Tournament Debate: Gun Rights

1. Guns cannot be controlled The number of unregistered guns in the United States is unknown, because it is, obviously, undocumented. However, to assume that there are millions of unregistered guns is a reasonable assumption. In fact, it's soon to get worse. http://www.foxnews.com... http://mic.com... Imagine: thousands of websites where people with 3D Printers can upload gun designs and, with the click of a button...voila! The level of regulation needed to prevent this would be unconstitutional, frankly. Of course, without bullets guns are powerless. But the main ingredients in gunpowder are potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. Charcoal can be obtained by anyone seeking to have a barbeque or to grill food. 32.5 million tons of sulfur are produced by the United States every year, and it has many commercial uses. Potassium Nitrate is also commercially available, with uses such as "stump remover". So, all three main ingredients of gunpowder are available. And knowledge of how to use these ingredients to make gunpowder is available on the internet. Even if these products are not made commercially available, a criminal may be able to gain access to them through a black market. Basically, nothing short of extreme authoritarianism could prevent those who desire guns enough to break the law from having them. Cops cannot be everywhere, and under what you proposed civilians would not have guns. The only surefire way to prevent criminals from having guns is to regularly scan people's minds. And the end result of that would be...Psycho-Pass for real. Yeah, that didn't work out very well for any of the main characters. So clearly, it is not feasible to eliminate all guns or to protect the populace sufficiently from those who gain them illegally and desire to hurt others. Until something changes, this is but a pipe-dream. And of course, many murders don't involve guns at all. So even if all guns were eliminated there would still be murder. 2. Abuse of original intent doesn't mean something is bad People use guns to hurt others. Though guns are weapons, their basic purpose is to endow the owner with greater power. This greater power can be used for protection, insurance against threats, for the purpose of hunting, just for looking cool, for shooting competitions, for possible use to fight back against an occupation of one's country, etc. The designers of civilian guns did not intend for them to be used for murder. Thus, such a use is an abuse of that gun. Other things can be abused, such as sex (think rape and child molestation). That does not mean that we should ban sex. In that same way, people should simply use guns in the correct manner. And what is the best way to ensure this? To allow "good" people to defend themselves and to use guns to deter criminals. In fact, in some cases guns serve only to save lives. For instance, if a muscular criminal without a gun attempts to attack a woman who isn't particularly strong or skilled in martial arts, her only hope is...a gun. In fact, even if they both have guns, at least they're on equal footing and it wouldn't be a plain-out massacre. Factors such as physical strength could be negated, saving the lives of many young unmarried women. 3. Government-Civilian Balance My opponent has made the error of believing that a good Government cannot corrupt. This simply is not true; the U.S. Government ended up wiretapping the Democratic Party in the early 1970s, in a scandal known as "Watergate". I think it's fair to say that before the 1970s the U.S. Government was a pretty good one. And to provide another example, if you're a Liberal, you'd consider Guantanamo Bay and the happenings at places like Ferguson and Baltimore, as well as the "corporate interests" in Congress to be blatant signs of Government corruption. I have already shown that not only is true gun control impossible, but guns have good purposes and they're even necessary for the populace to have. I await my opponent's response.