That we should ban guns in urban areas

I'm glad my opponent brought up the fact that the U.S. has higher homicide rates than the U.K. To see why these statistics are irrelevant, we have to look at the history of gun control laws in Britain. The first major restriction on guns in Britain came in 1920. [1] Before then, both British and Americans had virtually no gun control laws. During the time when neither country had gun control laws, the U.S. still had about 4 times the homicides per capita that Britain had. [1] Gun control, or lack of it, is not responsible for the disparities in crime rates between the U.S. and Britain. Now, for Pro's 3 main arguments: 1. The "right to bear arms," the "right to personal safety," and the "right to life" my opponent mentions are misleading ways of thinking about rights. I am not arguing that anyone should have the absolute right to bear arms, as in things like nuclear weapons. Humans, however, do have the right to their own lives, and thus the right to defend their lives. Thus, one cannot legitimately use a nuclear weapon, because such a weapon cannot be used for self defense, while one does have a right to use guns, because they can be legitimately used for self-defense. My opponent claims that allowing citizens to bear arms would violate the rights of the general population, such as their "rights" to safety and life. This is not the case. First, a right to something that necessarily takes away someone else's rights is not a legitimate right. I do not have the legitimate right to steal your stuff, for example, because my claim of that right would violate your right to own property. Similarly, one does not have the right to life in the sense that they have the right to violate another person's rights to stay alive. I assume you agree that I do not have the right to steal someone else's kidney if I can't find a voluntary donor. That's because my right to life, as I said before, means the right to not be murdered, not the right to violate the rights of others to stay alive, otherwise, it cannot be considered a legitimate right. And contrary to the supposed "rights" my opponent claims would be violated by allowing gun ownership, the right to self-defense does not violate the rights of anyone else. Someone could accidently shoot an innocent person, but then that wouldn't count as self-defense, and thus would not mean that the right to self-defense violates other people's rights. As for the right to self-defense being obsolete in "modern society" because of police, this claim is completely ridiculous. Police rarely protect people from home invasions—by the time they get there, the crime has already happened, and the homeowner is dead, burgled, or fine because he happened to own a gun and used it to defend himself and his family. The police cannot be everywhere at once, and simply cannot get to homes in time to stop the vast majority of crimes, only clean up after them, and maybe catch the criminal some time later. Furthermore, who can an innocent person call for help if the POLICE are attacking them? Surely you would agree that the victims of Stalin and Hitler had the moral right to defend themselves against the police, even though they didn't have the ability to. While the United States is not Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany (yet), citizens must have the right to defend themselves against tyranny in the possible future. 2. That 43:1 ratio is misleading and intellectually dishonest. It doesn't count non-violent ways that guns can stop crime, such as deterring criminals from committing the crime in the first place, and the victim subduing the criminal with the threat of a gun without actually having to fire it. Every year, 2.5 million acts of self-defense with a firearm occur, most of them occurring without any shots being fired, and 200,000 of them are women using a gun to defend against sexual assault. [2] Robbery victims that own guns will be injured 8% less than unarmed victims, and the crime will fail 70% of the time instead of only 12%. [2] 3. Your law would not eradicate the gun market. It would certainly reduce the total amount of guns, but it would do so by taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, not out of the hands of criminals who already use illegal guns. There's absolutely no way the proposed plan would do anything to keep guns out of the hands of criminal gangs. Millions of PEOPLE illegal cross our borders every year, but you think you can keep guns out of the country? And how exactly would you stop guns flowing from rural areas, where they would be legal, to urban areas? This would just increase the power of organized crime by increasing profits, as gangs would control the urban gun market, and making sure that criminals don't have to worry about their victims trying to defend themselves. [1] & [2] No room, see comments section.