Gun rights

** Plagiarism committed by Pro **Throughout my opponent's first two rounds, he has lazily copy / pasted entire sentences and paragraphs word-for-word from other sources without attributing them through the use of quotation marks. Omitting quotation marks from lifted passages makes it seem as if my opponent actually came up with the words and writing style of the original authors by himself. According to plagiarism.com, this is a form of plagiarism:"Sources Cited (But Still Plagiarized) . . . (4) The writer properly cites a source, but neglects to put in quotation marks text that has been copied word-for-word, or close to it. Although attributing the basic ideas to the source, the writer is falsely claiming original presentation and interpretation of the information."http://www.plagiarism.org...Even if failing to quote sentences ripped word-for-word from other sources weren't actually plagiarism (which it is), this practice is both distracting and unfair to the scoring of this debate. It is distracting because many of those sentences reference events or people mentioned in the original source that have nothing to do with this debate (i.e., Pro's unexplained references to "On Monday..." or "Stephenson" in Round 1, or "Butterfield" in Round 2). It is also unfair because unsuspecting voters will rate my opponent's grammar score higher than it really should be, as the few sentences he actually wrote on his own contain significantly more spelling and grammar mistakes than the ones he lifted without attribution from other sources.Accordingly, voters should take my opponent's plagiarism into account when scoring the conduct, spelling / grammar, and "reliable sources" voting categories.Rebuttals:1. More guns leads to more violent crimesIt is obvious that the more guns are available in a given community, the more likely it is for gun-related crimes to occur. To prove otherwise, Pro would have to show that guns deter more crime than they actually facilitate. This is an impossible burden to meet, and indeed he hasn’t.Pro cites to a handful of studies conducted by pro-gun advocacy groups showing that, in some cities or countries, crime rates increased after gun control legislation was passed, or crime rates decreased after gun restrictions were loosened. This selective use of evidence doesn’t prove anything, because correlation does not equal causation. Specifically, such evidence ignores other demographic or economic variables that really caused changes in community crime rates. For example, the homicide rate in Britain probably rose after 1968 gun control legislation simply because the 1970s featured a younger baby boomer generation hitting their late adolescence in the midst of a global economic recession. For this reason, my opponent cannot disprove that the homicide rates in Britain wouldn't have been higher than they actually were during the 1970s if guns had remained widely available.To make a broader point, I don't want this debate to devolve into a clash over dueling case studies. Just as my opponent can point to studies performed by pro-gun groups, I can respond with studies performed by gun control advocates. Given the limits of social science in conclusively settling this issue, we should perhaps simply defer to the judgment of those tasked with actually preventing crime: city mayors and local police. Here, it should come as no surprise that organizations like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and the Fraternal Order of Police, and hundreds of other local police chiefs support common-sense gun control measures like a ban on high-power assault rifles. [1, 2] Similarly, most mayors share the views of Republican New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who describe guns as "the # 1 public safety threat in our city - in all cities." [3]2. More guns lead to more suicidesIn Round 2, Pro failed entirely to address my point that guns result in more successful suicide attempts. I agree with Pro's argument from Round 1 that if an individual is really determined to kill themselves, there is little society can do to stop them. This, however, ignores the fact that a vast majority of suicide attempts are the results of a temporary mental incapacitation (i.e., bipolarism, severe depression, severe anxiety) or a substance-induced intoxication / hallucination, and that the availabilty of guns makes impulsive suicide attempts far more likely to succeed.To put it simply, guns are far more effective than other alternatives in finishing the job; that is why guns lead to more suicides.3. Guns provide little redeeming value to justify their dangerIn Round 2, Pro made a laughable claim that "[g]uns are used as a defensive tools (sic) 2.5 million times a year, and work more than 98% of the time." This 2.5 million number was an extrapolation taken from one 1993 telephone survey finding that 1.3% of 4,798 telephone respondents reported that they had used a gun in self-defense during the past year, with the "logic" of the extrapolation being that 1.3% of the entire 1993 U.S. population would equal 2.5 million instances of gun defense per year. [4] Extrapolating from such a small sample size is inappropriate, and falsely assumes that the 4,798 telephone respondents represent a representative cross-sample of America. Last I checked, children don't use guns, and they don't answer telephone surveys either.Pro's claim that gun defense "works" more than 98% of the time is similarly dubious, as his only cited authority is to a bizarre film by a "pro gun Jewish group" that blames gun control for the Holocaust. [5] Like Pro's estimate of 2.5 million instances of gun defense per year, his absurdly high 98% success rate figure is equally baseless.Finally, Pro invoked "specific examples of gun saving lives," but this ignores the many specific examples of gun defenses backfiring horribly, like the story of one man who mistakenly killed his fiancee due to a case of mistaken identity [6]. Other specific examples of failed "gun defenses" abound. [7] 4. There are safer alternatives to gun ownershipThrough his silence, Pro has conceded my argument from Round 2 that people don't need to own firearms to enjoy hunting or target-shooting. A highly regulated / supervised firearm rental system would accomplish the same benefits without exposing society to the danger of widespread gun ownership.Pro did argue that guns were the most effective means of self-defense, but neglected to address my point that a person would actually be far safer in a well-policed society where nobody had access to guns at all. Where would you feel safer: in a Japanese or Swedish suburb without a gun, or in Detroit or Los Angeles with a gun? Gun rights are no substitute for effective policing, which precludes the need to use self-defense in the first place.5. Gun ownership is not a human rightPrivate gun ownership is not a right enshrined in the constitution of any other major country, [8] nor is it enumerated in the exhaustive list of human rights announced in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [9] or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [10].Out of space; will continue my "human right" argument in Round 4.- - - Sources:[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com...[2] http://www.csgv.org...[3] http://www.nytimes.com...[4] http://www.rense.com...[5] http://www.youtube.com...[6] http://www.cbsnews.com...[7] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com...[8] http://www.slate.com...[9] http://www.un.org...[10] http://www2.ohchr.org...