July Tournament

Thank you Con for that presenting your case, I will now respond to each contention the best I can. R1) Absurdity and Catch-22 My view is very reasonable; no one should be able to privately own a gun. Only police, law enforcement and the military should be owning or possessing guns, to advance the public welfare. Ordinary citizens or body-guards do not need access to firearms because they already have access to many other methods of safety. For example, for burglary you could lock your door, install a security system, call the police, use another weapon, etc.R2) Protection Con states that guns stop more crimes than they cause. This is absolutely false. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1973-2013) found that: Out of the 29,618,300 violent crimes that were committed between the years 2007 and 2011, only 0.8% of the victims used a firearm in self-defense (the least used self-defense technique). http://www.bjs.gov...Even where access to guns is relatively easy, few people choose to use them in self defense. There are always going to be more criminals with guns than good people with guns. 100% of people in this country are at risk to gun violence.This includes threatening the criminal with the weapon. If the victim of a crime only uses a firearm 0.8% of the time, it is hard to believe how firearms stop more crimes than homicide, accidental death, and suicides put together.I would also like to point out that Con has no evidence to support his claim that guns prevent more crimes than they cause, therefore it holds no weight. R3) All firearms are not created equal and neither are their purposes Con asserts that firearms have other uses such as hunting, shooting targets, etc., and that taking away guns would take these beneficial uses for guns. I would like to think that the lives taken by gun homicides, accidental shootings, and gun suicides are more important than the enjoyment that hunting, or shooting at targets may bring. Con also says that guns are necessary for citizens that reside in rural areas, so that they can fight off bears and wolves. Yet the amount of deaths that occur from wolf attacks and bear attacks are extremely minimal. The last bear attack was last year, in 2014. Several of these examples included people who had access to guns.https://en.wikipedia.org... The last wolf attack was 5 years ago, in 2010.https://en.wikipedia.org... If we are going to talk about deaths, we should address larger numbers and more consistency. Con then mentions that Alaska and South Dakota have a higher rape rate than other states, he says that this is due to the fact that these states have lower population densities. Yet rape rates and population density have no correlation to each other. If we believed that there was a correlation, we should expect to find a lower rape rate with states with more guns. Yet both of the states Con mentioned have extremely high gun ownership rates. “More than 41,000 South Dakotans have permits to carry handguns or conceal them in their cars - the highest rate per capita in the nation…”http://www.opposingviews.com... “The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, Alabama, and Nevada... Alaska: Household Gun Ownership: 60.6 percent…”http://www.opposingviews.com... Alaska and South Dakota both have very high gun ownership rates; as a result they then should have a low rape rate. Yet as Con mentioned, they have one of the highest rape rates in the country. If anything, a high gun ownership concentration in these states suggests a reverse correlation. That increased gun ownership could lead to increased rape rates through use by criminals. R4) Not all crimes use guns, but all criminals prefer to avoid guns As I mentioned in R2, firearms are rarely used by the victim to stop the crime, only 0.8% if the time to be exact. “Criminals often seek easy prey, for whatever their goal is: whether it is to simply rob someone for quick cash...” Yet the presence of a firearm immediately escalates the situation, what would have been a quick theft, is now a scenario where the victim and the criminal are both pointing a gun at each other and a loss of life is significantly more likely. Con then makes the argument that criminals only pick on easy prey, which would explain why mass-shootings occur in gun-free zones 92% of the time. So it follows that we should arm the people to defend them against the shooters. Yet Con is completely wrong, it is actually the opposite. “Epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.”http://www.uphs.upenn.edu... This just goes to show how much of a bad idea Con is proposing. Doing what Con said would actually put victims of mass-shootings in more peril, 4.5 times more peril to be exact. “A study conducted by Mother Jones found that, in 62 mass shootings over 32 years, there were exactly zero instances of a killer targeting a place because of a gun ban. New data from Mayors Against Illegal Guns confirm this point, by showing that in all 56 mass shootings between 2009 and 2013, “no more than one quarter of the shootings occurred in public spaces that were so-called ‘gun-free zones.” Neither the motive nor the location of a mass shooting, therefore, have anything to do with ‘gun-free zones...places like schools and offices are dense, populous environments that naturally attract shooters who seek to rectify perceived mistreatment or unfairness. That they happen to also be gun-free zones is coincidence.”http://www.armedwithreason.com... There is no correlation between mass-shootings and gun-free zones. R5) Conclusion Con actually brought up more arguments in his conclusion, so hence this section. Con states that increased gun ownership is the cause of decreased crime. This is utterly false. Police funding cuts is just as likely a cause for the increase of crime. “The nation’s law enforcement agencies are confronting severe budget cuts and unmanageable layoffs, and they are fundamentally changing how they keep the public safe… Over one-third of the agencies that applied for 2011 COPS officer hiring funding reported an operating budget drop of greater than 5 percent between 2009 and 2011… Nearly a quarter of American cities surveyed have made cuts to public safety budgets.”http://www.cops.usdoj.gov...