1500
rating
1
debates
50.0%
won
Topic
#5094
Assault Weapons Bans Should Be Enacted in the United States
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 2 votes and with the same amount of points on both sides...
It's a tie!
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Two weeks
- Max argument characters
- 20,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
1287
rating
346
debates
39.88%
won
Description
https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr698/BILLS-118hr698ih.pdf
For the purposes of this debate, the criteria in this bill is the definition of an assault weapons ban
Round 1
Contention 1: Past failures
There is no association between the previously enacted federal assault weapons ban nor currently established state level assault weapons bans with any reduction in crime rates. At the end of the day, no form of crime had a statistically significant decrease that could even be remotely associated with these bans. This can be said to be from many reasons, but the main one seems to be inability to enforce - its private property kept behind closed doors, transferred via private sale. That is not viable to track.
Contention 2: Violation of the 2nd amendment
Violation of any right in the bill of rights puts the entirety of constitutional rights in jeopardy. Violation of civil liberties is in general abhorrent and needs to be prevented, as the largest cause of death in the 20th century was governments turning on their own people.
Contention 3: More lives are saved not having one
From a utilitarian ethics standard, a 1% chance at preventing a genocide that kills 10 million of people once a century is on average 1,000 lives a year being saved, which is 3 times more than all murders with rifles in the USA, and nearly 50 times the number of mass shooting deaths in the USA is each year. That is a very conservative number for the amount of lives saved by not enacting this policy all things considered, I would say its more than a 1% chance and closer a 10% chance, yet still it saves more lives than the gun control policy could possibly save by several orders of magnitude. And that isnt even looking at the death toll from assault weapons bans, where you are sending out SWAT teams, which can and does kill people - think of anything from the death of George Floyd to actions such as the Waco siege.
Assault weapons are bad. You can shoot someone in the eye and then the person would lose an eye. This is why assault weapons need to be banned. A ban on assault weapons will make sure that no one loses an eye anymore.
Round 2
Forfeited
Eh easy win I like
Round 3
Forfeited
Forfeited
Round 4
Forfeited
I have less forfeits :)
Round 5
Forfeited
Oh well
I agree. Assault weapons are bad. You can shoot someone in the eye and then the person would lose an eye. This is why assault weapons need to be banned. A ban on assault weapons will make sure that no one loses an eye anymore.