Guns should be legal for home defense in the U.S.

As no new evidence may be introduced in the final round, this will be a primarily scientific round from me.“Guns will always be available illegally”Living in the United Kingdom, I find this difficult to accept. British crime films are in fact typically quite clear on the difficulty in obtaining firearms – in Snatch, a gang attempt to use replicas to carry out a robbery, in Kidulthood, the guns in the film are all badly converted blank firing revolvers.I admit, that is not real evidence, so here are some hard facts (as opposed to the statistics you use, which I will discuss later):Between April 2010 and May 2011 there were 11,227 recorded offences involving firearms, broken down by weapon type:• Long-barrelled shotgun = 406• Sawn-off shotgun = 202• Handgun = 3,105• Rifle = 74• Imitation firearm = 1,610• Unidentified firearm = 957• Other firearm = 670• Air weapons = 4,203N.B. ‘Other firearm’ includes 223 uses of CS gas, 118 uses of pepper spray and 149 uses of stun gunsSo, that gives us 6,303 crimes committed using weapons that Americans would laugh at – non-firing replicas, air weapons, pepper spray, etc. This compares quite starkly to 4,924 crimes committed using ‘real’ guns. [1] This is corroborated by the findings of police detectives: “A comparative shortage of guns in circulation has triggered a price spike in the underworld firearms market, according to detectives.”“Police in the West Midlands have reported the emergence on the streets of more antique weapons using home-made ammunition and more sharing of weapons between gangs to counter the shortages.” [2]So yes, there are illegal guns in my country, but they are far from easy to obtain. Furthermore, it is likely that quite a significant proportion of those guns are converted from blank firing guns. Japan too has succeeded in controlling weapons – with some of the strictest gun control in the world, they saw only two gun deaths in 2006. [3]Even in America, the amount of truly ‘illegal’ guns is over-estimated. Of the last sixty-two mass shootings carried out in America, forty-nine of them were carried out using legally acquired weaponry, twelve by illegally acquired weaponry, and one killer used weapons from an ‘unknown’ source. [4] Clearly, mass-murderers are usually quite capable of legally acquiring the weapons they want to use. When they do have to resort to illegal weapons though, you will find that the majority of illegal weapons in America come from a legal source. Jay Wachtel, from the ATF, describes the most common sources of illegal weapons: in first place is the straw purchase, in second is a corrupt Federal Firearm Licensee, and in third place comes the unlicensed street dealer, whom is likely to have obtained his weapons by purchasing from a licensed dealer. [5] Guns are sold legally within the United States only to be then illegally sold to American criminals, and so the idea that the black market of weapons is completely detached from the legal trade seems to be a fantasy.Guns and Self-DefenceA study by A. L. Kellerman et al investigating "the relative frequency with which guns in the home are used to injure or kill in self-defense, compared with the number of times these weapons are involved in an unintentional injury, suicide attempt, or criminal assault or homicide" found that from 626 shootings at residences, that "every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides."[6] Eliminating police shootings, this gives a final figure of 3.3% of shootings being intentionally carried out by law-abiding citizens. So, what about instances where guns are not fired? You cite an impressive figure, however: “One check on the credibility of these DGU estimates is made possible by the detailed follow-up questions included in both these surveys... From the NSPOF, we estimate that 322,000 used a gun to defend against a would-be rapist. But that is more than the total number of rapes and attempted rapes estimated from the best available source, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)!6.... Our closer examination of the DGU reports in the NSPOF suggests that almost half of the incidents appear to contain some internal inconsistency, or otherwise do not make sense"[7]The same analysis further comments that a significant number of respondents were likely pro-gun, and so potentially lied, while an even bigger problem was likely ‘telescoping’, which is recalling events that happened over a year ago as happening less than 12 months ago. The point was also made that a number of respondents were likely senile, delusional and / or intoxicated. Furthermore, a different analysis of two surveys criticised the uses themselves, which is what I was referring to when I questioned the shooting of that egg-throwing wretch. They concluded: “Even after excluding many reported firearm victimisations, far more survey respondents report having been threatened for intimidated with a gun than having used a gun to protect themselves. A majority of the reported self-defence gun uses were rated as probably illegal by a majority of judges. This was so even under the assumption that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly” [8] – which if I may say so, is an optimistic approach.I find the ‘castle doctrine’ is immoral, in fact, you refute it yourself. You say yourself that “lethal force cannot be used unless a reasonable person in that situation would believe he was in imminent threat of death or great bodily harm”. In America, 28% of burglaries are committed with people in the residence, and of that 28%, 25% involve violence, but of these violent burglaries, only 9% resulted in serious injury (N.B. I had to perform some of these calculations approximately using the data provided). [9] The castle doctrine permits shooting a burglar under any circumstance, yet the chance of this shooting being justifiable (according to you) is tiny – only 2.5% of burglaries committed while someone was at home led to serious injury. Does it at least serve as a deterrent? It seems not: “Results indicate the laws do not deter burglary, robbery, or aggravated assault. In contrast, they lead to a statistically significant 8 percent net increase in the number of reported murders and non-negligent manslaughters.”[10]What Do I Suggest?I suggest that the status quo is deeply flawed, and that stricter gun control is needed. I am opposed to the idea that someone can buy, broadly speaking, any weapon they want with a quick background check and minimal control for the purpose of home defence, which of course anyone can claim as their motive. Stricter gun control has been shown to reduce gun deaths even in America [11], adjusting for the other influencing factors. Gun ownership to me seems to be a socially constructed crutch, or even a fetish, with 7.9 guns being the average number owned. [12]I am currently satisfied with my opponent’s concession regarding the limitation self-defence, so I will not discuss liberty for the moment. I have no space. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...[5] ] http://www.pbs.org...[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[7] http://home.uchicago.edu...[8] http://injuryprevention.bmj.com...[9] http://www.stateoftheusa.org...[10] http://econweb.tamu.edu...[11] http://www.theatlantic.com...[12] http://tinyurl.com...Yes, I had to resort to tinyurl.