The second amendment should NOT be restricted

I should have done this sooner but I will start by defining some terms. Pro started off by claiming that the second amendment should not be restricted. The second amendment is as follows: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." My opponent then proceeds to attack gun control laws in this debate so I am assuming that this means that my opponent believes that when access to guns or other weapons is being restricted or regulated, the second amendment is being restricted. Let us now look into what gun control is what gun control we have. The definition of gun control by wikipedia is "The term "gun control" means any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to define, restrict, or limit the possession, production or modification, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of firearms. [1]" Laws restricting large weapons such as machine guns are part of gun control and laws restricting certain people from having guns is also part of gun control. We need a license to hide a gun. Also people who have gone to prison for more than a year cannot own guns [2]. One gun control law that is absolutely necessary is the provision that ex-cons cannot own guns. This is because people who criminally offend are more likely to offend again. This is a great way of making it harder for the bad guys to get guns but keeping it easy for the good guys. Personally I believe that we have the right to keep and bear arms however we do need some controls to make sure the wrong people do not own guns and that some really dangerous weapons like machine guns and grenade launchers are not publicly available because they do more harm than good and increase the threat of terrorism. There is just no reason why we would want an ex-con to have a gun. These are people who are likely to use them. Firstly, gun control has not worked in the past. In every case, we have seen crime rates increase after gun control is passed. Even England, with their low crime rate and high gun control, had even fewer crimes per year before the gun ban. This phenomenon is universal. It occurs in the US, Europe, Russia, South America, Jamaica, the list goes on. Could you provide some evidence to back up this claim? I was unable to find anything to back this up. Also keep in mind that I do not support a gun ban only reasonable gun control. Criminals don't obey these laws, which only disarm people who obey the law. This encourages criminals to attack or rob the sitting ducks that are citizens. When guns are outlawed, large gun companies are barred from distributing guns, and police remove guns when they are found. Because of this there will be fewer guns out there and it will be harder to get a gun if you are a criminal. Therefore crimes involving guns will fall. This is true even if some criminals have ways of illegally getting guns. The US has a gun-related murder rate of 3 out of 100,000 while most European countries have a rate of less than .5 [3]. So if extreme gun control does not reduce the crime rate and only makes it worse because people cannot defend themselves than why is the European gun murder rate so much lower than that of the US? Another reason is that the second amendment acts as a deterrent against oppressive government. I am all for that however there is only so far you can go to do that. For example it would be unwise to allow everyone to own missile launchers or bombs as a way to defend themselves against the government. This will just end up unnecessarily killing lots of people. So it is necessary to limit the kinds of weapons people can have. If we bar ex-cons from having weapons, most people will still have guns and will be a deterrent against oppressive government. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org... 2: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com... 3: http://www.washingtonpost.com...