Resolved: All US Citizens from high school onwards should be taught how to handle a firearm.

The only real way to learn how to operate a gun is to actually operate it. You can learn gun safety without handling a gun, but gun operation is a different matter. It would be difficult, unreliable, and possibly dangerous to show someone how to operate a gun without actually testing them by having them operate it themselves. Pacifists: Some people are more extreme then that, and believe that even handling a gun would be wrong. This usually doesn't go as far as knives because a gun is designed to kill or wound something. A knife, on the other hand, is a tool that comes in various styles for different purposes that do not necessarily include killing. A pacifist wouldn't be using fighting knives; they would be using kitchen knives, which are designed for cooking, not killing. Besides that, some people actually don't use knives for this reason. Chinese vegetarian Confucius is believed to have influenced the use of chopsticks in China to promote against the use of knives while eating. http://www.infoplease.com... So this argument is valid. Making someone handle a gun when it's against their beliefs is wrong. Handicapped: Your resolution states that ALL citizens should be taught how to handle a firearm. Even if the handicapped person was in a special type of school, this doesn't solve how he is supposed to handle a firearm when the law requires him to do so. This contradicts the resolution, and thus it is a valid argument. Firearm Training: You have proven nothing here. If someone wants to learn to handle a gun, he can learn it elsewhere. There is no reason he should be forced to learn it in school. Public safety is a completely different matter; as I already stated, students may and should be taught about gun safety, but there is no need to teach them how to operate a gun if they won't actually be using one. School Gun Ban: Sex education is completely different from learning to handle a gun. Sex education doesn't mean we teach how to have sex and have them practice having sex. It means we teach them how to be responsible about sex. In the same way, we should teach them how to be responsible about guns, but this doesn't mean we need to actually have them handle guns. Besides that, this rebuttal is irrelevant. The argument here was that it would make things complicated for schools because of the gun ban. Switzerland: 1. Sources? 2. Your source was posted all the way back in 2005. The amount of guns per people is likely higher nowadays. Also, the amount of guns per household instead of per 100 people doesn't necessarily have to do with why Switzerland has a lower crime rate. How does weapons per household instead of weapons per people change anything? Lastly, showing someone how to operate a gun without giving everyone an assault rifle isn't going to change anything in America. The reason the crime rate is lower in Switzerland is most likely because of the fact that everyone owns an assault rifle in addition to being taught gun operation. When everyone owns a powerful weapon that they know how to use, most people won't be stupid enough to commit a crime. If we taught people how to use a gun, but didn't force them to own one, it will have no effect on the crime rate. You have not shown how gun education is the "only" explanation for less crime. How do you know it doesn't have to do with their culture, or a different reason that we haven't discussed, or because it's a combination of education and ownership as described above? It's entirely possible.