Guns Should be Banned for Civilians in the USA

To start I will defend my previous statements. The con has listed a few countries which have implemented a complete ban on gun ownership by civilians, however the con only gives very generalised statements about each country and does not show any statistics to support their claim. In England and Wales there has been an almost complete ban on owning firearms, statistics show that during 2008 - 2009 there were 39 fatal injuries involving firearms. This is compared to statistics form America in 2008 showing 12,000 gun related homicides. http://www.economist.com... Clearly banning guns does reduce the amount of gun related homicides that occur in the country. The entire point of gun legislation is to make is harder for criminals to harm civilians. According to the statistics quoted by the con in 2010 over 8,500 deaths were caused by guns. This means that if guns were banned in American 8,500 lives would have been saved in 2010. Surely this is the perfect example of gun bans making it harder for criminals to harm civilians. Yes I agree the citizens of the USA do have a right to defend themselves, but at what point do we say that self defence has become pre-emptive attack. Is it acceptable to shoot a person who is intruding in your house. If so than I am I allowed to shoot someone who comes over for tea but than refuses to leave when I ask them. There is a reason why people are not given the death sentence for breaking and entering, and that is because they do not deserve it. So why is it acceptable for someone to shoot an intruder. Looking closely at the gun related homicides that occur in the USA there is one main point that stands out. Statistically if you are a women and you are shot by a man, it is 3 times more likely that the man who shot you was your husband or intimate acquaintances of yours than someone you didn't know. http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org... This suggests that you should be more worried about your spouse rather than someone random on the street. This also shows the startling amount of times that guns are being used by civilians during domestic house fights. It isn't hard to imagine husband and wife having some sort of argument things get a bit heated, the husband (or wife) reaches into the draw and pulls out a gun and shoots their partner dead. A person in a temporary moment of insanity and anger shooting their partner because it was just too easy. In a country where guns are banned that gun would never have even been brought into the equation. The argument that "People own guns for reasons other then self protection, including simply firing at targets or for hunting" is true. However, there has been a massive increase in bow hunters in the past few years because of the extra challenge it provides. Also since most people buy their meat from the shops, hunting isn't really a major necessity these days. 1982 was quite a long time ago. Guns have evolved a lot over the past 30 years and so has the way that criminals operate. These days almost all criminals who own guns are fully licensed, this means that there is no difference between a criminal owning a gun and a civilian owning a gun. This makes it very difficult for any sort of action to be taken against the criminals who own guns, because there actually has to be some sort of crime linked to their gun. It is sort of like you have two sides the bad guys with the guns and the good guys with the guns, they are both shooting at each other and it becomes hard to see the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Chances are all the guns were bought legally, the only difference is the intent. The good guys only want guns for protection, the bad guys want guns so they can shoot the good guys. Quite often, as I stated before, guns that were for 'self protection' end up being used in domestic murders, which means that sometimes the good guys become bad guys. Now all of a sudden there are more bad guys than good guys, but everyone is still claiming that they only want guns for protection. See how confusing everything gets. The reason why 'Banning handguns has proven to not be effective here in the US' is because of a negative reaction towards the new ban. Homicide rates increased because people who owned handguns that never left the house, suddenly came out in silent protest against the new ban by actually carrying their gun around in the streets. This lead to more confrontations therefore more gun related deaths. All the ban needs is a bit more time for it to sink into the residents. Police officers need to step up their game because now they can remove the handguns and charge their owners even before any shots are fired. Now the con has come out with the age old statement that is our constitutional right to bear arms. It must be noted with this argument that the second amendment was passed back in 1791. Back then those guns could only fire one shot before they had to be reloaded, and fully automatic weapons were not even a concept yet. I am sure that the writers of the second amendment never imagined in the future what our arms would actually look like. Yes I do agree that the second amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms, but I think it is only fair for them to own the guns that the writers of the second amendment assumed that everyone would have, that is of course muskets and other guns from 1791. I think it is perfectly clear that the benefits of having a ban on guns far out way the negatives.