Creating gun control laws in the U.S. without passing an amendment, should not be tolerated.

This is my first debate, and as a result I am not so sharp with the standards. As my opponent pointed out, I did neglect to define certain terms. I agree with his definition for respect, and I mostly agree with his definition set for infringe, but I would like to make a slight modification. Since we are dealing with legal issues in this debate the definition "to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another" can be a bit redundant and might get into a purely semantic argument that neither of us should want to do. Instead I propose the definition be amended to "to encroach upon in a way that violates the rights of another. " That being said, those were not the only two definitions I lacked in defining. I should have made it clear that this debate is concerned with federal laws. As none of my opponents arguments thus far have been on state vs federal distinctions, I hope that this does not affect the debate, but it"s a point I should have made from the beginning. And furthermore, I would like to define gun control laws as the typical laws that are either being passed or seriously discussed to be passed in modern America. This means that although passing a bill against the possession of a gun that shoots fully automatic grenades is indeed a law on gun control, I would like the debate to focus on standard laws that are commonly debated and proposed such as limiting magazine size, attempting to make "assault rifles" illegal, universal background checks, and similar commonly discussed gun control. I am aware that my lack of definitions from the beginning may upset my opponent, but I hope that his entire argument was not based on something I just clarified. As long as that is true, I offer my apologies and hope that we can continue along the path that I just clarified. "Despite my opponent neglecting to provide any evidence to prove his claim, it is in inconsequential as he argues against gun control while the resolution was "Creating gun control laws in the U. S. without passing an amendment, should not be tolerated. " His argument therefore did not support his proposition that an amendment needs to be made to pass gun control laws. " While the argument is that it should not be tolerated without passing an amendment, arguing the constitutionality is not adequate. Even if my opponent was able to prove that an amendment is not necessary, that does not in turn prove that laws should be tolerated. For example if the state government passed a law banning the sale of silver cars, that would be constitutionally allowed, but I would still argue that it should not be tolerated because unless there is proof that silver cars are a hazard, it is an unnecessary limit on personal freedom and it also wastes taxpayer dollars. So my opponent needs to concern himself with the purpose of gun control laws as well as the constitutional justification. I did not provide any statistics supporting my claim, because the burden of proof is in the hands of those supporting laws. Using the same example, if my opponent was in support of banning silver cars, it is not on me to prove that silver cars are not a hazard " it is on him to prove that they are. Since this is already the second round, I will propose a couple common arguments, but I cannot completely anticipate the statistics my opponent might use. Typically many people assume that since guns are used in crimes, by controlling guns, they control crime. There are a few issues with this. One is that simply passing a law does not change things. Even if the intention behind the law is perfect, if it doesn"t effectively accomplish its intended purpose, it still will not do anything. To this point I will simply reference prohibition. We made alcohol illegal, but it didn"t stop people from drinking alcohol, it just created a criminal underground that still exists, because there was now a demand for something illegal. People violate the law, especially those who would be willing to commit crimes with guns. The other issue is the legitimacy of the purpose. I will reiterate that there no concrete statistics proving that gun control reduces crime. Factcheck. org has a good synopsis on the effectiveness of the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons [1]. I will agree there are conflicting opinions, I simply maintain there are no statistically significant statistics that prove any effectiveness of these types of laws. And without proof, it is wasteful financially and we should not give up personal freedoms without a reason. I leave the burden of proof of statistical rationale to my opponent. Now I will explain how these laws do indeed infringe on Americans right to bear arms. I agree that everything my opponent wrote on the cases of United States v Miller and District of Columbia v Heller is factually accurate, however I would like to dig deeper because it can be confusing. In United states v Miller when they said "that the sorts of weapons protected [in the Second Amendment] are those "in common use at the time," this was in reference to a discussion of what militia meant. If my opponent is proposing that that line infers that only 18th century weapons are protected by the second amendment, then he is extremely misguided. In the 17th century, the weapons were not the same as those in use today. The guns used then were muzzle loaded and are only found today as antiques. The first revolver, which is still not a semi-auto gun, was not invented until 1814. It is important to realize that guns that were "in common use at the time" simply do not exist for use by citizens as we examine the supreme court cases in question. District of Columbia v. Heller upheld citizens" rights to keep weapons for lawful purposes such as self defense. Those weapons in question were not "in common use at the time" of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. So common use simply is common use in today"s timeframe, not at the time of the ratification of the constitution " this is an important point to understand. So it seems that the point my opponent is trying to make is that guns that aren"t in common use, have no protection from the second amendment, but this gets complicated, because some of the factors that affect common use, ie gun selection by law abiding citizens, is the laws that prevent them from buying certain guns. So if we allow laws to limit types of weapons, eventually we"ll have a situation where a gun that might have been in common use is not because it is illegal, and thus it isn"t protected by the second amendment. This is somewhat circular. More relevant is the ability of a gun to be used effectively for legal self-defense. District of Columbia vs Heller stated "The District"s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of "arms" that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. " [2] So if there is a reason that certain guns that are needed for self-defense, the court holds that they are protected by the second amendment. There are many examples of necessary uses of guns that were or might become illegal. For example, assault rifles were important for self defense used by many Korean business owners in the LA riots. As I pointed on in the first round, there are many uses of guns for self defense, and unless you can prove that guns cost more lives than they save, laws reducing our personal freedoms of owning and using guns should not be tolerated. [1]. http://www.factcheck.org... [2]. http://www.law.cornell.edu...