Private Firearms are Necessary for the People to Possess and Use

Thanks to my opponent for instigating this debate. Just to let readers know, my opponent messaged me and explained that he had limited time to complete this debate and wanted to get it finished by Thursday (tomorrow) as he is going away and won't have internet access. Although it is a 3-round debate with a 72 hour response time, out of consideration for my opponent I will do my best to make time for this interesting debate and to post my arguments rapidly, although this may mean I cannot do as much research as I would have liked. I am relieved that my opponent does not want to debate complex interpretations of US law, which I am not as knowledgeable about as I would like to be. There are already some interesting comments being posted about this but I am pleased to conduct this debate in terms of logic and evidence as my opponent seems to wish. My opponent makes three basic, but separate, assertions regarding private firearms to outline his case: 1. "Private Firearms are Necessary for the People to Possess and Use." 2. "...privately-owned firearms are a hugely beneficial tool for the private population to possess..." 3. "Private firearm ownership reduces crime" I believe that as my opponent instigated this debate as Pro he bears the burden of proving all of these three points and that if I can prove any of them incorrect I deserve to win, although this will of course be up to the voters to decide. It is my contention that 1 and 2 are illogical which I will prove in subsequent rounds. 3 has lots of evidence both for and against and is difficult to prove either way, but I will attempt to disprove it nevertheless and will certainly prove that private firearm ownership increases the instance of the most serious crimes of homicide and other violent deaths. My opponent makes his points robustly and in the interests of moving this debate along as quickly as possible, (as my opponent wishes), I will postpone my critique of his logical argument and the very specific examples he provides until subsequent rounds. Instead in this round I will briefly provide some evidence and examples of my own. "Homicide rates tend to be related to firearm ownership levels. Everything else being equal, a reduction in the percentage of households owning firearms should occasion a drop in the homicide rate." Evidence to the Cullen Inquiry 1996: Thomas Gabor, Professor of Criminology - University of Ottawa source: http://www.greenparty.org.uk... The following Statistics have been extracted from GUN AVAILABILITY AND VIOLENT CRIME: RESEARCH EVIDENCE Note by the Crime and Criminal Justice Unit, Research and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office available online at http://www.dvc.org.uk.... They are provided for informational purposes you are free to draw to draw your own conclusions. .................... Gun ownership........ Homicide ......Gun homicide...... Suicide........ Gun suicide ......................rate per 100k....... rate per lm...... rate per lm..... rate per lm... rate per lm USA.................... 85,000................ 9.3................... 6.40 .............12.0................. 7.1 Switzerland .........43,000 ................1.5 ...................1.40.............. 20.4................ 5.8 New Zealand........ 29,000................ 2.6................... 0.49............. 14.5................ 2.5 Canada................ 24,000................ 2.2................... 0.67............. 12.8................. 3. Australia ..............19,000 ................1.8................... 0.36 ..............11.6................ 2.5 Britain.................. 3,000 .................1.3................... 0.14............... 8.6................. 0.4 Japan.................... 400 ...................1.2................... 0.06.............. 19.3............... 0.14 France............... (23,000)............... 4.9................... 2.32.............. 20.0................ 4.9 source: http://everything2.com... The above two examples demonstrate the correlation between gun ownership and violent death, also there is evidence that more guns in fact equal more crime contrary to the examples listed by my opponent. "Measures that seek to reduce the number of firearms in our communities actually seem to be having a measurable impact on reducing gun crime. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that children ages five to 14 living in the five states with the highest gun ownership were 16 times more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries, 7 times more likely to die from firearm suicide and 3 times more likely to die from firearm homicides compared to children of the same age living in the five states with the lowest gun ownership. This correlation suggests that lawmakers can indeed save the lives of children by limiting the number of firearms readily available in our homes and on our streets." source: http://daily.stanford.edu... One of my opponent's sources is John Lott, who's sensationalist 'More Guns, Less Crime' is a favourite of Gun Rights lobbyists. But his use of statistics has been criticised by many. "In the case of Lott's model we are in the fortunate position of being able to test its predictive power. Lott's original data set ended in 1992. Between 1992 and 1996, 14 more jurisdictions (13 states and Philadelphia) adopted carry laws. We can test the predictive power of Lott's model by seeing if it finds less crime in those jurisdictions. Ayres and Donahue [2] have done this test. They found that, using Lott's model, in those jurisdictions carry laws were associated with more crime in all crime categories . Lott's model fails the predictive test." source: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au... There is much more evidence but I will stop here for now and allow my opponent to respond. Hopefully there will be time to look at some of these issues in more detail in subsequent rounds. Thankyou.