Should guns be illegal to own for anyone that is not police or military in the US

I hope that both myself and my opponent are able to maintain a level of respectful contention and refrain from personal attacks, something both of us failed to do in our comment war the past few days. So I will do my best to keep this a respectful debate and ask only the same of my opponent. In addition, I think we are both quite stubborn and so the same sentiments go out to him as well. Counter to my opponent's topic, mine goal will be to show there is benefit from maintaining the current laws that allow for civilians to own firearms. While gun control and levels of control will come into this debate, the purpose is should guns be allowed at all and would we benefit from eliminating the legal ownership of guns by civilians. ---------As my opponent asked for, here are the answers to his questions:Second amendment - YesSafety - YesHobby (including but not limited to, hunting, sport/target shooting, collecting, etc) - YesThe rest are irrelevant. Guns are out there. It's an irrefutable fact that there are guns in the world. It is also a fact that guns have the ability to kill and are often designed for such a purpose. However, it is not a fact that by eliminating the ability for civilians to own guns you are making that population any safer. I will begin with a few simple refutations of my opponent's arguments and then I will add to my own. 1. The vacationing analogy my opponent offers is pointless. I ask you this, would you rather go for a vacation with your family to a third world country ripe with poverty, no clean living accommodations and corrupt governments OR go to Disney land? People don't vacation in Somalia not because of the number of guns but because of the whole country. In addition, the reason for the amount of guns in Somalia is due to illegal gun trade, acquiring them from the government and ethnic groups in war with each other, and other factors. To top this rebuttal off, the US is the second highest tourist destination in the world, second only to France. And the number of gun owners in the US is 7-8 times that of the entire population of Somalia, and the number of guns in the US is equal to over 30 times that of Somali population. So, clearly it is not the number of guns, it is the country as a whole and lack of any touristy attractions. In addition, Mexico which is a dangerous place as a recent times is #10 on the list, the UK which is high up on gun control is #7. So arguing tourism poses no relevance. . http://mkt.unwto.org...2. Yes, there may be issues with criminals buying guns at gun shows. However, this does not emphasize the point that civilians should not own them. That is a question of increasing levels of control as to who buys them, not eliminating them as a whole. Criminals are not allowed to own guns, a convicted felon may not possess a firearm, as such, for them to purchase them is illegal. And so, for my opponent to argue this point is arguing for increased measures to stop illegal firearm purchases not eliminating guns from law abiding citizens. 3. I'd ask my opponent to show me statistics regarding gun owners simply "losing" their guns. I know and have known many gun owners, and never once have I known one or known one to tell a story (which us gun owners like to do, like any normal people socializing) about someone "losing" a gun. So until I see statistics on this I see it as a mute point. 4. Corrupted gun dealers selling guns to people not authorize to own them. Again, not an issue of gun ownership but a matter of the government cracking down on these dealers. This does not play into how eliminating guns makes us safer. 5. A "law-abiding citizen" for the purposes of this debate, will be anyone who has not committed any violent crime or non-violent crime above small misdemeanors such as a possession charge or minor in consumption or reckless driving. Anyone convicted of a crime involving a weapon or some form of violent action or direct violation of another person's rights (i. e. burglary, rape, assault, etc) will not be considered a law-abiding citizen. Being as we are debating the benefits or non-benefits of eliminating guns from the civilian population, I see no harm in defining this in this fashion. While the legal definition may be looser or broader, due to space and eliminating confusion, I think this definition is acceptable. And through this definition it eliminates those that my opponent mentioned that have been convicted of crimes are were allowed firearms.6. Now, in this next paragraph I ask all my readers to pay attention to my argument here and to question the validity of my opponent's argument from here on out (this is not a personal attack but questioning the validity of your argument). The reason for this is his sources and his data presented. a. There is no means of getting actual numbers for illegally owned guns as they are illegally owned. The numbers presented are not validated. In addition, the escalation by exact numbers is a fallacy as there is no accounting for what measures to prevent illegal trafficking may take place so those estimations are not accurate, and by those estimations one could logically deduce that 10 years ago there were no illegal guns at all. b. My opponent states that his source (which is just a domain not an article) say there are 341,000 guns stolen annually. The next sentence he says 23.775 (I will assume he meant a comma not a decimal though) are reported stolen annually. Which is it? To get a more accurate and reliable picture, and I'm going to be nice and throw my opponent a lifeline here, the actual Bureau of Justice Statistics, a government agency, gave us a number, average 232,400 annually. (. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov...) c. Four people every hour? That equals, 35040 annually. However, in 2008, only 16,272 murders were committed, and 10,886 of those with a gun. Where does this 35,040 come from? Are we including accidents? That adds another 613 deaths making the total 16,885. (. http://www.justfacts.com...) I'd ask my opponent to please show me where his numbers are coming from. In addition, his second page he lists (. http://gunvictimsaction.org...) equates it out to 80 deaths per day, in addition to 3000 gun crimes daily. Now, that makes 29,200 murders and 1,095,000 gun crimes. A 5000 statistical difference? And on the site I listed (justfacts) which has quoted sources on it as well, shows, that 436,000 violent crimes were committed with a gun. So that's a 251% jump in actual statistics. Now, my own argument:Using data from my Just Facts page, civilians used guns to defend themselves from violent crime 989,883 times in 2000. According to the BoJS (. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov...) 6,323,000 violent crimes happened that year. Meaning 1:6.3 were defended against. In addition, according to and (. http://dailyanarchist.com... which is not academic but posts its sources check if you want), in these shootings, (accounting for Aurora and Newtown), armed civilian intervention has an average of 1.8 deaths per incident. Waiting on police 14.29 per incident. Guns save lives when there are gun carrying criminals. Sure we have cops, but waiting on them kills people. Want training? Want qualifications? That's fine, but stripping civilians of weapons will get people killed. I ask my opponent to validate his argument with credible sources, Gun Victims Action is just as propaganda as you claim the NRA to be. And to provide some argument as to how we'll actually benefit from making guns illegal to civilians as I have just shown that they have and do save lives.