We Should Not Ban Assault Weapons or High Capacity Magazines (2)

http://www.youtube.com... For a source as to where you can learn to reload a magazine in about 2 seconds after 15 minutes of practice, please watch the entire video or skip to 15:30 It is interesting to find myself debating against who I believe is a fellow Utilitarain. I wholeheartedly agree with your position of curtailing liberty to promote utlility, although I can still show that banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines would not promote utility. I would actually like to note that I usually discuss this issue from the perspective of a Libertarian and rights based perspective because people are more accustomed to discussing it in this way. From this point on, I believe my opponent is informed enough such that I can approach this issue from my true position as a Utilitarian. What I do feel might be more constructive is if later my opponent and I have a conversation, from the perspective of Utilitarians, as to whether or not people should be permitted to own guns at all and if they should even be restricted. Assault Weapons As it stands, the assault weapons ban would not have done anything to prevent future massacres because it does not attack features that make firearms more lethal. In order to have this conversation appropriately, we would have to gather a team of scientists to discuss different firearm features, such as bullet size and killing potential, and weigh that vs. practical civilian use. However the higher powered rifles that could be considered real assault weapons that don't have much practical use in civilized society may still not have legitimate justification to be banned under the Utilitarian moral theory. There are some 5 to 10 million assault weapon owners in America, nearly all of which are used for recreational purposes. About 300 people are killed each year by rifles, and a subset of that will be the assault weapons we're talking about. If we approach this from the Utilitarian perspective, then the pleasure received by the 5-10 million people firing these weapons for fun (typically at inanimate objects) outweighs the suffering created by the extra people who are killed each year because higher powered weapons are used (remember not all of the 300 will go away if assault weapons aren't used). http://www.fbi.gov... (info on people killed by rifles). http://www.slate.com...(assault weapons in US). High Capacity Magazines As far as I can tell, the Tuscon shooting is the only mass shooting out there where someone tackled the shooter, and if wikipedia can be trusted then the person who did this was ex-military. Next, someone needing high capacity magazines is not limited to them simply having bad aim. Usually if someone is shot, especially by a handgun, they don't die nor do they stop what their doing. The typical scenario, especially if someone is being robbed, is that presenting a gun leads to the offender running away. If the offender is one of the few who chooses to stay and fight, the would-be victim's life is likely to be at risk. They may need to shoot the offender multiple times to stop them from doing whatever they're doing. Additionally, the would-be victim may miss, there may be multiple offenders, and the offender may be high on drugs (in which case they are EXTREMELY dangerous). From a realistic standpoint however, there is no reason to have HCP's nor is there a strong reason to ban them based on lives lost. Mass shooters can reload fairly quickly, or they can carry multiple guns as most do. Consider the Virginia Tech shooting, the shooter had a few 15 round and mostly 10 round magazines and he used a handgun, but he was responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in US history, killing 33 people and wounding 20. HCP's, in all reality, don't hurt much nor do they help. Since they have virtually no positive nor negative effect, we might as well have them. As for the associated cost of banning them, we couldn't know unless we decided to ban them, but it is likely to cost taxpayers millions depending upon how they regulate them. Consider background checks: as they are they're not doing much to reduce violence in America. However the background checks cost taxpayers about 2.18 per check, multiply by about 118 million background checks run, we get 257 million taxpayer dollars spent on a policy that is currently doing little to prevent violence. Depending upon how these magazines are regulated, its likely to cost us millions of dollars to save, at best, a small number of lives. The only reason this is relevant is because there's probably a more effective means to spend that money to save more lives, such as investing in healthcare or fighting poverty.