Gun Control is Bad

Since this is the second rebuttal I will do my best to "shoot down" your points. It sounded good in my head I promise. I would like to start this rebuttal off by saying that whether or not an economics professor is related to gun control is irrelevant, as the quote still has merit when discussing the topic. What it means is that you should judge a policy not by what is supposed to happen but by what actually happens. This relates to gun control because people who advocate it believe in the idea of taking away guns, and never judge the policy by its history of flawed results. Then this lovely quote was made by my opponent in an attempt to rebut my point that gun control falls flat on its face in practice: "Has it ever really been used in practice? No, we're scared to change our laws." That is a lie. Gun control has been used in practice. Let's look at Venezuela, the country that is number one on the international crime index yet has a total gun ban. We can even look back to my first argument, in which I pointed out that 92% of mass shootings occur in "gun free zones", and that enormous spikes in gun crime occured in Australia when they implemented a gun ban. In 1987, the National Institute of Justice found that after the implementation of Canada's 1977 gun controls prohibiting handgun possession for protection, the "breaking and entering" crime rate rose 25%. Not only that, but the U.S. government itself has found no proof that gun laws are effective in reducing crime. Of course, my opponent's response to all this is predictable. Since what I just typed isn't counterbalanced by peppy anecdotes or corny quips, it is invalid and will be glossed over by my opponent. My opponent then brings up a graph and tells me to imagine how the graph would look in a world without guns. I know exactly what it would look like. The amount of knife victims would skyrocket, along with the personal weapons and blunt weapons categories. That is, of course, if a world without guns is even possible. I would like my opponent to know that I do think outside the box, but only after I use common sense. I would like for my opponent to tell me how he plans for the 270 million gun owners in the U.S. to have their guns taken away without any repercussions of insane proportions. "In a world without guns, would those 2.5 million people need to protect themselves in the first place?" Technically yes. As I stated before, a criminal is not motivated by their weapon, they are motivated by other things. Robbers rob for money or stuff they didn't have before. Murder happens usually because of harsh feelings towards someone or something or their victim was just in the way. Those 2.5 million people wouldn't have the perfect scare tactic to ward off an offender, yet the offender would most likely have another weapon, like a knife, club, or homemade bomb. "Do you live in some kind of bizarre, alternate reality where shootings happen every minute?" The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (in the fall of 1995) found that since people defend themselves 2.5 million times a year, that means more than 6,500 people defend themselves a day, or once every 13 seconds. So yes, I do live in some kind of bizarre, alternate reality where shootings happen every minute. "You'll only need to use a gun about once in your lifetime, if at all. Why pay $100 for it?" Because I want to save 8 times as many people as the police would save in a shooting situation. To quote you, Frankfurter50, "use your head, for gosh sakes". "If there are a lot of shootings, we need to amp up our police force, not give more people guns". As great of an idea this sounds, the world doesn't work this way. I have shown you the 1/8th statistic which shows that when you wait for the police to arrive, more people die, and all you responded with was a video which did not have much relation to the topic. I, however, have evidence that proves giving more people guns helps reduce crime. In 1982, in the Atlantan suburban of Kennesaw, Georgia, passed a law that required heads of households to always keep at least one firearm in their house. The residential burglary rate dropped a crazy 89% (Gary Kleck, "Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force". Sadly though, this crucial fact won't have much impact. My opponent has not responded to any of my factual arguments but merely dismissed them as "dull, useless statistics", while hyping up his one graph as "undeniable, cold, hard truth". I would like to know my opponent's take on all my "dull, useless statistics". How does he decipher the fact that most mass shootings occur in "gun free zones", or that criminals are more worried about armed victims than they are of the police, or that places in which owning a gun is mandatory had a lot less crime? Or how about the fact that gun bans caused a spike in crime? I am curious as to how my opponent will respond. "Guns don't kill people. But they play a big part in it". Just as spoons don't make people fat, but they play a big part in it. RIght, guys and gals? I am ready for my opponents next argument.