Gun control is bad
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with 8 points ahead, the winner is...
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According to research completed by the U.S. Department of Justice, private gun ownership influences the behavior of criminals. In this study, over 1,800 imprisoned felons across the country were surveyed on their opinions of firearms.(1) Here is what they learned:
One-third of criminals questioned had encountered an armed victim. The study found 34% of the felons had been scared off, shot at, wounded, or even captured by a gun-owning victim.
56% of those interviewed agreed that criminals intentionally avoid armed victims. If criminals know the individual has a weapon, they chose to target another victim.
Basically, criminals fear the armed civilian more than law enforcement.
There are multiple reasons for this, but the most common include: police are rarely at the crime scene in a timely manner and they are required to follow “policy and procedure.” On the other hand, the average civilian does not receive procedure defense training like the police, so can—and will—act in whatever way they deem necessary to protect themselves."
Yet a good guy with a gun is not a myth when it comes to public shootings. These individuals can stop shooters and significantly reduce the number of deaths and injuries. The 2017 Sutherland Springs Church shooting and the 2019 shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ brought the reality of a good guy with a gun into the public eye, but armed civilians have stopped mass casualties many times before, helping make communities safer.
The police agree. When surveyed, almost 90% believe having an armed civilian onsite during an active shooting would decrease casualties. In this same study, when given options on how to reduce public shootings, law enforcement officers’ #1 answer was “more permissive concealed carry policies for civilians, which topped other answers, like more armed guards/paid security personnel, improved background screening to determine mental wellness of gun purchasers for gun purchasers, and more regulatory legislation on assault weapons and ammo magazines.”(5)
Now that you have the facts, it’s easy to see how carrying a weapon and preparing for any situation can be essential to protecting yourself and your family.
Regardless of your stance, U.S. LawShield understands your concern and we’re here to keep you protected and informed."
- Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
- 60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.
- Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
- Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime."
- Louisiana: 11.0 (3)
- Mississippi: 10.2 (5)
- Alabama: 9.5 (4)
- Missouri: 8.5 (5)
- Maryland: 7.4 (1)
- South Carolina: 7.4 (3)
- Tennessee: 6.7 (4)
- Illinois: 6.5 (2)
- Arkansas: 6.2 (3)
- Georgia: 6.2 (4)
- Alaska: 6.0 (5)
- New Mexico: 5.7 (4)
- Oklahoma: 5.7 (4)
- Indiana: 5.3 (4)
- Delaware: 5.1 (2)
- North Carolina: 5.0 (4)
- Nevada: 4.8 (3)
- Ohio: 4.8 (4)
- Kentucky: 4.7 (4)
- Florida: 4.6 (4)"
1) America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as GermanyJavier Zarracina/VoxThis chart, compiled using 2012 United Nations data collected by Simon Rogers for the Guardian, shows that America far and away leads other developed countries when it comes to gun-related homicides. Why? Extensive reviews of the research, compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center, suggest the answer is pretty simple: The US is an outlier on gun violence because it has way more guns than other developed nations.3) There have been more than 2,500 mass shootings since Sandy HookKavya Sukumar/VoxIn December 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself. Since then, there have been more than 2,500 mass shootings as of July 2020.The number comes from the Gun Violence Archive, which hosts a database that has tracked mass shootings since 2013. But since some shootings go unreported, the database is likely missing some, as well as the details of some of the events.The tracker uses a fairly broad definition of “mass shooting”: It includes not just shootings in which four or more people were murdered, but shootings in which four or more people were shot at all (excluding the shooter).Even under this broad definition, it’s worth noting that mass shootings make up less than 2 percent of America’s firearm deaths, which totaled nearly 40,000 in 2017 alone.4) On average, there is around one mass shooting for each day in AmericaChristopher Ingraham pointed out at the Washington Post in 2015. Under the broader definition of mass shootings, America has around one mass shooting a day.5) States with more guns have more gun deathsMother JonesUsing data from a 2016 study in Injury Prevention and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mother Jones put together the chart above that shows states with more guns tend to have far more gun deaths, including homicides and suicides. This has been found across the empirical research: “Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.6) It’s not just the US: Developed countries with more guns also have more gun deathsAmerica is only an outlier when it comes to homicides and, specifically, gun violence, based on 2000 data from Jeffrey Swanson at Duke University.As Zack Beauchamp explained for Vox, a breakthrough analysis in the 1990s by UC Berkeley’s Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins found that the US does not, contrary to the old conventional wisdom, have more crime in general than other Western industrial nations. Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.“A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar,” Zimring and Hawkins wrote. “A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London.”8) States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deathsZara Matheson/Martin Prosperity InstituteWhen economist Richard Florida took a look at gun deaths and other social indicators in 2011, he found that higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness didn’t correlate with more gun deaths. But he did find one telling correlation: States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths. (Read more in Florida’s “The Geography of Gun Deaths.”)This is backed by other research: A 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiologic Reviews, found that new legal restrictions on owning and purchasing guns tended to be followed by a drop in gun violence — a strong indicator that restricting access to guns can save lives.9) Still, gun homicides (like all homicides) have declined over the past couple of decadesThe good news is that firearm homicides, like all homicides and crime, have declined over the past several decades.One theory that researchers have widely debunked is the idea that more guns have deterred crime — in fact, the opposite may be true, based on research compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Center.10) Most gun deaths are suicidesAlthough America’s political debate about guns tends to focus on grisly mass shootings and murders, a majority of gun-related deaths in the US are suicides. As Dylan Matthews explained for Vox, this is actually one of the most compelling reasons for reducing access to guns: There is a lot of research that shows greater access to guns dramatically increases the risk of suicide.12) Guns allow people to kill themselves much more easilyEstelle Caswell/VoxPerhaps the key reason access to guns so strongly contributes to suicides is that guns are much deadlier than alternatives like cutting and poison.Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, previously explained that this is why reducing access to guns can be so important to preventing suicides: Just stalling an attempt or making it less likely to result in death makes a huge difference.13) Policies that limit access to guns have decreased suicidesEstelle Caswell/VoxWhen countries reduced access to guns, they saw a drop in the number of firearm suicides. The data above, taken from a 2010 study by Australian researchers, shows that suicides dropped dramatically after the Australian government set up a mandatory gun buyback program that reduced the number of firearms in the country by about one-fifth.The Australian study found that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people correlated with up to a 50 percent drop in firearm homicides and a 74 percent drop in gun suicides. As Dylan Matthews explained for Vox, the drop in homicides wasn’t statistically significant (in large part because murders in Australia were already so low). But the drop in suicides definitely was — and the results are striking.Australia is far from alone in these types of results. A study from Israeli researchers found that suicides among Israeli soldiers dropped by 40 percent when the military stopped letting soldiers take their guns home.14) In states with more guns, more police officers are also killed on dutyGiven that states with more guns tend to have more homicides, it isn’t too surprising that, as a 2015 study in the American Journal of Public Health found, states with more guns also have more police die in the line of duty.Researchers looked at federal data for firearm ownership and homicides of police officers across the US over 15 years. They found that states with more gun ownership had more police killed in homicides: Every 10 percent increase in firearm ownership correlated with 10 additional officers killed in homicides over the 15-year study period.The findings could help explain why US police officers appear to kill more people than police in other developed countries. For US police officers, the higher rates of guns and gun violence — even against them — in America mean that they not only will encounter more guns and violence, but they can expect to encounter more guns and deadly violence, making them more likely to anticipate and perceive a threat and use deadly force as a result.
12) Guns allow people to kill themselves much more easily
Estelle Caswell/VoxPerhaps the key reason access to guns so strongly contributes to suicides is that guns are much deadlier than alternatives like cutting and poison.
Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, previously explained that this is why reducing access to guns can be so important to preventing suicides: Just stalling an attempt or making it less likely to result in death makes a huge difference.
“Time is really key to preventing suicide in a suicidal person,” Harkavy-Friedman said. “First, the crisis won’t last, so it will seem less dire and less hopeless with time. Second, it opens the opportunity for someone to help or for the suicidal person to reach out to someone to help. That’s why limiting access to lethal means is so powerful.”
