BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Assault weapons banned in 1994 were not uniquely lethal

Many guns that remained publicly available after the 1994 assault weapons ban were effectively as lethal as the weapons that were banned under the legislation. This is largely because simple adjustments to assault weapons allowed exemptions from the ban. And, it is clear that many of the weapons used in the most deadly massacres, such as the Columbine or Virginia Tech massacres in the United States, were not banned by the assault weapons law.
Decline in assault weapons due to decline in assault pistols

According to a 2004 report to the National Institute of Justice, "The decline in the use of AWs has been due primarily to a reduction in the use of assault pistols (APs), which are used in crime more commonly than assault rifles (ARs). There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons and by substitution of post-ban rifles that are very similar to the banned AR models."
The 1994 assault weapons ban was ineffectual

The sale of assault weapons continued beyond the 1994 ban, but with very slight modifications, such as the sawing off of muzzles, to exploit the loopholes of the ban. Therefore, there was never exactly a ban on assault weapons, but simply a shift in how the manufacturers produced them. And, despite the fact that assault weapons were still being produced and sold, there were still drops in crime and the use of assault weapons on the streets. This suggests that assault weapons were not actually the issue.
Police support a ban on assault weapons

Police, those that have the most experience dealing with crime, are strongly in favor of gun control laws. Why is this? First, many cops have been killed by assault weapons, and these brave law enforcement officers must consistently deal with the fear that criminals they encounter will be packing assault weapons. Second, they recognize that assault weapons are used by some criminals and madmen to inflict maximum casualties. Finally, they see first hand instances in which assault weapons can be used offensively and defensively, and it is notable that they conclude, ultimately, that assault weapons should not be available to the public.
Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely

"Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War". Hawaii.edu - "It is true that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and prosperity. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass murder). That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less the violence. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human insecurity and violence. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes we must also add that power kills."
The act of voting itself does not pacify people

James Bovard. "The Democratic-Peace Fraud". The Future of Freedom Foundation. 23 May 2008 - "The notion that democracy will end all mass killings implies that there is some nobility latent within the masses that merely requires a change in the process of selecting a nation’s rulers to blossom. That would hold true if the only reason people sought blood was that they had not picked their own chiefs. The history of mobs does not indicate that popular selection of leaders ensures nonviolence."
Democracies attack non-democracies, undermining pacifism myth

James Bovard. "The Democratic-Peace Fraud". The Future of Freedom Foundation. 23 May 2008 - "Other democracies also lack pacifist resumes. Britain, which was a constitutional republic that became increasingly democratic as the 20th century wore on, attacked many nations to expand or defend its empire. Since the government of Israel was established in 1947/48, it has attacked Egypt (1956), Egypt and Syria (1967), and Lebanon (1982–2006), as well as engaging in more than 35 years of armed struggle against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war. It also engaged in a defensive war in 1973 against Egypt and Syria.
Democracy promotes harmonious and cooperative inter-state relations

Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works?. Yale University Press. 2004. ISBN 0-300-10777-3. pp 33.- Liberal democracy does not only have domestic virtues. It is also the only system of governance for which harmonious and co-operative inter-state relations are a natural outcome. This important proposition was put forward by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his tract Perpetual Peace. Liberal democracies may fight with other states, but have no reason to fight with one another. When Norman Angell, the British liberal, wrote in his subsequently derided masterpiece, the Gran Illusion, published in 1909, that a war among the great powers could only prove mutually ruinous, he was correct...Liberal democracy is conducive to harmonious international relations because the prosperity of a nation derives not from the size of the territory or population under its direct control, but from the combination of internal economic development with international exchange. The insight is the heart of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It was not just a point about economics, but an equally original and important point about international relations. Mercantilism - the view that the aim of trade is the accumulation of treasure - was worse than bad economics. It was also lethal politics, because it led to conflict where conflict was unjustified."
Democracies share democratic values that help maintain peace

James Baker III - "We believed that the defeat of communism and the rise of the democrats created an unprecedented opportunity. We hoped to build our relations with Russia, Ukraine, and the other new independent states on the basis of democracy and free markets: what we came to call a "democratic peace," the type of peace we enjoyed with Germany and Japan. This peace would be based on shared democratic values, not just converging interests. While the democratic impulse in Russia and in most of the new independent states of the Commonwealth was genuine, these nations had little in the way of democratic traditions, and we were far from certain that democracy would take root. But we did not want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by pursuing a pure balance-of-power policy that assumed from the outset that these states would eventually return to authoritarianism."[1]
The desire to get re-elected constrains war-making

