Instigator / Pro
18
1495
rating
6
debates
33.33%
won
Topic
#974

Gun control is a flawed policy

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
9
9
Better sources
6
6
Better legibility
3
3
Better conduct
0
3

After 3 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
21
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

No information

Round 1
Pro
#1
In the wake of the Parkland, Florida high school mass shooting, mainstream media outlets and Democratic politicians worked hard overtime to push for a crackdown on Second Amendment rights. CNN, for example, held a "town hall" event wherein teenagers who attend the targeted high school were used as props to paint Second Amendment advocates and Republican politicians as callous and willing to turn a blind eye to the murder of schoolkids.


But the reality is, stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights and constructing anti-gun legislation has not worked. Here are six facts that show why gun control measures advocated by the Left are not the answer:


1. Over 98% of mass shootings happen in "gun free zones."

According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, so-called "gun free zones" have been targets of more than 98% of all mass shootings — this is why they are often fittingly referred to as "soft targets."
"According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, only a little more than 1 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places that were not considered to be a gun-free zone. In fact, as Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott Jr. noted in October 2015, only two mass shootings in the U.S. since 1950 have occurred in an area where citizens were not prohibited from carrying a gun," reports The Blaze.
Former Vice President Joe Biden introduced the Gun-Free School Zones Act(GFSZA) to the U.S. Senate in 1990 and it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.


2. Gun ownership does not correlate with a higher homicide rate.
More guns do not equate to a higher homicide rate, despite what the Left purports. In comparison to countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Mexico, the United States has an exceedingly higher number of guns per capita, yet a lower homicide rate.


And take the Swiss, for example. The nation of about 8 million is armed to the bone, with an estimated 2 million guns in circulation while boasting limited gun legislation. Demonstrating that gun ownership does not correlate with the homicide rate, Switzerland saw less that 120 homicides committed with a gun, per government data, as noted by USA TODAY. They also boast a low crime rate.
Additionally, data analysis from John R. Lott, Jr., in his aptly titled book "More Guns, Less Crime," has revealed that more guns can equate to less crime.



3. Gun bans are ineffective — yes, even the much-touted "gun buyback" program in Australia.
According to a Center for Disease Control (CDC) report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” gun turn-in programs are "ineffective":
There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).
Additionally, as noted by The Daily Wire, a British Journal of Criminology study from 2007 and a 2008 University of Melbourne study found that Australia's temporary gun ban did not appear to effect the already declining homicide rate.
"Prior to 1996, there was already a clear downward [trend] in firearm homicides, and this pattern continued after the buyback," wrote Crime Research Prevention Center President John Lott of Australia. "It is hence difficult to link the decline to the buyback."
And after Britain implemented a similar gun ban, they had increased homicides in the following five years, until "Britain beefed up their police force," notes Lott.



4. There's a correlation between higher gun ownership and fewer mass public shootings.
Between 1977 and 1999, "right-to-carry laws reduced both the frequency and the severity of mass public shootings; and to the extent to which mass shootings still occurred, they took place in those tiny areas in the states where permitted concealed handguns were not allowed," found Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and Lott.



5. Defensive gun use is higher than criminal firearm use.
The instances in which guns are used for self-defense far outpaces the criminal use of firearms. The Daily Wire previously reported:
The number of defensive gun uses are higher than the number of criminal firearm uses. There was a range of 500,000 to over 3 million defensive gun uses in 2013, according to research from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council published by the CDC. That same year, there were 11,208 firearm homicides and 414,562 nonfatal illegal gun uses, according to the CDC and National Justice Institute, respectively. Even when taking the low end of the defensive gun uses, it's clear that there are more defensive gun uses than criminal gun uses by Americans.



