Gun control in America.

Thank you, Con, for your arguments. I will simply rebut in chronological order.First off, I want to address my opponent's point about gun ownership rates. He said that Switzerland has the third highest percent of gun ownership, but they do not run around on the streets killing people. What my opponent failed to mention is that Switzerland has a tighter gun policy than we do in the US. In Switzerland, all males are required to do military service at a certain age, and they keep the guns as a symbol of their service. The military also does not provide any ammunition after service is done, so the guns are basically useless without ammunition. This means that the majority of the gun owners have gone through proper, military training on how to use the gun, and they would then own almost useless guns. Therefore, the violence rate is not nearly as high as the US. That does not seem odd to me. (http://www.bbc.com...) If my opponent had read my wording carefully, he would've noticed that I said, "Almost 290 people a day become victims of gun violence in the US, and that adds up to over 100,000 people in the US." My opponent made it seem as if I only meant homicides, but I was addressing all types of gun violence, including homicides, suicides, and plain injuries. In fact, while handguns are not the most used tool to commit suicide, they have the highest accuracy rate (85%) of ending in death. The most used tool, drugs, only have a 3% accuracy rate of ending in death. Over 19,000 people died from gun suicide while other tools only accounted for about 11,000 suicide deaths. In the case of murders, almost 80% of all homicides are committed with guns. My opponent said that 80% of the homicide cases are between gangs. Gangs are still humans shootng at other humans. It does not make the problem any better. (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu...) (http://usnews.nbcnews.com...) It gets on my nerves when people saying banning guns will not stop people from buying and using guns. Of course not! We are never going to completely get rid of guns or violence, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it. For comparison, we have laws against theft, but people still break into houses. So just because we haven't solved this theft problem, we shouldn't have any regulations against it at all? Think about it. Actually, outlawing guns does have an impact. We can look at the exhibit of Australia. Just months after a mass shooting in 1996 that killed thirty-five people, the government made legislations banning and calling for a recall of all auto and semiautomatic weapons and shotguns. Since then? Not one mass shooting. Not one. Look at the US. We have no gun laws, and we can turn on the news almost every month to hear of a mass shooting. I understand that I am not arguing for a complete gun ban at this time, but I wanted to make a point. (http://www.washingtonpost.com...)Addressing my opponents case on the gun free zones, I cannot count it as accurate until I see a source on his information. While I am not in doubt that it is true, I need to see a source. And I think my opponent needs to restudy his history as he listed 9/11 as a gun free zone. One problem with that- 9/11 was the case of two planes hitting the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York City. I don't know what that had to do with guns.My opponent said that we should all have guns to be prepared for invasion. He said the last time we were invaded as country was in 1812. Over two hundred years ago! Remember what I said in my opening case...society has changed, and we are no longer in a country constantly with war on our grounds. We are no longer under constant threat of invasion because our military is one of the largest superpowers in the world. It would be like studying for the final exam the teacher previously decided not to give. It is pointless to be prepared for something so chaotic and unlikely when we know the chances of invasion are so slim. Even if we were invaded, we have the strongest military force in the world.As I suspected, Con stated his understanding of the second ammendment. There is no way to rebut against either side without just repeating your same case, so I will leave it up to voters to decide who they believe more (based on the case each of us made). Either way, I don't think our founding fathers would come back today and want us using guns the way we are.My opponent agrees with me that we should issue background checks and training. Neccessary measures to keep the general public safe do not infringe on second ammendment rights. I will agree with him that our justice system is broken, but that is another debatable issue that our country is still working on. At this time, we just have to accept the justice system we have and do our best to be fair on who is or is not qualified to own a gun.The next point Con made absolutely frightened me. So now we are going to use automatic weapons to threaten innocent politicians into getting our way? Yes, we all saw how the country reacted when JFK was assasinated. Even those that opposed him felt the pain of his death. Those that were not born at the time still reminisce that day today. Violence among our leadership will not help our country move forward. I think my opponent took Jefferson's quote quite too literally. Jefferson did not mean that we should threaten to shoot our leaders or overthrow them every twenty years or so. He meant that in our democracy, we have a right to protest against the leaders that are not doing their job, and when the case hits the extreme, the person can be fired from his or her job. (http://www.jfklibrary.org...) The case my opponent made on open carry and the use of guns with children made it sound as if he does want a gun on gun society. What he is saying is that we should all have guns with us. Of course. Of course we want to live in a military state and be robotic soldiers carrying guns with us wherever we go. Think about what life would be like in that situation. Imagine your three-year-old child walking around with a gun at school. Imagine your spouse out around the town all alone having to carry a gun. Imagine your mother walking around town all alone having to carry a gun. Do we want to be living in that type of society? Look at how we think about Australia, and compare it to how we think about North Korea. Think about which image we would rather be sending to the rest of the world.