Recent and past shootings are not a gun control problem but a problem of society and the individuals

I would first like to offer some rebuttal against the case that my opponent presented and then move on to my first argument. RUBUTTAL Rebuttal 1: Stress trauma causing shooting My opponent kept on listing these tragic statistics about students, trying to prove that students’ are under enormous stress. He also claimed that such pressure on student is directly related to gun shooting incidents. However, this is very untrue. Let us take look at South Korea, a country that is infamous for having many scary statistics. South Korea has the second highest suicide rate in the world (Highest among all 30 OECD countries). Korean students study for 14 hours in average [1]. HPI of South Korea ranks the lowest among 30 OECD countries [2]. Korean university graduates face serious problem in getting job. Around 89% of senior students in Korea attend university, which makes competition for job very tough. This proves that South Korean face huge amount of stress and pressure. Despite the fact that South Korean face tremendous amount of stress, there has been only 1 shooting incidents in Korea, committed by civilian. Nevertheless, the crime was committed by a ranch owner, who always carried around an air rifle for the purpose of managing ranch and only two victims were killed [3]. This fact shows that stress of a nation do not equal to them going out and shooting people. It is the fact that guns are available that causes these shooting incidents. I will elaborate this further in my own argument. Rebuttal 2: 0.012% causing trouble My opponent claimed that only 0.012% of gun owners cause problems with their firearm, hence, gun control is not the problem. However, I would like to say that just because 0.012% is causing the problem, it does not give an excuse and claim that gun control is not a problem. 0.012% of entire gun owner (70~80 million) equates to 960,000 problematic gun owners. That number is close to a million which means there are about a million of gun owners that cause problems with their firearms. Divide a million by 365, which equates to 2739 shooting accidents per day. Suicide rates are number of person committing suicide per 100,000. South Korea for example, has suicide rate of approximately 31.2 suicides per 100,000 which equates to about 0.000312% of the population committing suicide. Regardless of how small the percentage is, that percentage still equates to about 1560 person committing suicide (there is 50 million South Koreans). Small percentage does not mean it is not a big deal. Just because the majority is not causing problem, it does not mean gun control is not a problem. Please keep in mind that it is still a million problematic gun owners. We also need to keep in mind that the statistics that my opponent gave is gun accidents that happened with properly registered firearms. However, there are countless un-registered and illegal firearms that contribute in crimes as well. So the credibility that only 0.012% of the gun owner cause problem is very questionable since the gun owner in the statistics is legal gun owner, not including those people who own gun through illegal path, that tend to commit more crime. I would also like to say that my opponent threw bunch of statistics around but never did really mention how does this statistics prove that the individuals a bigger factor causing shooting incident, than the gun control itself. He basically failed to make the casual link and I have focused on pointing those out in my rebuttal. Now, I will move on to my first argument and explain why the gun control and the fact that they are allowed in the first place is more problematic than individuals causing incidents. ARGUMENT 1: Means to commit shooting incidents Sub-Point 1: When gun control is very strict Referring back to Korean example again, there were 6 shooting events historically in Korea. Four were committed in the military, one by a police officer and the other one by a ranch owner (mentioned in the rebuttal). The culprits of these shooting incidents all have one thing in common – that they have higher accessibility to gun. Soldiers and police officer have regular shooting practices with live ammunitions. Police officers investing against violent crimes are assigned of their personal firearms. Soldiers in Korean military store their guns in individual firearm compartments that do not get secured with lock. It is very accessible. However, outside of military, South Korean government places strict gun control among nation. Owning live ammunition guns are prohibited to begin with. Only way a South Korean citizen can access live ammunition legally in Korean soil is by joining military or at a legally permitted shooting range. Even air rifles require very strict permit by the government. The owner has to have no criminal record and other complicated documentations are required. On top of that, most calibers of air rifles are kept in local police department and the owners are only allowed to use them during hunting season. There are heavy limits on BB guns (air-soft guns) as well. All BB guns being sold in Korea has to have power under 1J and their gunpoint has to be manufactured in distinctive colors like orange so it is clear that the gun is a BB gun. Since there are less guns around due to strict gun control, citizens of Korea are less likely commit crimes with guns. Sub-Point 2: When gun control is loose However, the story becomes different when guns do become more accessible and this is the essence of the debate. Because there are guns around in the US, it becomes realistically possible to commit crime with gun. In Korea, shooting incident that almost never happened among citizens happened five times by soldiers and police officer, both professions work around guns. This example makes it clear that gun being around only gave means to commit shooting crime. If there is a lower accessibility to guns to begin with, there is less likelihood for potential shooters to access gun. The same goes for US. With few permits, guns that fire live ammunition can be bought in a low price in United States. A lot of guns are accessible through illegal means as well. Lethal air rifles that shoot out steel pellets at the speed of a thousand feet per second can be bought online. All those facts back my claim that the gun control in US is very loose, compared to South Korea. Viewing that from the case of South Korea where shooting accidents only occurred in the case where guns were more accessible, it is correct to view that gun control is the bigger contributing factor to shooting incidents since both US and South Korea has unfortunate members of the society but South Korea do not have a million gun owners causing shooting incidents. To summarize, South Korea is serves as a good example that shows both cases, where guns are very accessible and when they are not very accessible. When guns were not very accessible among citizens, only 1 minor shooting incident occurred. However, when gun did become very accessible like how it is in United States, there were five shooting incidents. Bottom line, accessibility ends up enabling shooting incidents. As my opponent correctly said, guns do not make these criminals shoot others. However, guns give those means and make it possible for them to commit such things. Those people can cause destruction in one way or the other. Nevertheless, guns being so accessible only provide them with a very dangerous option of randomly shooting people. With stricter gun control, with less accessibility to gun, these people will definitely have fewer tendencies to pick up a rifle and start firing at random targets, killing 28 elementary students. REFERENCES [1] http://www.demotix.com...; [2] http://news.chosun.com... [3]http://news.naver.com...