6. The government has failed to protect us time and again.
The government has failed us time and again when it comes to potential mass killers. Take this last school shooting in Florida, for example.Recent reports have confirmed that "the FBI was warned specifically about the Parkland shooter not once, but twice — and did nothing," "the Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the home of the Parkland shooter at least 39 times since 2010," the "Sheriff’s Office was warned multiple times about the Parkland shooter," and that "an armed officer was present during the shooting and did nothing."


And the FBI has dropped the ball in other recent catastrophes, too:
  • The Fort Lauderdale airport gunman told the FBI he was being mind controlled by the CIA before the rampage.
  • The Pulse nightclub shooter was on the terrorist watch list for two years and then taken off the list before he murdered in the name of Islam.
  • A 2014 report concluded that the FBI failed to act on warning signs over the would-be Boston marathon bombers.
  • And the list goes on.
How can the answer to government incompetence or malfeasance be to disarm the masses further and to rely even more heavily on the same institutions that have failed us?


Con
#2
In the past I have had voters angry and accusing me of a crime called gish gallop if I tryhard my Round 1. This 'gish gallop' crime seems to be something committed if I go ham in my Round 1 so brutally that my opponent can't reply properly to all the fantastic points and proof I bring forth at once. Since this is a 5-Round debate and since on top of good reason for doing it, I'm just feeling a bit lazy at the moment with debates, I'm going to save my proof and expansion of my case for Round 2.

My case will revolve around the following core points:

  1. The true flaw is always with the implementation and culture, not the policy/policies of Gun Control.
  2. The endgame of Gun Rights (as opposed to control), unless you're a lunatic, is to remove the need for guns in the first place.
  3. The policy of Gun Control is possibly one of the most sound ones out there, for it directly addresses what it wants to achieve and not achieve by how tailored it is to the point between 'gun rights for all' and 'gun ban for all' (where it is between there is always precise for any place employing it and this makes it a very exact, sound policy indeed).
  4. The reason it fails in places like US states with gun-heavy states nearby is due to smuggling and complete failure of such places to attempt successful gun control. It succeeds far better in islands that employ it (UK, Australia and Japan) and this is again going to link core point 1.

Round 2
Pro
#3
Narcissism? It will take you everywhere. It took you 2 and a half days to write that you are fantastic? God,I only wonder how much time you will take to write all the "fantastic and brutal facts and evidence".


1............So? Even if the fault is with the implementation,it just reinforces the fact that gun control is a flawed policy.


2. I don't know where you get that idea,but let's see how you justify it in the later rounds.


3. That's nice semantics. I still have to see some empirical evidence proving that.


4. The reason it has failed because it is a wrong and failed policy. Once again,you put forward the same things that liberals do. No facts,no evidence,but somehow Australia and UK have succeeded in stopping gun violence through gun control. Let me write the point that I wrote in Round 1 once again:




Gun bans are ineffective — yes, even the much-touted "gun buyback" program in Australia.
According to a Center for Disease Control (CDC) report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” gun turn-in programs are "ineffective":
There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).
Additionally, as noted by The Daily Wire, a British Journal of Criminology study from 2007 and a 2008 University of Melbourne study found that Australia's temporary gun ban did not appear to effect the already declining homicide rate.
"Prior to 1996, there was already a clear downward [trend] in firearm homicides, and this pattern continued after the buyback," wrote Crime Research Prevention Center President John Lott of Australia. "It is hence difficult to link the decline to the buyback."
And after Britain implemented a similar gun ban, they had increased homicides in the following five years, until "Britain beefed up their police force," notes Lott.  






Fact: The United Kingdom has always had a lower homicide rate than the United States, even when British citizens could legally buy machine guns (Briton's modern era of gun control did not ramp up until the 1960s). The difference is cultural, not legal.


Fact: Since gun banning has escalated in the UK, the rate of crime – especially violent crime – has risen.