Immanuel Kant. "Perpetual Peace.". 1795 - "But there is another important theoretical thrust regarding the impact of regime type that relies less on the idea that democracy evokes normative commitments to the peaceful resolution of conflicts, and more on the idea that "leaders in democracies might avoid wars against other democratic states...because they feel that fighting such wars might be harmful to their chances of staying in power" (Ray 1995, p. 40). Bueno de Mesquita et al (1992), Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson (1995) find that interstate wars do have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states."
Democracies do not externalize their conflict resolution processes

Sebastian Rosato. "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory". The American Political Science Review. Vol. 97, No. 4 (Nov., 2003) - "Democratic peace theory is probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace. In this paper I examine the causal logics that underpin the theory to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the finding of mutual democratic pacifism. I find that they do not. Democracies do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution."
Yugoslavia was not a true democracy.

List of possible exceptions to the democratic peace theory - Wikipedia "Yugoslavia did not fulfill the criteria for a liberal democracy. Frequent and arbitrary changes of election laws and districts occurred, even retroactively after elections. Press freedom greatly restricted. Slobodan Milosevic's regime controlled the state television and radio broadcasts. Electoral manipulation including: massive double voting, "voting" of persons being permanently absent or deceased, the pressure on employees by the management of ";socially owned companies", organized planting of already prepared voting ballots into the polling boxes, forging of electoral records and election board records, alteration of the election results made by electoral commissions, the large-scale annulment of the election results by courts rulings, and changing the number of participating voters in order to fulfill the legal requirements for the validity of the elections."
Lebanon is not a liberal democracy according to Freedom House in its 2006 report

(for the year 2005). The last available Polity ranking for the year 2003 states "Foreign occupation". Syria controlled much of the politics in Lebanon until the Cedar Revolution in 2005 and regime after that is less than 3 years old. The Lebanese general election, 2005 after the Cedar Revolution has been described as "free but not fair" by the newspaper Washington Post. The different religious groups are allocated parliamentary seats not proportionate to the number of voters. The whole public sector is similarly divided. Everyone from the President and the Speaker of Parliament down to police and college professors are chosen according to the individual's faith.
Powerful democracies are frequently aggressive and violent

Imagine you are visiting an aquarium that features a large shark tank. There are 100 sharks in the tank. Ninety-five of the sharks are either docile or too small to injure a human. There are, however, five hungry great whites. Certainly, the overwhelming majority of the sharks are harmless, but would you swim in that tank? Similarly, we should not ask, are democracies peaceful?, but is the United States peaceful? Are the other militarily powerful democracies – United Kingdom, France, India, Israel, peaceful? History shows they are not. See, Figure No. 6. As Gowa writes, "Theory suggests and empirical studies confirm that major powers are much more likely than are other states to become involved in armed disputes, including war."
Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of Serbia, won several elections.

List of possible exceptions to the democratic peace theory - Wikipedia "Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of Serbia, won several elections. The NATO nations participating in Operation Allied Force were democratic. At time of Kosovo War, Milosevic's party was in a coalition with two others, and the Serbian Parliament contained a broader range of political parties than is common in nations such as America, Britain and Japan. The government had invited the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe into Serbia to judge on 1996 election fraud, and had accepted its rulings even though they went against Milosevic's party.Milosevic had made election of Yugoslav president into a ballot by the whole electorate rather than just by the legislature."
Israel battled the organization Hezbollah, which exerted control over the southern part of Lebanon, and not the Lebanese army.

The UN notes that "a group engaged in the democratic political process of opinion formation and decision-making cannot simultaneously possess an autonomous armed operational capacity outside the authority of the State. More broadly, the existence of armed groups defying the control of the legitimate Government, which by definition is vested with a monopoly on the use of force throughout its territory, is incompatible with the restoration and full respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and political independence of the country."
The country's restrictions on extremists were not preventing democracy

List of possible exceptions to the democratic peace theory - Wikipedia "As the opposition to Milosevic in Serbia in this period was often composed of extreme nationalists (such as the Serbian Renewal Movement that organized the March 9, 1991 protest, the Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia), it is hard to decide what restrictions on the opposition were legitimate. Many human rights groups, including Amnesty International, believe that neo-fascist groups should have special restrictions on their activity. The fact that the vast majority of convictions under the Law on Information were for the opposition may not necessarily demonstrate undemocratic exercise of power."
Israel is an established democracy. Lebanon has had a democratic system since its independence.

