Gun Control

For the final round, I will be rebutting my opponent's Round 3 responses to my initial arguments.= Final Rebuttals =More Guns, Less CrimeEngland and Wales' homicide rate jumped following both gun restrictions, showing that gun control does not work in eliminating crime. The graph doesn't "look high" because England and Wales' homicide rate per million people were together in one graph. Remember, we are measuring the murder rate over time and how the trend changes when gun control laws are implemented. I have clearly shown that the murder rate rose, and that gun control does not work, especially not in this instance. Pro drops the facts I showed about how the crime rates in European countries with various gun laws were higher with more laws and lower with less.Pro then goes on to examine my source and pulls out the Chicago graph that measured the murder rate in response to the strict gun bans. The graph did fluctuate a bit but was also cut off at 2007, so allow me to provide some missing info: An Illinois concealed carry law was enacted in July 2013. The Chicago homicide rate of the first quarter of 2014 saw the rate at its lowest since 1958[1]. This is a significant change that "coincidentally" happened right after the ban on carrying guns was lifted.It is true that the UK's murder rate is slightly lower than America's, but it has been rising significantly ever since gun laws have been enacted. America has the highest ownership rate of guns in the world, with 90 guns per 100 people. If more guns means more crime, then that should mean that the United States has the highest crime rate in the world. However, the U.S.'s homicide rate is not in the top 10, or the top 50, or the top 100 - it's homicide rate per capita is #111, despite having so many guns[2]. Most of the countries above the U.S. are progressive countries with gun control laws, so the mantra that "more guns, more crime" is a very false one indeed. Indeed, the crime rate can be affected by different factors, but gun control ultimately has the largest effect since it directly targets the amount of guns used for crime.The "homicides with large anomalies unrelated to guns" in the UK graph means that homicides were committed using knives and other non-firearm weapons. This shows that even if criminals don't have guns, they will still find ways to commit crime without them. The large spike was the result of the criminal response to the UK gun ban in 1997.We must note that my opponent has not provided any counter evidence to suggest that gun control does reduce crime, he has just stated his issues with my evidence.Self-DefenseTheoretically a criminal may have a harder time finding a gun with gun control, but they will put more effort into to obtaining illegal guns and non-firearm weapons that will not make the homicide rate lower, as we have seen with several examples above.As for the objections to my sources 5 and 6, the people who used guns for self protection were actually 9%, not .9%. This plus 7% makes 16%. We must remember that the study was focused on defensive gun uses, which is the polar opposite of offensive or criminal uses. The rest of the data is simply not noted, so it is wrong to jump to conclusions.Pro looks at the introduction of my round 3 source 5 study instead of reading the rest of it. The last line of the introduction reads, "There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?" The next section is titled "Dr. Kleck's Answer" where he uses multiple paragraphs to answer this question. Pro clearly has not read the rest of the study.GunCite.com is not at all biased. Just because the name includes the words "gun cite" does not mean it is anything seriously leaning toward one side. My opponent has attempted to dismiss the site because it's pro-gun, but that does not refute the numbers or data collection. In doing so he has committed the Genetic Fallacy[3]. Lastly, the article may be made in 2003, but the numbers and data are still as true today as they were then, so this is not even close to making the article wrong.Thanks a bunch for the debate Pro! It's been a pleasure.[1] http://www.ijreview.com...[2] Pro's source, Round 3[3] http://www.nizkor.org...