She added, “[I]f we keep the method of suicide away from a person when they consider it, in that moment they will not switch to another method. It doesn’t mean they never will. But in that moment, their thinking is very inflexible and rigid. So it’s not like they say, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to work. I’m going to try something else.’ They generally can’t adjust their thinking, and they don’t switch methods.”
13) Policies that limit access to guns have decreased suicides
Estelle Caswell/VoxWhen countries reduced access to guns, they saw a drop in the number of firearm suicides. The data above, taken from a 2010 study by Australian researchers, shows that suicides dropped dramatically after the Australian government set up a mandatory gun buyback program that reduced the number of firearms in the country by about one-fifth.
The Australian study found that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people correlated with up to a 50 percent drop in firearm homicides and a 74 percent drop in gun suicides. As Dylan Matthews explained for Vox, the drop in homicides wasn’t statistically significant (in large part because murders in Australia were already so low). But the drop in suicides definitely was — and the results are striking.
Australia is far from alone in these types of results. A study from Israeli researchers found that suicides among Israeli soldiers dropped by 40 percent when the military stopped letting soldiers take their guns home. The change was most pronounced during the weekends.
This data and research have a clear message: States and countries can significantly reduce the number of suicides by restricting access to guns.
1) America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany
Also this point is refuted by point 7 in the article.
7) America is an outlier when it comes to gun deaths, but not overall crime
the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.
“A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar,” Zimring and Hawkins wrote. “A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London.”
This is in many ways intuitive: People of every country get into arguments and fights with friends, family, and peers. But in the US, it’s much more likely that someone will get angry during an argument and be able to pull out a gun and kill someone.
2. Across high-income nations, more guns = more homicideWe analyzed the relationship between homicide and gun availability using data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s. We found that across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides. These results often hold even when the United States is excluded.Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew. Firearm availability and homicide rates across 26 high income countries. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 49:985-88.3. Across states, more guns = more homicideUsing a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten-year period (1988-1997).After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. Household firearm ownership levels and homicide rates across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health. 2002; 92:1988-1993.4. Across states, more guns = more homicide (2)Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003. We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. State-level homicide victimization rates in the U.S. in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.6. More guns = more homicides of policeThis article examines homicide rates of Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) from 1996 to 2010. Differences in rates of homicides of LEOs across states are best explained not by differences in crime, but by differences in household gun ownership. In high gun states, LEOs are 3 times more likely to be murdered than LEOs working in low-gun states.This article was cited by President Obama in a speech to a police association. This article will hopefully bring police further into the camp of those pushing for sensible gun laws.Swedler DI, Simmons MM, Dominici F, Hemenway D. Firearm prevalence and homicides of law enforcement officers in the United States. American Journal of Public Health. 2015; 105:2042-48.
This was a pretty frustrating debate to read. I was going to provide a really detailed breakdown of the problems, but I think keeping this at a more generalized level will help explain what concerns me.
From the outset, I'm not really sure how each side is defining what gun control actually is. Pro spends a lot of his time jumping between different potential forms of gun control without focusing on any of them, though much of his case mainly applies to gun bans or heavily restricted access to guns, while Con tells me that Pro is just focused on failed methods of gun control without really defining what is a successful type of gun control that he's defending. That leaves me in a strange place because, on the one hand, Pro's arguments do not all apply to every form of gun control, but on the other hand, I'm not sure what Con's case is so I don't know which ones apply to him. The best I can do is glean some stance from Con's advantages, which suggest that any gun control measure has to be nationwide and strongly enforced. What that means in terms of who can legally get guns, how much of a reduction that yields in the amount of legal guns in peoples' hands, and how effective that is at reducing the number of guns going into the hands of criminals/the suicidal is unclear.
What's missing from this debate is policies. You're both talking in the abstract without engaging with what a gun control policy would actually look like and how effective it would be. The debate starts in the abstract and stays there, with Pro claiming that poorly designed gun control policies stand in for any possible gun control policy (and focusing in on a few possible policies that his opponent never directly supports), and Con just saying that good gun control policies can happen without really getting down into what a good gun control policy looks like. And neither of you do yourselves any favors in terms of how you decided to address one another. Pro starts out with a generalized analysis with some statistics that may or may not apply to Con's case, then engages with Con's arguments largely via either cross-applying points he already made or giving short blurb answers that largely let the link do all the talking, demanding that Con and voters read a whole list of links that he never even quotes. Con begins with a pretty generalized and loose set of statements about Pro's argument that he outright tells us won't be supported, then comes out with a longer argument that's largely just a single source pruned down to some core points, followed by a third round that just expands on those points. There's surprisingly little meat to this debate.