Fact: Ironically, firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned. [320]


Fact: Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population). [321]



Fact: 67% of British residents surveyed believe that “As a result of gun and knife crime [rising], the area I live in is not as safe as it was five years ago.”  [322]


Fact: U.K. street robberies soared 28% in 2001. Violent crime was up 11%, murders up 4%, and rapes were up 14%.  [323]


Fact: This trend continued in the U.K in 2004 with a 10% increase in street crime, 8% increase in muggings, and a 22% increase in robberies.


Fact: In 1919, before it had any gun control, the U.K. had a homicide rate that was 8% of the U.S. rate. By 1986, and after enacting significant gun control, the rate was 9% – practically unchanged. [324]


Fact: Comparing crime rates between America and Britain is fundamentally flawed. In America, a gun crime is recorded as a gun crime. In Britain, a crime is only recorded when there is a final disposition (a conviction). All unsolved gun crimes in Britain are not reported as gun crimes, grossly undercounting the amount of gun crime there.  [326] To make matters worse, British law enforcement has been exposed for falsifying criminal reports to create falsely lower crime figures, in part to preserve tourism.   [327].


Fact: Handgun homicides in England and Wales reached an all-time high in 2000, years after a virtual ban on private handgun ownership. More than 3,000 crimes involving handguns were recorded in 1999-2000, including 42 homicides, 310 cases of attempted murder, 2,561 robberies and 204 burglaries.  [329]



Fact: Handguns were used in 3,685 British offenses in 2000 compared with 2,648 in 1997, an increase of 40%.  [330]



Fact: Between 1997 and 1999, there were 429 murders in London, the highest two-year figure for more than 10 years – nearly two-thirds of those involved firearms – in a country that has virtually banned private firearm ownership. [331]


Fact: Over the last century, the British crime rate was largely unchanged. In the late nineteenth century, the per capita homicide rate in Britain was between 1.0 and 1.5 per 100,000.  [332] In the late twentieth century, after a near ban on gun ownership, the homicide rate is around 1.4.333 This implies that the homicide rate did not vary with either the level of gun control or gun availability.



Fact: The U.K. has strict gun control and a rising homicide rate of 1.4 per 100,000. Switzerland has the highest per capita firearm ownership rate on the planet (all males age 20 to 42 are required to keep rifles or pistols at home) and has a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000. To date, there has never been a schoolyard massacre in Switzerland.  [334]


320---Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007
321---The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S., Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations
322---YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007
323---British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002
324---Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction
326---Fear in Britain, Gallant, Hills, Kopel, Independence Institute, July 18, 2000
327---Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police, Daily Telegraph
329---42 killed by handguns last year, The Times, January 10, 2001, reporting on statistics supplied by the British Home Office
330---Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001
331---Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001
332---Crime and Society in England
334---Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal





Please respond to these if you can.

















Oh and try not to take 2 whole days please.
Con
#4
I am unsure what exactly to say about Pro’s R2. It begins as a rude taunting and then proceeds to plagiarise with zero original content other than toxic taunting? Not sure.  The entire Round was copy-pasted from this source: http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/

Even if Pro actually is a journalist and the author of that piece, he didn’t even link to it, he linked to another one…?

Anyways, I think it’s time to establish some framework. Pro has failed to ascertain two things:

  1. What makes something qualify as flawed?
  2. What is a policy, as opposed to other elements of something?

Pointing out one tiny nitpicked ‘flaw’ could be the most unfair and Pro-heavy way to interpret the debate’s resolution and burden of proof(BoP). Conversely, to say that to be ‘flawed’ one needs to prove the entire thing to be corrupt would be the most Con-heavy way to do the very same thing. Let’s stick with the idea of balance. If much more about it is flawed then not, Pro wins and if it’s much less, Con wins but if it’s around equal I would indeed argue that Con should win simply because that’s what the burden of Proposing a resolution entails. You get the power of bringing forth a case, Con has to destroy it and so the price you pay is if it’s 50/50, really the resolution hasn’t been proven true and defaults to you failing to meet your BoP.