The Lebanese general election, 2005 has been described as free, credible, fair, well managed and peaceful by United Nations observers and its Security Council. The electoral law was accepted by all major parties, although there is also agreement that it needs to be reformed. Allocation of parliamentary seats according to faith is in accordance with the principals of consociationalist democracy as advocated by Arend Lijphart.
Iron fertilization may require an impractical amount of iron

"Iron Fertilization Of Oceans: A Real Option For Carbon Dioxide Reduction?" Science Daily. 10 June 2007 - "Twelve oceanographic expeditions were carried out between 1993 and 2005 is the North Pacific, the Equatorial Pacific and the Southern Ocean to test the iron fertilization hypothesis. However, as pointed out by Hein de Baar, from the Netherlands Institut voor Onderzoek der Zee (NIOZ, Texel, The Netherlands), today after all those experiments we know that they are many losses and that this manipulation is not a real efficient way to capture and store CO2 into the deep ocean. Much more iron is needed that had originally been suggested for algae to bring down a certain amount of CO2 from the atmosphere."
Iron-fertilized algae blooms deplete nutrients in ecosystems

"A scientific critique of oceanic iron fertilization as a climate change mitigation strategy". Greenpeace Research Laboratories. September 2007 - "Iron fertilization results in other essential nutrients, such as nitrates, phosphates ad silicates, being used up as the phytoplankton bloom progresses. Consequently, this could result in a reduction of these nutrients down-current from an iron- fertilized area. In turn, a lack of nutrients would cause a negative impact on phytoplankton down-current resulting in a reduction in overall biological productivity. This would be likely to have a knock-on negative impact on all other marine life because phytoplankton underpin the marine food web. Indeed, because of this phenomenon, modeling studies have predicted that commercial-scale iron fertilization of the oceans could have a significant detrimental impact on important fisheries."
Algae need only sequester C02 for roughly a century.

While ocean science does traditionally define "sequestration" in terms of sea floor sediment that is isolated from the atmosphere for millions of years, modern climate scientists and Kyoto Protocol policy makers, however, define sequestration in much shorter time frames. They recognize trees and even grasslands, for instance, as important carbon sinks. Forest biomass only sequesters carbon for decades, but carbon that sinks below the marine thermocline (100~200 meters) is effectively removed from the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, whether it is remineralized or not. Since deep ocean currents take so long to resurface, their carbon content is effectively "sequestered" by any terrestrial criterion in use today.
Some plankton species cause red tides and other toxic phenomena.

How do we know what kind of plankton will bloom in these events? What will prevent toxic species from poisoning lagoons, tide pools and other sensitive ecosystems along our coasts? Highly increased and intensified Red Tide Blooms have been wreaking havoc on the west coast of Florida for the last ten years. The argument that red tide blooms cause no harm is ridiculous. Once the chain of a HAB gets started, no one knows how to end it. The Red Tide Bloom in Maine over the last three years is testament to this. Even though the water is too cold to be very favorable to red tide (K. Brevis), these Red Tide Blooms have flourished. When even harmless species of plankton die they decompose and this brings about a very bad situation like the giant and growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.[
Trials finding low results from carbon sequestration were faulty

The studies concluding that iron fertilization lead to low levels of carbon sequestration suffered from numerous flaws: Timing - none of the ocean trials had enough boat time to monitor their blooms for more than 27 days, while blooms generally last 60~90 days; Scale - most trials used less than 1000 kg of iron and thus created small blooms that were quickly devoured by opportunistic zooplankton, krill and fish; Academic conservatism - with limited data sets, scientists have not been willing to (understandably) extrapolate upon their findings.
Iron fertilization would revive depleted phytoplankton populations.

Iron fertilization would help to reverse what some believe to be a decline in phytoplankton. One study (Gregg and Conkright, 2002) reported a decline in ocean phytoplankton productivity between the period 1979–1986 and 1997–2000. If phytoplankton populations are down by natural standards, there should be not environmental argument against helping these populations rebuild. And, it could be argued that the decline of these phytoplankton are partly responsible for global warming, since it would reduce the capture of C02 in the process of photosynthesis.
Ecosystem changes caused by algae are not "bad" ones

Margaret Leinen PhD, Kevin Whilden, and Dan Whaley. "A Response to Concerns about Ocean Iron Fertilization Raised by Greenpeace". Climos, Inc. 15 May 2008 - "While it is true that OIF produces ecological changes, as we will show, there is no a priori evidence from literature that OIF experiments projects might result in widespread deleterious ecological changes. The preponderance of evidence suggests that OIF experimentation and study, even if done at scales of 200 x 200 km, will not harm ecosystems."
Global warming kills algae, worsens warming; iron fertilization helps

