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

http://www.youtube.com...http://www.youtube.com...Return Arguments:1. LibertyYou argue that it is not necessarily unethical to violate property rights. I actually agree, however when is it justifiable to take away one's property rights? If we are justified in taking away anyone's property at any time for any reason, then we are essentially living under a dictatorship. America prides itself on freedom and liberty, or the ability to do what one wants and own any object one desires as long as he or she is not violating the rights of others. Unless my opponent wishes to argue why we would be better off living under tyrannical rule (and I am by no means stating that he is) then I'm sure we can agree that liberty is good, and if we are to ban assault weapons and/or high capacity magazines it will be because owning them is permitting greater rights and/or more rights to be violated than that of the property rights of millions of gun owners. Although my opponent did not bring this up, please note that this takes care of the very common arguments stating that "no one NEEDS an assault weapon," because you are theoretically allowed to own anything until proven otherwise. I am arguing that the evidence supporting assault weapon bans and high capacity magazine bans has not proven otherwise. 2. Assault WeaponsPerhaps my biggest problem with the assault weapons ban is that the people trying to legislate it know nothing about firearms and are attacking characteristics that do not contribute to the deadliness of the weapon. There is substantial data available displaying which weapons are deadlier an why, but this research was disregarded, and they attack special characteristics which sometimes even make guns safer to handle and carry, such as the pistol grip and collapsible stocks. For example, the demonized AR-15 is nearly functionally identical to the Ruger Mini 14, both of which can accept high capacity magazines, fire the same bullet, and are both semi-automatic. Given that there are weapons equally deadly to "assault weapons" that would not be banned, the assault weapons ban cannot be beneficial as it is defined. 3. High Capacity Magazines (HCP)Recall our criterion for owning property: theoretically you can own anything until proven otherwise. Obviously many gun owners feel they are being wronged by taking away high capacity magazines, therefore they are having their rights violated. So given past research, what could the net effect of banning HCP's be?The typical rule of thumb is that if you practice for about 15 minutes you can learn to reload a magazine in about 2 seconds. The chances of an ordinary civilian being close enough to the shooter and being in the state of mind to run TOWARD the shooter an tackle him or her is virtually nonexistent. Could it give the potential victims a chance to run away? Maybe, but how many lives this lapse in the shooting would save is likely to be small.Additionally, HCP are used in approximately 14%-22% of gun crimes, and rarely are they used to their full potential. There are also instances where citizens need more then ten shots to defend their lives, although they seem to be about as rare as mass shootings. We must weigh the potential lives lost vs. the lives saved from citizens possessing HCP's, and we actually don't know if there even is a positive or a negative benefit from having them. What is clear is at best the lives lost or saved will be a small amount. Additionally, it would take probably 50 years before HCP's began to grandfather out and dry up, AND the associated cost of instituting these bans would be extremely high (time and labor, paid by taxes, goes in to enforcing these laws). This is all disregarding the property rights of gun owners. https://www.ncjrs.gov... (This is where I got the data on HCP's, you don't have to read it but you can if you want to). In summation, we don't know if there will be a positive benefit from banning HCPs, it would take an extremely long time to even begin to see an effect, the policy is by no means cost effective, and the sum of millions of property rights arguably outweighs the small number of rights to life lost.