more guns mean more homicide, more gun control means less homicide

I'm assuming since Pro is arguing in the affirmative, that pro bears the burden of proof. Additionally, the resolution is two parts. If pro fails to fulfill this burden on either or both of these parts, then Con should be the victor of the debate. Those two parts are:1. More guns mean more homicide.2. More gun control means less homicide. I will be arguing in the negative for both of these parts of the resolution. I'd like to open by responding to the statements presented thus far by Pro. "more homicides correlated to more guns owed. "I'm uncertain what Pro means by "owed" here. I'm assuming it is meant to be "owned" instead. Correlation hasn't been properly demonstrated, as I'll show soon. Even if it had, correlation does not equal causation, like the resolutions would require, "more guns mean more homicide. " Correlation could mean that the latter instead caused the former, which could make sense. People as a whole may decide to purchase firearms in order to defend themselves and their family if the homicide rate increases. A third possibility is the case where correlation occurs randomly, but the studied concepts aren't even related. There's a website that lists 30,000 strongly correlated but unrelated items [1]. "Aside from a shoddy study or two. .. "My opponent makes reference to not-yet-cited studies. I'll let the reader decide if the claims and citations I make stand up better to scrutiny rather than many of the biased sources my opponent provides, like thinkprogressive. com"Hemenway and. .. "I found this statement verbatim at a site not listed among my opponent's citations [2]. Rather than accuse of plagiarism, I'll assume that one of the many links my opponent provided references it, or they share a common source. What my opponent did not include, however, was the statement immediately following: But, again, the 2004 report said: “None of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide. ”"this is true when. .. "I'll show it not true below. The qualifiers my opponent gives are unrelated to the resolution, and allows unscrupulous statisticians to manipulate otherwise meaningful data. If regression techniques are used with enough additional data, it can either intentionally or unintentionally further confound the statistics. "states with more gun control have less deaths. .. "Already my opponent has conflated the issue. "Deaths" in this context includes suicides and is beyond the scope of this resolution, which instead looks at homicides in both parts. The politifact source my opponent provided even admits this, saying, ". .. when suicides are taken out of the picture, there’s not as clear a correlation between more gun laws and fewer non-suicide gun deaths. "I have chosen not to respond to any of the links, with the one above exception, as I don't see any of Pro's contentions referring to them specifically. Now that I have mitigated my opponent's presentation, I'll provide evidence to the contrary of the resolution, starting with the first half. Homicide has been decreasing in the United States. As of 2014, the U. S. per capita homicide rate is 4.5, [3] which is the lowest it has been in over 50 years. [4] The homicide rate is about half what it was 20 years ago. The Number of Firearms is increasing in the United States. Since homicides are significantly lower than they were 20 years ago, then for the resolution to be correct, the number of guns must have also declined during the same period. About 132 million new guns have been added to the total supply over the last 20 years. The total supply of civilian owned firearms in the U. S. is estimated to be somewhere between 270 million [5] and 310 million [6]. When we use real, unmanipulated data, it suggests that not only is the resolution not accurate, but the opposite is the truth in the United States. International comparisonsInternational comparisons tend to have their own sets of problems. The Crime Prevention Research Center has made an attempt [7] to reconcile the differences in the way nations count civilian firearm amounts, or some other statistics that are known to be inaccurate. The conclusions they made shows a negative correlation between homicide and firearms per 100 persons. Even when they only include developed nations like Pro indicated should be done, they still show a negative correlation, even though it isn't statistically significant. Let's move on to the second half of the resolution, that more gun control means less homicides. The Failure of the Brady Bill to Reduce Homicides in the United StatesThe Brady Bill refers to the legislation passed in 1993 that required background checks and waiting periods for those who want to purchase a firearm. According to JAMA [8], there were 18 states that had similar background checks and waiting periods prior to the federal bill, but there was no statistical difference in the change of homicide rates in those states compared to the other 32. From their conclusions, ". .. implementation of the Brady Act appears to have been associated with reductions in the firearm suicide rate for persons aged 55 years or older but not with reductions in homicide rates or overall suicide rates. "The Failure of the Assault Weapons Ban to Reduce Homicides in the United StatesThe Assault Weapons Ban was legislation that was active between 1994 and 2004 that banned firearms with a certain set of classifications. The NIJ [9] conducted a study on the impacts of that legislation and it concluded in 1999, "The ban has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims. " When the NIJ did an updated assessment [10] in 2004 after a trend of reduced gun violence, it concluded, ". .. we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. "The Failure of 51 Other Methods of Gun Control to Reduce Homicides in the United StatesIn 2003, a task force under direction of the CDC conducted a study [11] that evaluated 51 of the gun control programs in their effectiveness. It “. .. found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes. "ConclusionPro has failed to demonstrate in his presentation any evidence that suggests the resolution is affirmed. Con has demonstrated that the first half of the resolution is falsified because in the United States, a decreasing homicide rate occurred during a period of increasing firearm supply. Additionally, Con has shown evidence of a negative correlation between homicide rates and firearm supply internationally. For the second part of the resolution, Con has shown the Brady Bill, the Assault Weapons Ban, and 51 other instances of gun control have failed to produce a lower homicide rate. As my opening is now completed, I await the reply from Pro. [1] . http://tylervigen.com...[2] . http://www.factcheck.org...[3] . https://ucr.fbi.gov...[4] . http://www.bjs.gov...[5] . http://www.smallarmssurvey.org...[6] . http://fpc.state.gov...[7] . http://crimeresearch.org...[8] . http://jama.jamanetwork.com...[9] . https://www.ncjrs.gov...[10] . https://www.ncjrs.gov...[11] . https://www.cdc.gov...