Dueling should be legalized

Thanks, Civiero, for your articulate and spirited Libertarian argument for dueling. Given the ubiquity of prohibition of dueling in modern nations, your fight was always going to be an uphill one. I look forward to seeing what the voters think.== Closing Arguments / Summary ==My opponent advocated for making dueling legal based on two grounds. I will summarize my perspective of the flow and final conclusions of the argument on these two points.-- Dueling is a Right --My opponent's Libertarian argument is, at its basis, well-founded. My rebuttal, however, used one of the very few defenses accepted (in U.S. law, anyway) for overriding a person's rights: The Harm principle and the Legal Paternalism principle. Neither were explicitly named in my first rebuttal, but were nonetheless used. My point about cost to society was admitted by my opponent to have merit. His most effective counter was that nonconsensual medical treatment can't oblige the patient to change their behavior. This is not true; we are, in fact, obliged to pay for medical care given to us while unable to refuse that care. As I did not have space to introduce the principles for why that is, the reader is left to decide whether the medical consent argument is sufficient on its own.His other two counters still run aground, in my view, of the Harm principle and Legal Paternalism. Just because the line of 'too risky' is difficult to draw does not mean the state should decline to make any judgment about safety whatsoever, as well-evidenced by reasonable regulations on dangerous activities. A fuzzy line is still a line, and the precise location of that line is less important than when an activity is blatantly on the wrong side of it.Legal paternalism is the concept which my opponent most needs to dismantle. However, he has given no evidence to refute the state's interest in acting in loco parentis. He simply states that we have the right to risk ourselves at will. This is not a rebuttal to legal paternalism; it is a statement of preference. Even if we did have this right, this does not erase the responsibility of the state to try to prevent it. Indeed, my opponent mischaracterizes my argument. Far from wanting to draw a difference between dueling and other dangerous activities, legal paternalism treats them the same: Regulate them with the minimum amount of restrictions necessary to minimize the risk to life and health. It is the NATURE of dueling that makes the 'minimum restrictions necessary' a full prohibition. The lethality rate is far too high; other dangerous activities have, in the wake of this minimum regulation, been reduced to acceptable lethality rates. Non-lethal dueling, as ever, is known as boxing or martial arts exhibition matches, and are regulated, as usual, the minimum amount to be reasonably assured of safety for both participants.As I am applying the same standard to dueling as I am to all dangerous activities, and this standard has gone unaddressed save for what amounts to, "I would prefer that legal paternalism not remain in force", my opponent's rebuttal on rights grounds is ineffective. John Stuart Mills is not the only authority on the rights and liberties of mankind.-- Increased Public Safety, Culture of Honor -- We seem to have come to no solid conclusions in these matters. Who describes the more likely effects on our culture, and which of those effects is more desirable, is left as an exercise to the reader. I can only confidently say that I would not prefer to live in a society in which dueling was considered an acceptable form of conflict resolution.-- My Analogies -- As a note of clarification: My 'warning labels off chemicals' was intended as a wry rhetorical device for illustrative effect. The entire point behind the knight, the dragon, and the maiden was to contrast how incomparable those two motives were, and how the 'social pressure' reason was incompatible with rational decision making. My opponent actually correctly stated the point of the analogy even as he expressed the confusion of why I was using it. This means I need to refine my usage to make the relevance more clear.----- Thanks to Civiero for a rousing debate. He was a tough opponent, demanding that my brain undergo a healthy workout. Regardless of the winner, that's the best possible result, from my perspective.