Gun Rights

A) Canada and US comparison and analysis. As I said at the beginning, that they only go to show the general trend. I am not exactly sure about why you devoted 4,000 or so characters to an argument I don't even really care about. In fact, it makes up over 50% of your argument. The saying "much ado about nothing" comes to mind. However, I will try my best to partially refute it. On your first link, it says that "Serious assaults, as illustrated in the chart below, have gone up steadily since 1983" and that data started to be collected in 1983. Canada put gun control into effect in 1977[1]. Who are we to say that it is the prevalence of youth, and not gun control, which caused this spike in crime? In fact, on your source it says "Despite decreases in both the proportion of teens aged 15 to 19 and crime rates in the 1990s, overall rates of violent crime are still three times higher than they were in the 1960s". "Family breakdown and poor parenting, poverty, violence in the home, the Internet, the decline of religion and morality, video games, the proliferation of guns, lenient laws and weak sentences, a lack of discipline in schools, and on and on" were theories, just like I have a theory that gun control causes deaths (the main difference is that mine is based in facts that can't be refuted). To quote from your source,in the line before "The theories could fill a newspaper." You could refute most, if not all, of those arguments with your correlation-causation argument. Video games causing crime? Yes, they may lead youths to be slightly more aggressive, but that doesn't translate to violence. There is nothing to show that it directly causes more deaths, just a correlation argument. That argument is a lot different from mine, because mine is directly proven that it causes more deaths. There is no correlation-causation weakness. This does not mean that I am saying that gun control is the only reason for Canada's crime. I am just showing that gun control is one of the most easily proven, and one of the worst. B) "Gun Control saves 15x more lives than it ends" arguments. Now to the addressing of my main point. You say that it shouldn't be considered because it's what people "think would happen". But consider this. Even if 85% of the people were wrong, there would be over double the lives saved than ended. Obviously, some of them will be wrong. However, can you just refute an argument by claiming it's what people "think would happen". Even if 7 or so out of 8 households were wrong, there would be double the lives saved than ended. Can you seriously think that 7 out 8 households were wrong? "What would have happened" isn't exactly an exact science, but it isn't 85% wrong. In your first link, "Family breakdown and poor parenting, poverty, violence in the home, the Internet, the decline of religion and morality, video games, the proliferation of guns, lenient laws and weak sentences, a lack of discipline in schools, and on and on" were theories. Aren't theories another form of "what would of happened", but they are instead "why did this happen"? They are both predicting with available information, just that one deals with the past and the other the present. It is not a good way to refute an argument by just saying it's what they "think would happen" and brushing it aside. It may be the only way, but it is not a good way. C)Other options to prevent crime arguments. C1) Effectiveness of guns to deter crime. I will start this off with a statistical blurb. "In 2002, some 90 percent of the time when people used guns defensively, they stopped the criminals simply by brandishing the gun."[2]. This is mainly so I can refer back to this in later arguments. Sure, she may not appear to be threatening. But here is the critical part- she has a gun. There is almost nothing short of hiring bodyguards she can do to appear threatening. After all, she's a grandma. But it's a freaking gun, of course it's threatening! She may not appear to be a gunslinger, but you can be sure that over 90% of criminals would not even THINK of robbing her if they knew she had a gun. There is so much that can go wrong robbing someone with a gun that it is almost never worth it. After all, "34% of criminals had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim" and 40% didn't commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun". If including just the numbers of criminals who had known a victim was carrying a gun, the numbers would likely be much higher. Why, you ask? Because the gun has a certain threat to it. It has so much power, that almost all people fear it. C2) Effectiveness of other options and arguments. Yes, other options than guns can be used to prevent crime. However, I think that none could be as effective as a handgun. Even if some were more effective than a handgun, why should we stop the use of guns when they have been proven to be effective at preventing crime. 162,000 households think that guns have saved a life, and that number doesn't even include other types of crime. Refuting Conclusion) Saying that "Without gun rights, you are a lot more helpless than you would be with gun rights. Obviously, gun rights is the way to go." is a statistic blurb without in depth analysis is partially right because it doesn't require in depth analysis. All there is is two hard, solid facts. You can try to say that the facts are wrong, but the fact is over 95% of households would have to be wrong (to equal the deaths caused by guns) for you to be right. It is NOT saying that without guns you are helpless. Rather, it is saying that you would be a lot more helpless without a gun than with. The reason it isn't a statistical blurb is that it is a statement supported by a statistic, not just a statistic standing alone. Conclusion To conclude, gun control is wrong because gun rights save 15x more lives than it ends. Therefore, gun control causes deaths. My opponent tried to refute it with the ineffectual argument of "think would happen" doesn't count, which I have refuted. Not only that, guns are a very effective option to reduce crime. Even if there is other options, why should we deny citizens a effective method of self defense when it has been proven to save lives? Sources [1] http://www.davekopel.com... [2] http://www.foxnews.com...