Fire v.s. bsh: In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned.

Thanks, Fire, for this debate.FRAMEWORKFire does not offer a cohesive framework with which to assess the round. I will therefore offer one to fill the void, namely, rule consequentialism. To clarify this, "rule-consequentialism selects rules solely in terms of the goodness of their consequences and then claims that these rules determine which kinds of acts are morally wrong." [1] We should prefer consequentalism for several reasons:A. In matters of policy, appeals to a priori values fail"Appeals to a priori moral principles...often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense...the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that...their policies are somehow to the overall advantage of society." [2]B. Non-consequentialist standards devolve into consequentialismOther "moral systems...provide no clear way to resolve conflicts between moral duties. A deontological moral system should include both a moral duty not to lie and one to keep others from harm, for example, but...how is a person to choose between those two moral duties? A popular response to this is to simply choose the 'lesser of two evils,' but that means relying on which of the two has the least evil consequences and, therefore, the moral choice is being made on a consequentialist rather than a deontological basis." [3]ARGUMENTSI. Gun overabundance poses severe risks to the health and safety of AmericansA. SuicidesHarvard professors who have immersed themselves in studying the impacts of guns on society found that guns were closely linked to increased suicide rates. They write: "we analyzed the relationship of gun availability and suicide among differing age groups across the 9 US regions. Levels of gun ownership are highly correlated with suicide rates across all age groups, even after controlling for lifetime major depression and serious suicidal thoughts." [4]Suicides are more often than not (80%) impulsive acts. [5] Other means of suicide, like overdosing on pills, take longer to work or may end up injuring rather than killing. Guns have greater lethality and can work nearly instantaneously. For people who use guns, they have little opportunity to change their mind in the course of a suicide attempt and summon help, or to receive help after a failed attempt. Moreover, someone wanting to kill themselves may be put off by the potential pain of non-gun alternatives; guns, on the other hand, are viewed as a painless alternative, reducing the mental barriers that a suicidal person has against making a suicide attempt. Limiting gun suicides, then, logically will reduce the number and fatality of suicides.B. Accidental DeathsAfter studying all the gunshot deaths in King County, WA, over a 5 year period, researchers found "for every time a gun in the home was involved in a self-protection homicide, they noted 1.3 unintentional deaths, 4.5 criminal homicides, and 37 firearm suicides." [6] During the period of the study, this county was home to approximately 1.3 million people, a sizable population of people. [7] "This implies that for every case where someone in a gun-owning house hold uses a gun to successfully stop a life-threatening attack, nearly forty-three people in similar households will die from a gunshot." [8] "Children aged 5 to 14 years in the United States have 11 times the likelihood of being killed accidentally with a gun compared with similarly aged children in other developed countries...According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data, between 2003 and 2007, the typical resident from the 15 states with the most guns...was 6 times more likely to die in a gun accident than a typical resident from the 6 states with the fewest guns." [9]C. Anti-DeterrenceRecent research suggests that the presence of a gun in a household may function as an inducement to commit crimes. Guns are "valuable loot" for criminals who may not be able to acquire these guns through legal means. [10] Ownership of a gun correlates with higher rates of firearm assault and theft. [11]Researchers have suggested that possessing a gun gives one a false or overstated sense of security. That sense of security may lead one to go into neighborhoods one might have previously skirted around, or to push the gun-holder to overreact in otherwise resolvable conflicts. [12] This inflated sense of invincibility or safety can thus encourage the possessor the gun to place themselves in dangerous situations that put them at significant risk. [12] The presence of a gun on a person may also make it easier for a person to, in a moment of rage, pull the trigger without thinking, turning what may have been a fist fight or merely a heated exchange into something approximating a shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.D. Violence"The strong correlation between the presence of guns and a higher murder rate is compelling. Since the correlation is statistically significant...it is difficult to believe that limiting private gun ownership will not have a noticeable effect on the numbers of murders...Consequently...fewer guns would directly cause some decline in violent crimes." [8] "Multivariate analyses found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates of men, women and children. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide victimization in our study was driven by gun-related homicide victimization rates." [13] In other words, the higher the rates of gun ownership, the higher the rates of deadly violence. "The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates in 2011 [had]…states with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation." [14] And, in situations of domestic violence, as well, the presence of a gun does not deter the abuser, but rather intensifies the abusive behavior and increases the chances that the violence will turn lethal. [15]II. A ban on private ownership of handguns would help in saving livesA. Handguns are particularly problematic"[M]ost gun crime is committed with handguns...Surveys of inmates show that they prefer concealable, large caliber guns...Studies of the guns used in homicides show that large caliber [handguns] are the most frequent type of gun used in homicides." [16] Guns are clearly the weapon of choice for criminals being "used in about seven out of 10 murders in the U.S." [17] Handguns are used 18x times more than the next most popular kind of gun in the commission of murders, as well. [18]B. Australia demonstrates how bans can be very effectiveAustralia implemented a partial gun ban through a mandatory buy-back scheme. The results of this effort were astonishing: "[T]he firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides...The paper also estimated that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people results in a 35 to 50 percent decline in the homicide rate." [19]Data shows that between 1988 and 1996, the year in which the gun ban was implemented, the mean number of gun deaths per year was 551. Between 1993 and 1996, the gun death volume held fairly stable at around 515 deaths per year, with one notable outlier in 1995. However, after the gun ban, between 1997 and 2005, the mean number of gun deaths per year was around 313--238 fewer deaths than the previous nine year period. Since guns were banned, the number of gun deaths in any one year has not exceeded 428, and has, instead, stabilized around 230. Firearm suicides fell from 2.2 per 100,000 people in 1995 to just 0.8 per 100,000 people in 2006, and firearm homicides in 2006 are less than half of what they were in 1995. Most importantly, however, is the fact that "the non-firearm suicide rate has fallen by 27% and the non-firearm homicide rate by 59%." [20]III. ConclusionGuns--especially handguns--are dangerous. They threaten the security, health, and wellbeing of thousands of innocent Americans. They kill our children, increase the number of suicide attempts, promote crime, increase the lethality of domestic violence incidents, and lead to accidental deaths. This is not promoting good consequences. A ban has the potential to solve--at least in part--all of these problems. The fact that another country that is culturally similar to the United States was able to implement a ban shows that a ban is not impossible, and that the potential for benefits is real. A ban therefore is more consequentialist than not.SOURCES1 - http://tinyurl.com...2 - Gary Woller, "An Overview by Gary Woller," A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 19973 - http://tinyurl.com...4 - http://tinyurl.com...5 - http://tinyurl.com...6 - http://tinyurl.com...7 - http://tinyurl.com...8 - http://tinyurl.com...9 - http://tinyurl.com...10 - Philip Cook and Jen Ludwig, "The Effects of Gun Prevalence on Burglary: Deterrence vs. Inducement," working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, 200311 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...12 - http://tinyurl.com...13 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...14 - http://tinyurl.com...15 - http://tinyurl.com...16 - http://tinyurl.com...17 - http://tinyurl.com...18 - http://tinyurl.com...19 - http://tinyurl.com...20 - http://tinyurl.com...Thus, I affirm. Thank you, and please Vote Pro! I now hand the floor over to Fire...