Gun Bans

The video adds nothing to the debate except to express succinctly the paranoid racism of the Negative side. In R1 we learn: a)"Innocent civilians obey laws", and b)"If innocent civilians obey laws, they will obey the gun ban." The only way to derive (b) from (a) is to assume (a) is absolute—that is, encompassing all laws, real and hypothetical. But in R3, as if Con were on my side, we are reeducated: "their [sic] isn't a hunter or true southerner that will give in either [‘guns or ammo']." Con goes on to explain that "innocent civilian" means only one who "will not murder". Had he the time, Con might have also affected his "Before"-and-"After": Before: criminals w/ guns, civilians w/ guns After: criminals w/ guns, civilians w/ guns However, Con was constrained by the urgent need to "refer back to R1", reiterated: the gun ban "only disarms the innocent" and "civilians would…be without guns". This was necessary because I "obviously didn't understand one of the points I made." Evidently, neither of us does. Later we experience yet another turnabout. This time, civilians will not merely disobey but will actually be compelled toward "resistance against the government and law enforcement" and will "cause violence" and "only increase crime rates". These "innocent civilians" being "w/o guns" looks a better proposition by the minute. But fear not, for it "is also highly possible that law enforcement would not willingly remove guns from innocent and free civilians". And so we're back to my revised "Before"-and-"After". "My opponent lacks the proof that suggest [sic] the ban would work, [sic] yet he suggest [sic] harming the economy to find out for sure." And my opponent lacks proof that the ban would harm the economy. On the contrary, I would expect the reorientation of capital and labor to more useful enterprise (perhaps green infrastructure?) would only be beneficial to the economy. Con presents 4 "facts", all gotten from the same pro-gun source (strangely, though, a random anti-gun blog is listed as a "source"): Fact #1 would be irrelevant if it were true. In fact, the figure you give is based on a study that includes ALL incidents of guns used in the prevention of a crime, not just acts of "self-defense", and certainly not just acts "to protect the lives of honest citizens", as the website hopes we'll conclude. Thus, juxtaposing your figure with gun crimes that "take lives" is inappropriate. It would be more appropriate to juxtapose total gun crime with total gun prevention thereof, or total gun victimization with total gun prevention thereof, or total gun murder with total gun prevention thereof. It would be even more appropriate to discount those 20% of incidents of guns-used-in-the-prevention-of-a-crime that are performed by police officers, who would be unaffected by the ban. And it would be superlatively appropriate to update the figure, instead of relying on a study conducted at nearly the peak of the rate, which has been declining steadily and dramatically ever since. In the absence of a gun ban, one would expect a high rate of crimes-thwarted-by-guns, along with the even higher rate of successful gun crimes and gun accidents. Also ignored in Fact #1 is scale. If an "innocent civilian" thwarts a burglar and then turns around and kills his wife in a drunken fit of jealous rage, we haven't broken even. What we have done is allowed a murder, so that we could prevent a burglary. It is the lethality of guns that is responsible for such asymmetry. Fact #2 is about no-carry laws, not gun bans. Also, its methodology is weak. It simply compares no-carry counties (only for those crimes it finds useful to mention, of course) to right-to-carry counties. But, as support for no-carry laws certainly inhabits the same counties as frequent crime, and is indeed probably a response to crime, such would be expected. If we were honest, then, we wouldn't conclude that right-to-carry doesn't "increase crime". And we certainly wouldn't conclude that the three crime rates mentioned "drop" or "fall" "when citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons". We would in fact conclude only what the website calls "more to the point": that "crime is significantly higher in states with right-to-carry laws", as would be expected from successful or unsuccessful right-to-carry laws. Fact #3 is anecdotal and suffers from the same inability to perceive scale as Fact #1. Fact #4 cites the murder rate of Japan (where non-sporting guns are banned), which is lower than the gun murder rate of the US; and the non-gun murder rate of the US, which accounts for the remainder of US murders (and whose rationale for inclusion in this debate is not clear). I will thus count Fact #4 in my column. "He suggests we find billions, possibly trillions of bullets to make the ban possible." I suggest no such thing. The ban would be possible and effective whether trillions of bullets, billions of bullets, or indeed none at all were found. "His whole debate was based on the idea that we could find trillions of bullets and millions of guns." Neither my whole debate nor any part of it was based on that. No less would a murder ban have to be based on the idea that we could prevent every murder. "He even shows a belief that the American public, the same public Obama says "clings to guns and religion", will willingly give up their 2nd Amendment rights." That Obama even said it is evidence that he was speaking about only one segment of the American public, which is itself only a very small segment of the world. I fear that my arguments will be again "declared irrelevant" if I argue for American gun bans as opposed to your "terms", which stipulated "gun bans" generally. Gun bans generally do not result in general chaos, contrary to what you predict. And if this were indeed a debate about American gun bans, I would simply say that those who don't "willingly" (read: peacefully) obey the dictates of a democratic, constitutional (to the extent that a gun ban indeed violates the 2nd Ammendment, it will require ï¿½ majority of state legislatures and a 2/3 majority of each national house) authority, they're criminals, and the gun ban will provide an excellent opportunity to reveal them and deal with them.