Gun Control

I feel as though Con is blinded by his biases, so I will attempt to debate this completely objectively."If this method were actually effective, then illegal drugs would not be an issue"Con fails to make any connection between guns and illegal drugs so I can safely assume this claim is false. "Vilifying gun owners by imposing gun restrictions make it tougher for registered, law abiding gun owners from purchasing firearms and does nearly nothing to prevent real criminals from acquiring them."Con has failed to provide any sources for this claim so I can also safely assume it is false. "As Alex Jones had said "When strict gun control laws are prevalent, the fear of getting shot goes away and criminals tend to flourish."Wikipedia says that Alex Jones is "an American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist, and documentary filmmaker[1]"Here's a video a 42 completely wrong predictions made by Alex Jones [2]. He has made multiple claims that Obama is going to nuke everybody, shut down the internet, and kill 50% of the population with a controlled bird flu to instate martial law. Alex Jones is not a reliable source. "Individuals who go through the legal process and apply for a gun permit care about their own preservation of life."What Con is saying here is that nobody buys guns for anything other than self-defense. This is obviously false. There are many sports that involve guns such as target shooting, skeet shooting, and hunting, [3]. "A true criminal isn't taking gun safety courses, obtaining a permit, paying the processing fee, or waiting a 2 day period to receive their firearm."A lot of non-criminals don't even take gun safety courses which is why there are lots of accidental killings/injuries. [4]. The accidental homicide rate among children is horrifically high. Between 1999 and 2012, 259 children under 15 died because they had careless parents that didn't keep the weapon in a safe place. If Con tries to claim that in a population of 300 Million that isn't a lot, then I will claim that Con is a sociopath."No aspect of gun control will prevent criminals from obtaining or using firearms."This is absolutely not true. Japan has the highest gun restrictions in the developed world, and it had only two gun related deaths in 2006 [5]. There are 126 million people in Japan. There are 314 million people in the USA. Comparatively, we should be having five or six per year with higher restrictions, not 11,000 [6]. Is one example not enough? I'll happily provide more. Australia has 0.1 gun deaths per 10,000 people every year. In 2010, Germany had 158 gun deaths. In the last 14 years, the highest amount of gun deaths the UK has seen in one year is 52 (2004) [7]."The real criminals who have the intention of using firearms to commit illegal actions are buying a gun in some alley from the back of some guy's trunk."Again, not true. 49 out of the 61 mass murders in the USA since 1982 have been done with legal firearms []8]. Clearly criminals aren't getting as many guns from the black market as Con would have people believe. Think about how many people have been stopped because they could not obtain a legal firearm. " In 1999 Benjamin Smith was unable to pass a background check barring him from legally purchasing a firearm. Three days later he bought two handguns off the streets and went on a rampage killing two people and wounding nine others. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots USA Today reported that many of the people who scrambled to gun stores were 'lifelong gun-control advocates, running to buy an item they thought they'd never need.'"These were both claimed without sources so I can safely assume they are false. "Two other common misconceptions about potentially successful methods of gun control are either creating gun free zones or banning guns all together. Gun free zones create a false sense of peace of mind and security. If gun free zones stopped shootings, no one would go 60 mph in a 25 mph zone. The only people a gun free zone stops is a law abiding, gun carrying citizen who could stop a crime from happening rather than a maniac going on a shooting rampage. Banning guns is just as useless as the previous proposed method. If the federal government were to seek to outlaw guns, it would have as much success as has the drug war if not worse."I find this argument to be extremely flawed. As can be seen on this graph [8b] (a graph from source 8), states that have higher restrictions on guns have fewer gun deaths. States with little to now gun restrictions have more gun deaths. Correlation is not causation but it is very suggestive. Especially with these kind of statistics. This other graph [8c] also shows that the most gun deaths are in states with relaxed gun laws. Obviously, gun regulations do work. Also, I cannot believe that Con just equated driving to owning a weapon. Cars do not have the primary purpose of killing. They are a useful tool."Another reason the idea of outlawing guns is absolutely ludicrous is because it is our 2nd amendment right and it was written into the constitution for a very good reason...The 2nd amendment is in place to ensure that the citizenry of the United States always has the ability to exercise the explicit right to overthrow the elected government by force of arms."For an aspiring police officer Con has a terrible grasp at what the 2nd amendment states.The second amendment states "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."[9]I'd like Con to show me where to sign up for this "well regulated militia". Does it exist? Nope. Until it does, the right to bear arms does not exist. Let's just assume that the well regulated militia part is not there, for arguments sake. When the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) were added to the constitution, the founders could not have possibly know about fully automatic rifles and high powered sniper rifles. They were talking about muskets. An M16 has the ability to fire 800 rounds per minute [10]. That would be unfathomable at a time when a skilled musketeer could shoot maybe three/four rounds per minute. New bullets are also much more lethal than musket balls.I argue that the second amendment should be repealed because our current setup of guns could not have been imagined by the founders. Also, it says "right to bear arms". It does not specify which arms. This should make it legal for a normal citizen to have an armed nuclear warhead and mustard gas. Is that a world anybody wants to live in? It would be pure chaos. "Citizens arm themselves to assure that they have safety from a government that takes away rights individually until forced to live in a police state"Have fun taking out an F-32b fighter jet with your shotgun. Also, those tanks might be a little hard to bust with your pistol. The idea that guns are necessary to overthrow the government is ludicrous. "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms."For all I know Con's name is James Madison. There's no source here so I can safely assume the real James Madison did not say that. "As Ben Franklin has said 'Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns'"Read above"If you take a look at history you can see that history repeats its self. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao took the guns. Each a leader of a powerful nation that fell."Sorry, I'm having trouble not seeing China on a map. Should I cut it out? Also, Stalin was long gone when the USSR fell. The fall of the USSR had nothing to do with guns. Command economies don't work as well market economies. By the way, "itself" is one word. To add on, most countries that have fallen, fell before guns came into existence. The Roman Empire didn't fall because they confiscated guns. The Aztecs didn't fall because they confiscated guns. The Ottoman's didn't fall because they confiscated guns."If the Jews were armed during the Holocaust or slaves in the United States had guns, they would have had a fighting chance.Nope. Slaves outnumbered white people in the south. They did have a fighting chance. Also, how could you expect such a small portion of the populace to fight the government? "Overall, guns in the United States are used 80 times more often to prevent crime and protect the lives of honest citizens than they are to take lives...People have used their firearms to protect themselves against assailants around 2.5 million times a year."I'd like proof of this claim."Guns protect us from criminals, psychopaths, governments at home and overseas."I wasn't aware that people were now taking trips to North Korea to fight them with their pistols. I feel safer already.I'm out of space, so I will target more of Con's claims in the second round. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...(radio_host)[2] #t=323[3] http://www.nssf.org...[4] http://www.nytimes.com...[5] http://www.theatlantic.com...[6] http://www.cdc.gov...[7] http://ivn.us...[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com...[8b] http://img.washingtonpost.com...[8c] http://img.washingtonpost.com...[9] http://constitutioncenter.org...[10] http://fas.org...