The US should not ban guns.

Just reminding you that I am playing devil's advocate. And I want to debate you on Mitt Romney later, send me a challenge about Ron Paul, but ANYWAY.... 1)A Harvard University Study published in The Journal of Trauma Feb 2002, shows that children living in the 5 states with the highest levels of gun ownership were 16x more likely to die from unintentional gun injury, 7x more likely to die from gun-related suicide, and 3x more likely to die from gun homicide than children in states with the lower levels of gun ownership. Additionally, children in the top five gun ownership states were 2x as likely to die from homicide and suicide overall. VPC Exec. Director Josh Sugarmann states, "this study proves what common sense would dictate, a greater availability of guns has dangerous and deadly consequences. Firearms in the home pose an enormous threat to the well-being of our nation's children." Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at HSPH and head author of the study, states, "In states with more guns, more children are dying. They are dying in suicides, in homicides, and in unintentional shootings. This finding is completely contrary to the notion that guns are protecting our children." The avalibility of guns has an effect on the number of children murdered. GENIUS! 2)Domestic violence also increases due to firearm availability. The results from a Multi-Site Case Control Study by J. C. Campbell, D. Webster, J. Koziol-McLain, C., as published in American Journal of Public Health show: "Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times more than in instances where there are no forearms. In addition, abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners." Because firearm availability increases domestic fatalities, more citizens, in this case women are harmed by the presence of firearms. Did you consider that? A Deadly Myth: Women, Handguns, and Self-Defense. (2001): "In 1998, for every one woman who used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in self- defense, 83 women were murdered by an intimate acquaintance using a handgun." It is obvious that domestic violence and deaths will increase because of home owned guns, a severe negative impact is placed on the pro's goal of protecting citizens. 3) The ownership of a firearm makes you more likely to be the victim of homocide. According to the findings from a recent case-control study (Kellermann et al. 1993) were interpreted as indicating that "persons who lived in households with guns were 2.7 times as likely to become homicide victims as persons in households without guns." An article published by the Harvard School for Public Health called "Firearm availability and homicide". "The research suggests that households with firearms are at higher risk for homicide, and there is no net beneficial effect of firearm ownership. No longitudinal cohort study seems to have investigated the association between a gun in the home and homicide. Two groups of ecological studies are reviewed, those comparing multiple countries and those focused solely on the United States. Results from the cross-sectional international studies typically show that in high-income countries with more firearms, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide." Owning a gun actually increases your chance for getting killed. 4) The availability of firearms increases suicides. According to a study and case review done by: Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, PhO; IVIartin Killias, PhD; Urs Hepp, MD; Erika Gadola, MA; Matthias Bopp, PhD; Christoph Lauber, MD; Ulrich Schnyder, MD; Felix Gutzwiller, MD; DrPH, and Wulf Rossler, MD, MA. "This result is in line with the well-established association between availability of firearms at home and risk of firearm suicide.' Firearm suicides depend on the availability of the method more than other suicide methods. Firearm suicides result more often fixed impulsive decisions than other suicide methods and tend to be associated more often with alcohol abuse." Victims of firearm suicides were shown to have distinctly fewer previous suicide attempts (22%) in their psychiatric history than were victims of other suicide methods (360/0-70%). Furthermore, firearms are more lethal than most other suicide methods." Increases in suicide rates are directly related to the availability of firearms, and these suicides are exclusive to firearms. This is another reason that the private ownership of firearms harms individual citizens that the pro was trying to protect.