Effective gun control is a good thing.

Thanks to my opponent, and let's start this round with something I agree with my opponent on: It's trivially true that eliminating civilian guns would almost certainly lower civilian gun crimes. But the motion under consideration is "Effective gun control is a good thing." Those are not identical. On to rebuttals: As to the statistics I brought up, the UK already had strict gun laws. The VCRA didn't suddenly make guns illegal. In fact, for weapons the VCRA primarily dealt with making airsoft weapons harder to purchase and making it illegal to make a replica weapon look like a real weapon. While I do concede that there are passages about "us[ing] another to look after, hide or transport a dangerous weapon...and...in circumstances that...are intended to facilitate, the weapon's being available ... for an unlawful purpose" and the sale of ammunition, [1] this has nothing to do with making actual firearms more difficult to procure. In fact, over the last few decades both the UK AND the US have both shown a trend of lower violent crime. Last year did show a spike for the US, but one year does not a trend make; violent crime declined by "more than two thirds" between 1994 and 2009 in the US [2]. Pro continues to use gun violence alone, claiming any other figures are "irrelevant to the debate". This is obviously a disingenuous method of going about judging the the problem of violence. Again, reducing guns would OF COURSE reduce gun violence. But that an attacker now uses a knife or a baseball bat doesn't change overall violence done, and doesn't make removing guns a "good thing", particularly if the rate of violence in the gun-free country is much HIGHER than the one with guns. Pro then moves on to a confusion about the difference between regulation and prohibition. His statistics from within the US show that states with tighter REGULATION of guns have lower crime rates. It does not follow that completely PROHIBITING guns would have that effect. "I hope that anyone reading this knows what I mean when I use the terms machine gun and assault weapon synonymously." THEY ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS. So-called "assault weapons" ARE NOT FULLY AUTOMATIC. This is no small detail. Pro claims he's "...well aware of the laws surrounding them", yet doesn't know the difference? As regards to the comments on the FAWB, he number mentioned by Pro appears nowhere in the article, and he doesn't explain which he's talking about: raw data, per capita, or percentage. Further, I was specifically and expressly talking about Assault RIFLES. The Assault WEAPONS ban expired, and had little to no effect [5]. Assault RIFLES have been generally banned since 1934. Pro's inability to understand the difference is a real problem to this discussion. Remember, my opponent said: "For God's sake, if you want a minigun in some states you can have one" It's simply not true. The reason this terminology matters is that an assault rifle, like a minigun, is a fully automatic gun, a "machine gun", by definition. Assault weapons are weapons that LOOK like military rifles, but are not fully automatic. That's a substantial difference, and there is a reason fully automatic weapons are almost entirely illegal (and Pro can show now crimes committed with the few legal ones), while semi-automatic guns are not. This is not a "slightly off" situation, nor is it pedantry. It's akin to justifying a ban on consumer-grade fireworks by equating them with C-4. Following this, my opponent moves on to muskets. He asserts that "Muskets may well be illegal now," (They aren't.) Then tries to say "it wasn't the forefather's intent to give everyone an killing machine." (it was). He then makes up a "2,000 people in 5 minutes" statistic, with, as a source, a Wikipedia article talking about fully automatic weapons which, TO REPEAT, ARE ALREADY ILLEGAL. "The forefathers wouldn"t support the weapons sold to civilians today." That's an unsupported assertion. There was diverse opinion among the founders, between Federalists and anti-Federalists. Fundamentally, though, the 2nd amendment was put in specifically to defend the people's rights to own guns (or "killing machines") both to protect them from criminals and to protect them from the government, as well as hunting and self defense et cetera. Patrick Henry, for example: "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." [3] James Madison, in "Federalist No. 46... confidently contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he contemptuously described as "afraid to trust the people with arms." He assured his fellow citizens that they need never fear their government because of "the advantage of being armed...." [3] Samuel Adams said the Constitution should: "Be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..." [3] The right to bear arms was (and, at least in the US, still is) considered a "natural right". Con then tries to create a new definition for "school shooting"; by it, the Columbine shooting doesn't count, since the shooters expressly went to kill those who they felt had wronged them, a "prior reason". And he's wrong about the Enoch Brown massacre. While the Indians did use Tomahawks for the scalping, "Brown pleaded with the warriors to spare the children before being shot and scalped." [4] "I agree with you ... on the miss-usage of police force site you referenced...but those are select circumstances. I realize it happens quite often, but more often than not, it doesn"t happen..." The same is true for civilians. More often than not, a gun owner is law-abiding. More often than not, a gun is not used in a crime. "What good reason do you have for owning an AK?" Again, an "AK" IS ALREADY PROHIBITED. By focusing on fully automatic weapons, even when I have clearly showed him that he was wrong to do so, I have trouble concluding anything but foolishness or dishonesty on Pro's part. "If Adam Lanza had murdered a police officer, he would have ...eight rounds...I don"t see any logic in this argument" Very wrong, again. First off, the gun would likely be a semi-automatic with more than 10 rounds. Secondly, most officers also have a backup weapon, and at the least shotgun in their car. Pro once again attempts to handwave away problems with his idea through an inaccurate picture of reality. My opponent then goes on to try to claim that his argument that the constitution is "no longer relevant" has "statistics" and is "valid". It doesn't, and it isn't. "...capitalism hasn"t changed that much over the past 90 years..." This is a nonsequitor with no relevancy to this debate. I'm unsure why he brought in capitalism. "To conclude, people having guns ends lives, the state having guns saves them (usually)." That's another unsupported assertion. To conclude this round: Pro still doesn't actually understand the things he wishes to ban. He whines about my correction of his being "slightly off" while STILL being wrong, and not in a "slight" way but rather quite a major way. He concedes that the state is known to abuse its power, yet tries rather hypocritically to claim that because the majority of the time the state behaves generally appropriately, therefore the state should have weapons, even though the exact same is true of civilians. Pro has yet to fulfill his burden of proof here. 1 http://www.legislation.gov.uk... 2 http://en.wikipedia.org... 3 http://en.wikipedia.org... 4 http://en.wikipedia.org... 5 http://en.wikipedia.org...