Steve Connor. "Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton". 20 The Independent. January 2006 - "The microscopic plants that underpin all life in the oceans are likely to be destroyed by global warming, a study has found...Scientists have discovered a way that the vital plankton of the oceans can be starved of nutrients as a result of the seas getting warmer. They believe the findings have catastrophic implications for the entire marine habitat, which ultimately relies on plankton at the base of the food chain."
Algae blooms do not sequester much carbon

"A scientific critique of oceanic iron fertilization as a climate change mitigation strategy". Greenpeace Research Laboratories. September 2007 - "With the scientific discovery that phytoplankton growth can be stimulated by the addition of iron to HNLC waters, some have proposed that the ‘biological pump’ could be enhanced by fertilizing the oceans with iron, as a way of drawing down more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the oceans and, in so doing, helping mitigate climate change. However, such proposals are founded on an incomplete understanding and highly simplified interpretation of current scientific knowledge. They have not taken properly into account the results of the 12 mesoscale iron enrichment scientific studies carried out to date which suggest that the amount of carbon sequestered in this way would be very small, nor the fundamental influence of hydrodynamics and large uncertainties and indeterminacies in ecosystem response which those studies highlight."
Phytoplankton populations have increased; no need for iron fertilization.

One study (Antoine et al., 2005) found a 22% increase of phytoplankton populations between 1979–1986 and 1998–2002. Gregg et al. 2005 also reported a recent increase in phytoplankton. If phytoplankton are actually up compared to natural averages, it cannot be argued that iron fertilization can help re-stabilize the natural size of phytoplankton populations. In fact, iron fertilization would only accentuate the problem of currently over-sized phytoplankton populations.
Iron-fertilization harms "downstream" algae, C02 sequestration

"Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron". Woods Hole Oceanic Institute. 7 Sep. 2007 - "Beyond the inefficiency of carbon sequestration, iron fertilization would likely cause other changes “downstream” of the ocean patches where iron was added. The huge green phytoplankton blooms would take up not just iron but other nutrients, too—nitrate, phosphate, and silica—essentially depleting nearby waters of the building blocks needed for plankton growth.
Iron fertilization can dramatically reduce C02, combat global warming

John Martin, former director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, said in 1988, "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age". This famous statement has highlighted the power of iron fertilization in spawning massive algae blooms to draw large quantities of C02 from the atmosphere, in the process of photosynthesis, reducing the greenhouse gas effect and helping cool the planet.
Global warming grows phytoplankton; growing more is reckless

Jef Huisman and Ben Sommeijer. "Global Warming could Destabilize Plankton in Oceans" - "Global warming of the surface layers of the oceans reduces the upward transport of nutrients. Computer simulations predict that plankton growth will become unstable when the supply of nutrients is reduced. This may have a negative impact on the food chains of the oceans and on uptake of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the oceans. Scientists of the Universiteit van Amsterdam and CWI (the Netherlands) and the University of Hawaii (USA) presented their results in Nature of 19 January 2006."
Iron-fertilized algae blooms may release some greenhouse gases

"A scientific critique of oceanic iron fertilization as a climate change mitigation strategy". Greenpeace Research Laboratories. September 2007 - "There is a risk that iron fertilization could result in increased production of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide. It is of great concern that one modelling study predicted that any benefits of carbon sequestration by commercial iron fertilization could be outweighed by nitrous oxide production. In two mesoscale studies which tested for the production of nitrous oxide, one found a small but significant increase in nitrous oxide while the other did not detect the gas."
Iron fertilization reverses global warming; other solutions only slow it.

All the main solutions to global warming entail cutting greenhouse gas emissions from future energy production. Yet, this does not reduce the amount of C02 currently in the atmosphere, nor does it promise to end C02 emissions any time soon. And, yet, global warming is occurring now from the existing quantities of C02 in the atmosphere. In other words, all plans to cut future emissions will not help actually reverse the current trajectory of global warming. The only real solution is to attempt to directly remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Iron fertilization and algae blooms offer this kind of real solution to global warming, actually helping reverse it.
Deep sea iron fertilization would not grow coastal red tides.

Red tides and other harmful algal blooms are largely coastal phenomena and primarily affect creatures that eat contaminated coastal shellfish. Iron stimulated plankton blooms only work in the deep oceans where iron deficiency is the problem. Most coastal waters are replete with iron and adding more has no effect. Since all phytoplankton blooms last only 90~120 days at most, in the open ocean fertilized patches of any species will dissipate long before reaching any land.