March Beginners Tournament : The United States should place a ban on all semi-automatic weapons"

I will begin by addressing the argument made by my opponent in round one only, the issues that have been otherwise brought up regarding my framework and the defence to my own arguments will be presented in my final round. Contention 1 - Highly impractical for the US Granted, I came into this debate full aware of the fact that the history of gun ownership in the United States is a special case when compared to the rest of the world, except, this contention doesn’t do one basic thing that weakens it greatly being his first main argument, my opponent does not attempt to isolate semi-automatic weapons from other weapon types. Let me make this point clearer by quoting my opponent, “With semi-automatic guns being used for many different sporting events, hunting, self-defense, etc” For someone who has a framework that is supposed to weigh the pros and cons based on the consequences of semi-automatic weapons, he does a very weak job in researching this as he uses two wikipedia pages linking to the practices of sporting or hunting where a MAJORITY of which takes place with weapons other than semi-automatic weapons. So the necessity of having semi-automatic weapons for hunting is not proven, there is absolutely nothing that would prevent Americans from practicing these events without the ownership of these guns, furthermore, we would be throwing away hundreds of lives away because of the negative effect that semi-automatic weapons have presented to use these guns when they aren’t even necessarily required for the sport. Contention 2/3 - Criminals don’t listen to laws/Black market These contentions are practically the same, since law-breaking criminals head to the black market to purchase weapons, so I’m going to merge this rebuttals with contention 3. Let me start with a simple question, if criminals don’t listen to laws, why do we bother having laws on gun control at all? My opponent probably supports the view that the only way to deal with a bad guy that has guns is a good guy that has guns to fire back at with. We could simply put the same example for murder or theft, why have laws on them at all if criminals don’t listen to laws? The reason is the presence of laws build up social norms, they allow families of deceased victims to get retribution through the criminal justice system as laws are in place against illegal weapons that criminals are using, because either way, 100% of criminals are not going to oblige to the change in gun laws, but some will be deterred from crime once the laws are put in place which once again build up our social norms and will contribute to reducing the suicide rate.[A]Simply because criminals have ready access to the black market at any time means that they have the desire to use the weapons more, nor does it necessarily mean that most criminals will always have access to the black market. But yet, the black market has not seen drastic statistics of increased gun crime in states with more gun restrictions, we should not tell off anyone advocating the semi-automatic gun ban simply because there is this futility to perform the task because of the presence of the black market which hasn't helped law-abiding citizens either way if they had semi-automatics or not to defend against deadlier weaponry because the crime rate is as still high as ever, hence, the influence this ban will have will reduce crime, even in the black market to an extent where it will outweigh the benefits of keeping semi-automatics as it will significantly reduce the homicide rate. Contention 4 - The Second Amendment So my opponent attempts to defend the semi-automatic weapons bringing the one contention that DOES NOT even relate to his framework, apart from this being directly contradictory to what his stance was about evaluating the ‘consequences’ of semi-automatic weapons he also pushes it even further by stating that, “what is the point of a gun, or a gun right, if legislation can be passed to render them useless?” So, bringing forward the Heller case to strengthen the argument on the Second Amendment shows us that my opponent doesn’t like the idea of Congress or the Government as a whole rather to take away the rights citizens would have to their guns, in the bizarre case that they go rogue and an armed revolution is the correct measure in preparation for that if they do. Bonus points for bringing out some true American patriotism there, but to no avail. Why? Because if the presence of the Second Amendment was to ensure that Congress does not attempt to do something unconstitutional towards the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ this puts forward the question that what should prevent the average person from owning deadly weapons such as an RPG-7 or an anti-tank missile? The US is not moving towards totalitarianism simply because of this ban, it has never occurred in the United States, they are not becoming Nazi Germany simply because some of your guns are taken away and using the whole ‘tyranny’ case to justify a revolution doesn’t stand because it isn’t a democratic action given to the people, which I have stated if you’re going to cling onto the constitution so much. [B] Contention 5 - Self Defense I’ll be honest, naturally everyone feels better holding a Tec-9 for a defense weapon rather than a Winchester because of it’s fire rate and ammo capacity, but we can’t ignore some basic facts. If the average person does indeed feel better protected with these weapons, why is it that gun crime and gun violence is still as prominent as ever in the United States? [C] Let’s apply the logic my opponent has used, basically more guns = less crime. So this ideology should carry out throughtout the states proving that a state that has more freedoms on gun ownership should produce less homicide rates and domestic gun violence and yet this diagram proves the exact opposite, homicides are higher in states with more gun freedoms and it is lower in states that have taken more measures against it. Contention 6 - Analysis of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban So to get some vengeance against my opponent for calling me out on numerous fallacies in the second round, (which I will discuss in the 4th round) my opponent commits the “argumentum ex silentio” which is basically the ‘argument from silence’ as my opponent does not attempt to relate the semi-automatic assault rifle ban with increase in crime that all semi-automatic weapons have. As there is very little to actually rebut in this contention, and since the rebuttal my opponent made will be addressed in round four, I will simply state that my graph above can be referred to answer this question. The presence of semi-automatic handguns has a huge factor on the homicide rate, when the Australians began extremely tight gun control regulations which resulted in numerous gun bans, people believed that this would empower criminals and leave citizens defenceless. But as I quote from Australian journalists who studied this issue, “It is the ready availability of weapons, particularly those that are automatic or semiautomatic, that increases the likelihood that people in a moment of madness, or malice, or hatred, will kill a lot of people,” [D] So the presence of semi-automatic handguns was the main factor that actually proved that stronger measures were needed since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. My opponent brings up that the “less guns, less crime” theory is debunked because gun production was still high during these times because of the black market produce, but as I mentioned in an earlier rebuttal, the ban would enforce social norms which would protect law-abiding citizens and deter some criminals from committing wrongdoings because of the stronger role the Criminal Justice System can play, and even with all these sources my opponent DOES NOT PROVE how the presence of more guns has anyway reduced crime in the US, my source thoroughly debunks that and there is nothing more to add at this point. Sources- [A] http://www.armedwithreason.com... [B] - http://www.theamericanconservative.com... [C] - http://www.theatlantic.com... [D] - http://www.nytimes.com...