The USA should abolish all firearms

Thank you for your response. I have realised that there are some important misunderstandings in this debate that need to be cleared up. I realise that the motion title itself is quite ambiguous. As the proponent in this debate is my job to define and set up the meaning of the policy that I intend to put forward. This motion is obviously about the abolition of the 2nd amendment. In order to abolish all firearms (to civilians) I would abolish the 2nd amendment. Therefore, I would no longer be breaking the law by removing guns from all people without good reason. Police, emergency services and armed forces would all still obviously have access to firearms. However, all civilians without a legitimate reason for firearms would have their firearms removed. The legality of the motion would be ensured by democratically repealing the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment is outdated and unnecessary and considering the sheer mass of murder caused by the lack of gun control it should be removed. The USA is a very stable country. It has a concrete democracy with absolutely no history of dictatorship or tyranny. Furthermore, surely the arming of civilians makes it equally likely for a rebellion to form which could overthrow a democratic government and impose tyranny? The 2nd amendment works both ways. I argue that both sides are ridiculously unlikely and thus it makes sense to get rid of weapons which lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans every year. Next, I really need to analyse the theory that a good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun. The truth is that you are more likely to kill a member of your own family than an armed intruder. Based on this, if Americans really want to protect them and their families, disarming themselves actually makes more sense. Furthermore, most criminals will no longer have access to guns because the black market is actually a really difficult market to gain access to. The reason being is that so few other countries allow guns to be possessed legally and thus it is much harder to deal in guns than in things like drugs (which are much more widely spread and less strictly regulated). Most criminals are not really hard-core criminals and so could not get access to a very inconspicuous and dangerous black market. The truth is that wherever guns are banned there are fewer criminals with guns and thus fewer innocent people die from being shot by criminals. In almost every other country on earth, guns are illegal to possess for ordinary people and as a result fewer criminals have them. The police can keep the peace better than armed civilians who are more likely to kill innocent people. The truth is that gun attacks are really, really scary and in most cases armed "good guys" actually run away (and who could blame them - it's terrifying). For the once in a blue moon occasion that one good guy stops an armed drug cartel, there are thousands of other cases where people like him murder people. It is just not a strong enough possibility to rely on. Finally, I want to point out that many of these mass shooters are often mentally ill. They often do not have criminal records and are not actually criminals before committing the crime. In this way, they couldn't get their guns from a black market. Thus, in the event of banning guns these mass shooters, who are not career criminals, would not be able to get access to firearms and therefore not be able to kill people. So, to an extent, many of these especially horrific mass shootings will almost certainly not happen when guns are banned since they do not fit into the category of career criminals anyway. In places where guns are banned it is so difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns. Therefore, despite the fact that civilians are terrible at using guns to protect themselves and almost always cause more damage, civilians would not even need to be able to defend themselves in the first place as the attackers would not have guns. Hardcore career criminals rarely attack innocent people who they have no connection to but generally attack other criminals who they compete with therefore there is even less of a need for ordinary Americans to protect themselves when the police can do it for them. Moreover, even acknowledging smallest possibility that the police are too late, this still does not matter since the overall damage that is done by the 2nd amendment, in giving the ability for evil people to carry out attacks overweighs the potential for a gun owner to protect themselves on a death toll basis. You seem to have conceded my explanation that wherever there are guns for civilians more people die. So, notwithstanding whatever ways it is possible for a gun to save a life, we know that overall more people die. Guns do not have reasonable practical uses above the myth that they "save lives". They are used for leisure and are not essential commodities but luxury goods that most people would never expect to have a right to own. As I previously explained, although we should fight to improve the mental health of Americans, making everyone responsible and sane enough to own a gun is completely unachievable. There will always be bad people - no matter how much money the government spends on improving mental health. Thus, there will always be evil and ill people who carry out gun attacks. Some people cannot be cured of criminality. Not every gun murder is due to severe mental health problems. But they all have a connection: they all used guns. Thus if we abolish guns, by scrapping the 2nd amendment, these murders might not happen as they could not get the guns to carry them out. Those few criminals that do can be dealt with by the FBI and police and are in a tiny minority anyway just like in so many other countries. Now, I am not an expert on the level of mental health spending in the UK and USA so I have to plead ignorance on this issue to an extent. But what I can say is that there are still many mentally unfit people in Britain that could commit mass murder if they had guns but since they can't get guns, this is one cause of lower gun deaths. Guns in the UK are banned from all people who don't have a need for them like a professional necessity. It is so hard for people to get a gun in the UK and thus fewer people die of gun deaths. This is the same for Sweden, Japan, Australia and Norway and many others. Finally, I need to make a brief statement about the economy. I think that in a debate concerning the lives and rights of people the economy has to play second fiddle. I think we need to put the moral arguments first. But anyway, in the event of banning guns, gun manufacturers can still sell and export to other consumers of guns such as the police, armed forces and farmers home and abroad. The gun producers are not the beating heart of the American economy and thus the effect on the overall economy will not be great. Those that lose jobs in gun production could take their manufacturing skills elsewhere and work in other forms of manufacturing. There will be slight damage, but this is recoverable, minimal and not enough to overturn the mountain of skulls created as a result of the 2nd amendment's existence. To conclude, I have provided a reasonable and workable method of abolishing civilian use of guns. We repeal the second amendment and bring in detailed legislation, interpreted by courts of law, in order to objectively and fairly control who gets a gun. Guns provide little realistic use sufficient to justify their sale to ordinary citizens. Furthermore, they have been proven to be responsible for a high rate of gun murders and because they provide little potential to protect people are undeniably the cause of more murder. The damage to the economy is small and not enough to overturn the moral argument for abolition. The concept of the mythical mega-black market is a complete exaggeration since in almost all other countries this is not the case and most criminals could not obtain illegal firearms. Therefore, abolition is workable and makes sense in order to save people's lives. I would always put the right of people to live above the right of people to own a useless and vile murder-machine.