There's a lot I could say about whether certain arguments apply or don't apply to specific sources, but that's pretty irrelevant to my decision on this. Though neither side talked about it, the burden in this debate is on Pro. He had to prove that gun control is bad, and since Con made the argument that he's just not engaging with whatever "good gun control" is in his estimation, I honestly can't tell if he affirmed the resolution. Even if the reason for that has more to do with Con's unwillingness to take a clear position, I need something from Pro that engages with that problem and tells me why he affirms the resolution anyway. Instead, I get a lot of reasons why the case for guns being beneficial as a deterrent is muddled (Pro focuses on Wyoming, Utah and Idaho while ignoring every other state in the final round and focuses on England while ignoring Australia), and a lot of alternate causality arguments that nonetheless acknowledge some benefit for gun control (even if other measures would be more effective, that doesn't erase these points). Even if I don't like his tactics in this debate, that leaves me defaulting to Con.
Pro started off by claiming that 90% of all gun deaths are done with illegal guns, and I couldn't find this claim anywhere in the sources he listed. This fits in with the general pattern of the relationship Pro has with his sources - he leans heavily on quoting from them, though they make a lot of vague statements like "firearms prevent 400,000 violent crimes every year", with sources that don't explain where this data materialized from. Con seems to have a better command and understanding of what sources are for. I was a bit skeptical of his decision not to lay out his full argument in the first round, but in Round 2, while he admits it's an edited-down Vox article, he makes a very good basic case against the proposition, with some solid points that Pro didn't really successfully rebut. For example, Con points out that America has many times more firearm deaths as other developed countries. Pro says that it's just because America has a bigger population. To be fair, Con didn't explicitly say that these are deaths *per capita*, adjusted per population, but if Pro actually took a look at Con's source (as he tells Con to do multiple times) he would see that his rebuttal doesn't cut it. Plus, I agree that it was rather a poor move by Pro to pull the "We're talking about the US, not Australia" bit when he had used data from the UK earlier in the debate. And then accused Con of tu quoque when it was a perfectly valid thing to point out. Aside from that, it was a good debate overall.
I would like to thank RationalMadman for debating with me. Even if I lost, I hope you guys watching the debate critically thought and considered both of our arguments. As this was my first debate finished, I would like to thank RationalMadman for giving me my first experiences when debating online, I will try to learn from my mistakes and build better arguments. I would like to tell you to know that I am just a newcomer in online debating, and I would like to participate in more debates in the future.
Thanks for your disapproving vote
I'll aim to get through this before the deadline.
thank you for voting.
Bringing up arguments in the last round is not poor form for the person that goes first unless it was stated in the description that this cannot be done.
It is only bad conduct for the person that goes second because it would be impossible for the first person to respond.
VOTE NOW LADS!
My first created debate on this site is about to come to an end, thank you RationalMadman for debating with me.
any words/thoughts on the debate so far? Would love to see your responses.
whoever is watching this debate, I say to you, you are a cool guy, even my opponent is a cool guy, even if I disagree with him.
gun control is about as effective as the war on drugs.
I want a country where anti-communist America loving undocumented immigrants are allowed to defend their marijuana fields with fully automatic machine guns while sipping on a cold beer with some hot 18-year-old supermodels with big tits and ass in the background and a kickass pickup truck that has a bumper sticker that reads, "Stanton 2020, Make America Debt Free" that they don't have to pay property tax on.
#'Murica Fuck yeah!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQRiO1ihcQA
yes kiddo!
Are you willing to debate anything with me in the future?
one link did not paste well so here it is: https://crpa.org/news/blogs/ten-powerful-arguments-against-gun-control/
Thank you novice
That was a very good first round
Very well but right now I feel like making a debate for gun control.
Create a religious debate and I will debate you
Good luck, and welcome to the site.
Anyone wanna debate?
Very good, but I am looking for opponents to debate with.
I agree.