Instigator / Con
1
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
Winner
1
1

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
Contender / Pro
1
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
Con
#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. 



Pro
#2
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
Con
#3
Forfeited
Pro
#4
Eh easy win I like
Round 3
Con
#5
Forfeited
Pro
#6
Forfeited
Round 4
Con
#7
Forfeited
Pro
#8
I have less forfeits   :)
Round 5
Con
#9
Forfeited
Pro
#10
Oh well