Bluesteel v. Mikal, Resolved: The US should adopt a ban on assault weapons similar to Australia's.

== Rebuttal == R1) What is an assault weapon (AW)? Mikal says that he doesn't accept that a pistol can be an assault weapon, but nearly every single source agrees that the TEC-9 is an assault weapon. The TEC-9 is a *fully* automatic pistol. The term "assault weapon" has more to do with the weapon's destructiveness, not with the length of its barrel. One gun manufacturer makes a pistol version of the Uzi submachine gun that can be converted to fully automatic. It's hard to argue that a slightly smaller Uzi is not an "assault weapon," given that the Uzi was used by the Israeli military in tactical assault missions. There is not some arbitrary length cut-off for assault weapons, such that a pistol cannot be one. I specifically did *not* make the resolution specific to "assault rifles," but that's what Mikal is trying to force me to argue. "Assault weapon" must be interpreted as a broader term than "assault rifle" because "weapon" is a broader category than "rifle." In addition, Senator Feinstein's proposed 2013 "Assault Weapons Ban" defines a pistol with a high-capacity magazine as an assault weapon. If your pistol can fire 30 bullets, it is an assault weapon for the purposes of this debate. However, you can make your pistol "not an assault weapon" by getting rid of your high-capacity magazine. You don't have to get rid of the pistol entirely. Mikal says that Australia does not ban handguns. I agree that they do not ban handguns, but they do ban high-capacity *magazines* for handguns, which is my proposal. I am not proposing a handgun ban. Debate Theory. This is a "plan" topic, which was supposed to give me some leeway in what I am allowed to propose. Mikal can't dictate what my plan is, especially when he *dropped* my contextual definition which said that "assault weapon" is a term of art. [Source 2, Rd. 2]. My source said that "assault weapon" is actually a meaningless legal term created by lawmakers; it is not a term used outside the context of gun control legislation. "Assault weapon" means whatever a particular gun law defines it as. Many states define "assault weapon" differently under their laws. The 2013 "Assault Weapons Ban" would have defined "assault weapon" the same way I am now, so what I have proposed is perfectly reasonable. Furthermore, I told Mikal I was going to run a high-capacity magazine ban before he even *accepted* the debate. My definition is not abusive because Mikal knew what he was getting into by accepting. R2) Ineffective First, Mikal says that mass shootings are more common in Europe than in the U.S. His source doesn't say this. It just says that Europe has had some horrific mass shootings despite strict gun control laws in *some* of its countries. Notably, the source mentions that a single mass shooting has happened in England, which has the strictest gun laws. However, the semi-automatic rifles used in England's mass shooting were owned *legally* by a UK citizen who managed to get them approved as part of a hunting license, which is a huge loophole in the UK law. [1] In fact, my proposal goes further in some ways than the UK's gun ban because the UK allows 1.7 million citizens to have semi-automatic weapons under its lax "hunting license" loophole. [1] I would simply ban all semi-automatic self-loading rifles. Hunters could still use rifles where bullets are hand-loaded into the chamber one at a time. If anything, a single shot rifle is more "sporting" than using a semi-auto to gun down a bunch of deer. Next, Mikal says that people could still get assault rifles on the black market, just like people get drugs and prostitutes. However, first, the punishments I've proposed are a lot harsher than for drugs or prostitution. Drug pushers and prostitutes rarely get life imprisonment for selling their wares, whereas sellers of illicit firearms would face life imprisonment. If you're going to do something illegal, selling drugs is probably a better bet than selling illegal guns under my regime. Second, it's possible to get uranium on the black market, but that doesn't mean owning it should be legal. Illegality makes it a lot more *difficult* to buy. The same would be true of assault weapons. As Mikal's own Source #11 points out, nearly all mass shooters purchased their guns legally. We should therefore make it a lot harder to purchase assault weapons. Currently, it's not *impossible* to purchase assault weapons in Australia (there is a black market), but they've made it a lot harder for mass shooters to do so, given that they have had zero mass shootings. Third, Mikal says the 1994 Ban failed because although it *did* decrease the use of the *banned* guns in crime, people shifted to other types of guns with large-capacity magazines (LCMS). However, turn this argument against him; Mikal concedes that a ban reduces crimes involving the *targeted* guns. My ban targets all high-capacity magazines. People would be unable to shift to using "other" legal guns with high-capacity magazines because they would *all* be illegal. So Mikal concedes that my ban would reduce crime because *all* LCMS would be targeted and bans do decrease crimes using the targeted gun. This also takes out his "black market" argument because the 1994 Ban resulted in a significant decrease in crimes using the banned guns, which proves that criminals did not find these guns easily accessible on the black market. Mikal next claims that allowing assault rifle ownership somehow reduces crime. However, these cross-state comparisons are extremely problematic because (1) comparing California to Montana is comparing apples to oranges since they differ on so many other metrics, and (2) as Mikal pointed out later, rifles are used in too few crimes to get statistically significant results from such a comparison. Furthermore, Mikal fails to explain a causal mechanism; why would assault rifles ownership (e.g. compared to pistol ownership) reduce crime? R3) Grandfathering Mikal posted his round approximately 10 minutes after I posted mine, meaning he pre-wrote it. "Grandfathering" has no relevance to this debate because I argued for a compulsory buyback. It would still be illegal to own an "assault weapon," even if it was manufactured before my ban went into effect. R4) Australia's buyback Mikal says gun ownership increased back to normal levels after the buyback. That is to be expected: gun owners want to own guns. However, after Australia's law went into effect, someone who owned a semi-automatic rifle would instead have to go buy a pistol with a magazine size of 10 or fewer bullets or a non-self-loading hunting rifle. Mikal never says what *types* of guns were purchased after the ban went into effect. His argument doesn't prove the ban was ineffective. R5) Rifles are not used in homicides Mikal says that rifles are not used in homicides and cites the FBI data to show that only 323 homicides involve rifles per year. However, first, the FBI data excludes about half of all mass shootings from its dataset for no apparent reason. [2] For example, for some reason, the FBI did not include the Sandy Hook shooting in its dataset. [2] So the 323 number is way too small. Second, Mikal ignores my argument that 26% of all homicides involved a high-capacity magazine (including handguns). Third, 323 deaths *per year* is still a lot. To put things in perspective, we would spend tens of billions of dollars to stop a terrorist attack that could claim 323 lives. Why not spend the same on preventing mass shootings? R6) Are pistols used more often in mass shootings? With this argument, Mikal is ignoring the fact that most mass shooters use multiple weapons (e.g. a rifle/shotgun and a pistol). For example, the Aurora shooter used both an assault rifle and a Glock pistol. Mikal's dataset included only 62 total mass shootings, so if 22 shotguns and 29 rifles were used, then long guns were used in up to 82% of the shootings. In addition, many of the pistols used in mass shootings had high-capacity magazines (my source said up to 83% did). The Columbine shooters used a TEC-9 pistol with a high-capacity magazine. Assault weapons most definitely facilitate mass shootings. It's hard to deny that. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com...