As for what policy is, I think this is the biggest element of Pro’s debate that’s missing, so far. Pro goes to experimental elements of evolving the implementation of policy (such as Australia’s gun buyback) and ignores everything about the context of it and how successful the overall gun control in Australia has been since (and partially due to) the gun buyback program.

So far, it seems as if Pro is geared up for a game of intellectual ping-pong whereby everything is a ‘yeah but’ statement. If I say it reduces the chance of a family dispute resulting in a dead family member, Pro will immediately say ‘but that doesn’t mean anything if only the law abiding citizens get guns and anyone could run into that family’s home and kill them anyway.’ If I then prove it’s worked, Pro will run to the US where other states smuggling it across barely well-kept borders between intra-national state-lines and use that as the reason why it is flawed overall.

Let’s firstly establish that it can work and accept that part of evolving a policy is to experiment with ways of getting it implemented. The gun buyback scheme was an innovative attempt by Australia to achieve something at the time that later they realised needed more done to properly make happen as of course not everyone was going to sell their gun(s) to the government, especially not those who illegally obtained the gun(s) in the first place.

The long story is this:

In 2002, a mentally impaired student at Monash University in Melbourne shot two people dead and injured five others. He came to his rampage with six handguns, not an assault rifle. Had he been carrying an AR-15, the toll would have been far worse. But even so, Australian lawmakers added a new National Handgun Agreement, a separate buyback act, and a reformulated gun trafficking policy to their legislative arsenal.

There has been no similar shooting spree since.

But it wasn’t just the murderous rampages that faded away. Gun violence in general declined over the following two decades to a nearly unimaginable degree. In 2014, the latest year for which final statistics are available, Australia’s murder rate fell to less than 1 killing per 100,000 people—a murder rate one-fifth the size of America’s.

Just 32 of those homicides—in a nation of 24 million people—were committed with guns. By comparison, more than 500 people were shot dead last year in the city of Chicago alone. (Chicago has about 2.7 million residents.)

Perhaps most remarkable is what happened with gun suicides in Australia in the wake of the post-Port Arthur firearm legislation. They dropped by some 80 percent, according to one analysis.

What stopped many of those would-be suicides—quite straightforwardly, it seems—was the lack of access to a gun, a generally immediate and effective method of killing. (Nine out of 10 suicide attempts with a firearm result in death, a far higher share than attempts by other methods.) Public health experts call such an effect “means restriction.” Some Australians found other ways to take their own lives—but for many, that acute moment of sadness and resolve passed in the absence of a gun.

Suicide “is commonly an impulsive act by a vulnerable individual,” explain E. Michael Lewiecki and Sara A. Miller in the American Journal of Public Health. “The impulsivity of suicide provides opportunities to reduce the risk of suicide by restricting access to lethal means.”

Which brings us back to the here and now. In 2015, an unthinkable 22,103 Americans shot themselves to death with a gun (see Table I-21)—accounting for just over half of the suicides in the country that year.

It isn’t hard to imagine what would happen without all those guns at the ready. In a world of raging hypotheticals, we actually have some good, hard answers for this. All we have to do is look down under. There are millions of American families begging us to do it.
- Leaf, C. (2018). http://fortune.com. [online] Fortune. Available at: http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/australia-gun-control-success/ [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

Now, yes, since that was written an Aussie went over to NZ and that horrific event happened. So, while that article flexes nonstop prevention for 22 years, it did happen the next year from that nation into the neighbouring one but honestly, this is about odds and trends. You can't fixate on one mass shooter and say 'if only those Muslims all had guns'. If everyone had a gun, it isn't reasonable to assume things would be just or fair at all. Instead of 'the sanest majority killing off the madmen/madwomen' it would merely be the most adept with a gun dominating the rest, whether they were madmen/madwomen or not.

