We Should Not Ban Assault Weapons or High Capacity Magazines

WilliamofOckham your bradycampaign link did not bring up any results, could you re-post the source. Also please cite where you got the following statistic: Following the now-defunct ban, the amount of assault weapons traced back to crime decreased by 66%. As of 2001, only 1.1% of weapons traced back to crime were found to be assault weapons named in the act. This is a sharp decline from 3.67%, the first year before the ban.2 Next, plagiarism was against the rules. You plagiarized from the following sources: http://www.iop.harvard.edu... (three of your paragraphs were plagiarized from this source) http://www.debate.org... (a plagiarism directly from Stupidwalrus on debate.org) Additionally, I already addressed why the argument that no one NEEDS an assault weapon is a bad one. America is a Libertarian State, and liberty dictate you can own whatever you want until proven otherwise. I then went to attempt to prove that banning assault weapons would not have any effect on the net crime rate. Since it would not have a net effect, or at the very least a enough of an effect to justify violating the property rights of millions of Americans. Nonetheless, let's address the statistics and arguments you proposed. "Assault Weapons Bans Have Worked" If the end goal is to eradicate assault weapons then yes criminalizing their ownership would make it much more inconvenient to own them. However this does not stop criminals from smuggling them over the borders or committing atrocities with other firearms. The deadliest mass shooting in US history was the Virginia Tech Shooting, and he used a Glock 19 pistol. The Glock 19 fires a 9mm (arguably less powerful than the 5.56 NATO that the AR-15 fires) and he used a variety of 10 and 15 round magazines. But I still say our goal is not to eliminate assault weapons, it is to reduce violence as much as possible while respecting the liberties of others. "Following the now-defunct ban, the amount of assault weapons traced back to crime decreased by 66%. As of 2001, only 1.1% of weapons traced back to crime were found to be assault weapons named in the act. This is a sharp decline from 3.67%, the first year before the ban.2" What crimes, exactly, decreased? And was this crime per 100,000 people or total crime? For those of you who do not know, crime per 100,000 is the proper indicator to detect changes over time because it takes into account fluctuations in populations. Next, if you plot the US total violent crimes rate over time you'll find that crime was decreasing before and after the Assault Weapons ban. They have actually linked this to, among other reasons, a decreasing youth population in the US (youths commit the most crimes, so when you have lower concentrations of youths you have less crime). See: http://www.fbi.gov... http://www.csmonitor.com... "In Massachusetts, where assault weapons are banned, firearms kill three out of 100,000 people each year, compared to national average of 10 out of 100,000.3" This fails to take into account the many, many other reasons crime rates differ. I could just as easily point to Wisconsin where in assault weapons are legal and the murder rate was 2.4 per 100,000 in 2011 vs. Massachusetts where the murder rate was 2.8 per 100,000 in 2011, or California which has assault weapons bans and had a murder rate of 4.8 per 100,000 in 2011. These statistics, however, fail to consider other factors that create violence and murders, such as population concentrations, drug trades, unemployment, under-educated societies, poverty, etc. See: http://www.fbi.gov... http://en.wikipedia.org... "Since the law"s expiration, police deaths from gunshot wounds have increased substantially. In 2009, 49 police officers died from gunfire, a 24 percent increase from 2008. In 2010, 61 officers were shot and killed, a 37 percent increase from 2009. And in 2011, 68 officers died from gunfire. In fact, 2011 represents the first year of the past 14 years when the leading cause of on-duty police officer death was from gunfire and not from traffic fatalities.1" The problem with this is that it's looking at changes that are actually extremely small and doesn't factor in population (did the total number of police officer in America increase?), it doesn't specify how many police officers were killed by assault rifles, and it doesn't specify whether or not the incidents involved cases where the police officer would have died even if the perpetrator didn't have an assault rifle (for example, if someone came behind a police officer and shot them in the head, the police officer would have been killed just as easily by any other gun or even a blunt object). "If we allow both officers and criminals to obtain high-powered weaponry, we"re simply asking for death and instability. Banning assault weapons would not only save civilian lives, but also would help protect police officers on duty. The move would allow for tighter, more aggressive enforcement of the law. The fight against assault weapons should be framed not as a limitation of rights, but as a stand against criminality and criminal violence. The net benefit to society is positive." Assault weapons are used in roughly 6% of crimes, and those are mainly assault pistols since they're more concealable (which fire the same bullets as other handguns). Then, we have to ask "what can an assault weapon do that a pistol cannot?" Honestly not much, and I addressed this more thoroughly in my previous arguments. If citizens owning assault weapons DID lead to more death and instability this argument would be valid, but it hasn't. Few people are killed by assault weapons and few crimes are committed with assault weapons. So if millions of Americans own assault weapons and mainly shoot them for recreation (some use them for self-defense), and you cannot PROVE that banning them would have a positive net effect on the total people killed, then you would be violating their property rights without justification. See http://www.cdc.gov... https://www.ncjrs.gov...