In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned.

I refuse to say anything about femicide because I call hogwash on the fact that you believe that violence against women deserve a higher priority over men. This is seen because the simple fact that you have to identify gun violence, specifically murders and homicides, is nothing more than an attempt to try to sway the feminist vote in your favor. Violence against women by guns is smaller than against men. This is shown by a FBI expanded break down of homicides. In 2012, 603 people were killed by their female marital partners, while only 110 were killed by male marital partners, which is a staggering 5.48 times higher. Now, if we were to add up the total number of homicides committed by female family members, the number would be 926, this only includes wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters, while the number of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers that committed homicides in 2012 was 589, which is still a ratio of 1:1.57 with women committing more family homicides than their male counter parts. Now, I haven't had much time to do this as I have been procrastinating, but I typed into google your words exactly of, "Banning handguns reduces crime" and the first link was CNN, which I clicked on but quickly left because it was a very biased article, but I will still leave a link as I refuse to be bias and want you to read both sides and decide on your own if I am wrong for disagreeing with them. The second link was a cliff notes one that simple showed what both sides argue for, and how we do need to take note of it because children are dying, I will leave a link because, though it isn't evidence for either of us I would say, it still is a quick recap of how both sides say completely different things. The third link I found interesting and it helped out a lot. You and me both agree that the population doesn't want to ban guns, but then go on to say that we should vote for the buy-back of all handguns. My problem with this is that we live in America and as such, see democracy as something to cherish and to do what the population doesn't want is opposite of what we stand for. Also, the argument that we as a whole didn't want to abolish slavery is not true, because Congress had to have a 2/3 majority in each house, which they did easily in the Senate, and finally in the House after sometime, as well as every single state except Florida, New Jersey, Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas, California, Iowa, and Oregon, only 8 states, while 28 states, 4 more than the 3/4 majority needed, ratified it in 1865, which would mean an overwhelming majority, both in state numbers and population as a whole. Also in the third link, the author states that handguns are not only meant as murder weapons, as, "less than 0.02% (two hundredths of 1%) of the handguns in America. Many of these reported homicides (1,500-2,800) were self-defense or justifiable and, therefore, not criminal." Now I come to the part that really befuddles me, your contradiction in the fact that you want us to deal with a less than ideal world, but then go on to say that because guns aren't used in defense more than 1% that we must assume that we should ban them as that will stop criminals from gaining guns. Well, that sounds fine, but what about those criminals that don't have registered guns, or refuse to give them up. If we but guns back, then those who obey the law will follow it as it would most likely be a felony if they own a handgun. But criminals are not above the law, and some good people would turn into these now felons because of it. Just look at the war on drugs. Many people were sentenced to 20+ years for marijuana, and that is because they had done it for a while, and when the crack down came, they simply had to resort to going into the now highly criminalized area of buying from drug traffickers. What would stop a criminal from trafficking guns if they have not stopped with marijuana, even after roughly 36,000 are currently in prison for drug-related charges. This is similar to the New Jersey law that prohibits the wearing of a bullet-proof vest when robbing a bank. A criminal is already in the wrong, so why would this change that. In part E of your first argument, you say some weapons need to be outlawed. You never specified, but I will assume you are talking about assault weapons as that is what many are pushing for outlawing. The biggest problem with that is that by broadly banning assault weapons, we leave it up to law makers to decide what is and isn't an assault weapon. Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson have posted a statement that tells how, "Prior to 1989, the term 'assault weapon' did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of 'assault rifles.'" This is continued when David Kopel stated that, "What some people call "assault weapons" function like every other normal firearm"they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. ... Today in America, most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown shooting. Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns." What this is meant to show you is that what is classified as an assault weapon by politicians is not actually an assault weapon. This is because true assault weapons fire multiple rounds when the trigger is puller, which has been illegal for decades, is different from a semi-automatic as they fire 1 shot each time the trigger is pulled which is just like anything police officers use. You are mislead with point A of your second contention as America doesn't have the highest homicide rate per country, that title is reserved for Venezuela at roughly 53 per 100,000 citizens. A side note, Venezuela has someone the one of the highest gun control laws with it nearly illegal to own both guns and ammo, though I'm not comparing as I stated before that comparing countries in this area is not fair but still a fact I thought should be spoken of. You also spoke about how guns are the murder weapon of choice, and while that is true, if we did ban and collected all 270 million guns in America, which is impossible as even China with a harsh dictatorial government still has illegal guns after 50+ years of this rule, we would then have knives take over the murder scene and, though they aren't effective at mass murder, could easily replace most of the gun homicides because of their easy accessibility, and how hard they are to be traced. Finally, if you are supporting the buy-back of every single gun in America, where do you say we get the money. If we raise taxes then the money that they are given for their guns would ultimately not be theirs as it would be slowly taken back from them with higher taxes on food, property, or income, all of which would hurt them. The average gun costs $750 and, when multiplied by 27,000,000 guns owned in America, would add up to at least $202,500,000,000 dollars, which is impossible to be considered reasonable. This is because if 30,000 people are murdered every year by guns, and the average person is worth $5,000,000 according to John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University whose work focuses on national security and risk analysis, that would add up to $150,000,000 which is less than the amount we would spend. You could use the argument that that is per year and that after 2 years the program would pay for it's self, but that is only an average, and doesn't account for any variables out of our control such as the loss in revenue from guns that accounts for $5,100,000,000 of taxes from the sale of guns, the loss of 209,750 jobs that are directly related to the firearms industry, and the affect this policy could have on politics as gun companies make up a decent part of military spending and with this policy, many gun companies will have to raise their prices to both make up for the loss profits, and to attempt to give the government backlash for a policy that will send many into bankruptcy that could cause another 2008 stock market crash and a possible recession. http://www.as-coa.org... https://mises.org... http://www.assaultweapon.info... http://www.drugwarfacts.org... http://www.infowars.com... https://www.fbi.gov... http://people.duke.edu... http://www.cliffsnotes.com... http://www.cnn.com...