Gun control works but requires heavy funding. You need a lot of sting operations, educating people (to make them believe the endgame is possible where you don't need a gun as only the criminals have guns but instead you can relieve yourself of your firearm as the authorities are efficiently hunting down the suppliers and dealers). This takes time not just because of the funding and getting people to vote in a pro-gun individual but indeed the shifting of opinions, culture and everything involved with the 'foundation of a nation' that is required to have gun control policy truly work is going to take time to shift. The flaw is never with the policy though, it's with people not appreciating it.

I will bring forth case studies of Japan, UK, South Korea, Australia and Norway.

What I want to do is prove that nations can efficiently control guns to the point where the only thing separating 'gun control' from 'gun ban' is that they have always some very very restrictive way to get a license.

Japan, UK and Australia all amplify the importance of border control (they have ocean around their island-nations) in ensuring guns aren't easily smuggled in from neighbouring states (as happened in the US states that Pro allures to that failed to reduce all that much of gun possession and crimes with guns).

Japan is the single best case worldwide, with UK being second place and South Korea third (on my ranking, many sources rank the three equally).

  • Japan is a country of more than 127 million people, but it rarely sees more than 10 gun deaths a year.
  • Culture is one reason for the low rate, but gun control is a major one, too.
  • Japan has a long list of tests that applicants must pass before gaining access to a small pool of guns.

Gun control discussions crop up every time there is an attention-grabbing shooting in the US. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old allegedly shot dozens of his former classmates at a Florida high school, leaving 17 of them dead.

One of the biggest questions: How does the US prevent this from happening over and over again?

Although the US has no exact counterpart elsewhere in the world, some countries have taken steps that can provide a window into what successful gun control looks like. Japan, a country of 127 million people and yearly gun deaths rarely totaling more than 10, is one such country.

"Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws," Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, a British advocacy group, told the BBC. "They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world, and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don't play a part in civilian society."

Japan is a country with regulations upon regulations
Japan's success in curbing gun deaths is intimately linked with its history. Following World War II, pacifism emerged as one of the dominant philosophies in the country. Police only started carrying firearms after American troops made them, in 1946, for the sake of security. It's also written into Japanese law, as of 1958, that "no person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords."

Government has since loosened the law, but the fact Japan enacted gun control from the stance of prohibition is important. (It's also one of the main factors separating Japan from the US, where the Second Amendment broadly permits people to own guns.)

If Japanese people want to own a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test. Then they have to pass a mental-health evaluation, which takes place at a hospital, and pass a background check, in which the government digs into their criminal record and interviews friends and family. They can only buy shotguns and air rifles — no handguns — and every three years they must retake the class and initial exam.

Even Japanese riot police infrequently turn to guns, instead preferring long batons. Toru Hanai/Reuters
Japan has also embraced the idea that fewer guns in circulation will result in fewer deaths. Each prefecture — which ranges in size from half a million people to 12 million, in Tokyo — can operate a maximum of three gun shops; new magazines can only be purchased by trading in empty ones; and when gun owners die, their relatives must surrender the deceased member's firearms.
- Weller, C. (2015). Japan has almost completely eliminated gun deaths — here's how. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/gun-control-how-japan-has-almost-completely-eliminated-gun-deaths-2017-10 [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

The other nations don't have as flawless statistic as Japan but shine in their own ways. With UK it's about how eradicated the need to use them has become.

From the moment 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton unloaded his legally held arsenal of handguns on children and staff at Dunblane primary school on 13 March 1996, gun control was on the cards.

Nothing like Dunblane – a massacre of 16 five- and six-year-olds, along with the teacher who tried to protect them – had taken place before in Britain. The shock and collective grief of the whole nation resonated from the northernmost point of Scotland to the tip of Cornwall. This was not the United States, where by 1996, classroom shootings had occurred in many places including Nashville, San Diego and South Carolina.

As grief turned to a national anger, public debate focused on how someone like Hamilton, a former Scout leader who had been ostracised because of his suspicious behaviour with young boys, had been allowed to own such lethal weapons.

