumentality effect" of guns.In a broader analysis in Guns in America, Zimring and Hawkins continue to debunk the myth that if guns were not widely available, people would just find another way to kill each other (the classic "guns don't kill people, people do" argument). They point out that "if this were so, knife attacks in cities where guns were not so widely used would show a higher fatality rate" due to the expected substitution effect. But no such trend exists. Guns simply facilitate certain killings that would otherwise not be possible. As an example, Zimring and Hawkins explain that since guns are both more deadly and more versatile (can be used from a distance), they are used almost exclusively in police killings. Lastly, Zimring/Hawkins cite another study proving the instrumentality effect of guns: comparing wounds in the same location, attacks with higher caliber guns were much more likely to result in death than attacks with lower caliber guns. Without guns, altercations (usually between family members and friends) would be much less likely to result in a fatal injury. A study by Kellerman found that people were 2.7 times more likely to be murdered in a home with a firearm than in a home without one, further underscoring the predominance of family/friend murders among the homicide statistics. For the same reason, a regression analysis done by Mark Duggan in "More Guns, More Crime" found that looking at time lag data, local increases in gun ownership are soon followed by localized increases in homicide rates. To understand the next study, we must first explore a legal distinction. A common misconception is that "assault" means an attack. However, in terms of the legal definition, "battery" means a violent attack and "assault" is a threat of bodily harm. Normally, an assault should result in nothing more than an argument, but the presence of a gun makes it much more likely than an assault will turn deadly. Zimring found that assaults (read: threats) were 7 times more likely to result in death if the aggressor possessed a firearm. Sources in comments.