Gun Rights

== NEG CASE ==CA1) Decreasing Homicide RatesRegarding Australia, Pro seems to be a bit confused about what exactly I am claiming. .. I am not trying to say that all violent crime is the result of the presence of guns-- it is quite obvious that high rates of violent crime can be caused by a number of variables which are unrelated to guns. Rather, I was claiming that the presence of guns usually results in high rates of violent crime. It's the difference between saying "all Muslims are terrorists" and "many terrorists are Muslim". Thus, observing that high rates of violent crime can exist without the presence of guns does nothing to mitigate my argument. Regarding Chicago, Pro concedes that poverty is the major contributing factor to crime there, yet still attempts to salvage his point by claiming that he has still "further weakened the argument of a false connection between gun rights and suffering. " That is patently false because not only has his correlation been exposed as fallacious, but it was a high-violence/low-gun correlation, which, as I explained in response to his Australia point, does not refute my argument at all. Only a high-gun/low-violence correlation could be used to rebut the soundness of my argument, and he has failed to show that one exists. In response to my point that Pro cannot use bare correlations as evidence for his assertions, he claims that the studies I cited were also bare correlations, but that simply demonstrates that he did not read the quotations I included-- they clearly indicate that an effort was made to take into account all possible external variables, thus making those correlations much more likely to reflect causation. Pro's attempt at a turn does not hold up. CA2) Gun Rights are UnnecessaryPro asserts that guns can still be used effectively for self-defense in many situations, but he provides no evidence for this at all; meanwhile, I have provided a compelling rationale for why guns can rarely be used for self-defense, backed up by research from the Violence Policy Center. There is no question as to who is winning on this issue-- guns generally do not provide any sort of self-defense benefit. Pro argues that criminals can just change their source of guns after a gun ban, but this ignores the fact that legal producers of guns have many advantages over illegal producers, such as the ability to operate large factories, economies of scale, and easy access to mass production technology; this naturally means that their guns would be much cheaper and more readily available to criminals. It would not be *nearly* as easy as Pro would have us believe for criminals to simply change their sources. Thus, a civilian gun ban would certainly entail that criminal rates of gun ownership go down as well. But besides that, 'professional criminals' are actually only responsible for the minority of homicides; the majority are carried out by civilians themselves, with domestic violence being the most common form of violent crime. (. http://www.motherjones.com...). == AFF CASE ==R1) Bill of RightsPro's counter is irrelevant, as it does not address the core of my rebuttal-- that the second amendment can be changed if there is good reason for that to happen. Besides his random non-point about "how hard the founding fathers worked", he suggests that perhaps the second amendment could just be changed rather than repealed, but my case very clearly shows the need for a total gun ban (which it is required to do, considering that the resolution I am trying to negate is called 'gun rights'. .. ), so that point carries no weight. R2) Hobbyists & CollectorsFirst of all, let's just note that I was not committing an ad hominem-- I was simply noting an implication of Pro's point. Anyways, Pro completely shifts this from what is original argument was, instead now making the case that since most people don't use guns to commit homicide, their liberties cannot justifiably be restrained. However, liberties *can* be restrained under certain circumstances; it is simply a matter of utilitarianism. For example, speed limits deprive us of our freedom to drive as fast as we want, but it is absurd to call for their removal, as their presence creates a large net benefit for society. In the same way, I have shown that a gun ban would create enough of a net benefit for society that the limitations of liberty associated with it would be justified. R3) Public OppositionPro claims that it is meaningless to debate whether or not people should be allowed to own guns without discussing implementation. In that case, perhaps the resolution IS meaningless. Pro's opinion on what constitutes a 'meaningful' discussion does not matter-- the fact is that the resolution specifically refers to whether or not people *should* be allowed to own guns, which implies a theoretical debate. I have shown that people *should not* be allowed to own guns, and thus the resolution is negated. I do not also need to prove that the complete enforcement of such a policy would currently be feasible. In conclusion, I have shown that the existence of gun rights poses no real benefit to society, with the only tangible result being increased homicide rates. Since none of Pro's arguments or rebuttals hold up, my case remains standing in its entirety. The resolution is negated.