Public petitions, most notably by the Snowdrop Campaign, founded by friends of the bereaved families, called for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the UK. Signed by 750,000 people it was symbolic of the weight of public opinion.

Nine years before Dunblane, there had been Hungerford, where Michael Ryan went on a rampage through the Berkshire town, killing 16 people in a series of random shootings before turning the gun on himself. He had been carrying a handgun and two semi automatic rifles, for which he had firearms certificates.
The aftermath of Hungerford brought to an end the right to own semi-automatic firearms in Britain; they were banned along with pump action weapons, and registration became mandatory for shotgun owners.

With Dunblane the focus turned to handguns – held by tens of thousands who took part in pistol shooting across the country. The Conservative then prime minister, John Major, passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 after the Cullen inquiry into the massacre. It banned all cartridge ammunition handguns, except 22 calibre single-shot weapons.

But with the landslide election of Labour and Tony Blair the same year, the law was tightened further, and the remaining .22 cartridge handguns were also banned. The decision, supported by a majority of the public, all but wiped out target shooting as a sport in the UK.

Dave Thompson, chief constable of the West Midlands, and the lead on gun crime for the National Association of Chief Constables, said: “The legislation coincided very well with a culture.”

Overnight, however, about 200,000 owners of handguns, most of whom kept them for pistol shooting, found their weapon banned and their pastime wiped out. All small-bore pistols and rifles used by target shooters were included in the ban. Penalties for anyone in possession of an illegal firearm were tough - from heavy fines to prison terms of 10 years.

The hostility of those involved in the sport to what they term the draconian legislation is still strong, 20 years after Dunblane. Mike Wells, secretary of the Sportsman’s Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, set up in 1996 to counter public pressure for a ban on handguns, said politicians had been driven by a need to show they were doing something but their actions did nothing to stop the criminal use of guns. “It never, never has any effect. The criminal underworld in England, the drug dealers … have all got guns, but they are illegal guns,” he said.

Mark Mastaglio, an expert on firearms who worked for the Forensic Science Service for 20 years, said there was no evidence that the ban on handguns after Dunblane had done anything to cut the criminal use of firearms. “It was very rare that there was ever leakage from the licensed gun owners to the criminal fraternity. Most guns used by criminal are either illegally imported or converted weapons. And that remains the case today,” said Mastaglio.

Crime statistics in the years after the ban was introduced appear to support the theory that it had little impact. Gun crime rose sharply, to peak at 24,094 offences in 2003/4. After that the number of crimes in which a firearm was involved fell consistently, to 4,779 offences in 2013. In the year ending September 2015 there was a small rise of 4% to 4,994 offences.

Thompson said the legislation was only part of it: law enforcement agencies had to prove they would carry through on the tough penalties and there was also poor policing of gang areas, and poor ballistics records and analysis. Both were addressed in the early 2000s, when there was a huge decline in gun crime, he said.
But there has been only one mass shooting in the UK – in Whitehaven, Cumbria, in 2010, during which Derrick Bird killed 12 people – since Dunblane.

Mastaglio said: “Dunblane was certainly a turning point. It was a huge piece of legislation, and had a huge impact on registered gun owners in the UK. We now have one of the most stringent set of firearms legislation in the world – only Japan has tougher laws.”
- Relevant Graph 1: https://i.imgur.com/f9IZPpT.png
- Relevant Graph 2: https://i.imgur.com/LAlJg4H.png
- Jowit, J., Laville, S., Wahlquist, C., Oltermann, P., McCurry, J. and Beckett, L. (2016). Four countries with gun control – and what America could learn from them. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/15/so-america-this-is-how-you-do-gun-control [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

This one is interesting, for it shows both sides of why it works when it does work.

Gun control policy is intricately intertwined with culture of the nation it is being employed in. The nation needs to thoroughly begin to believe in the idea that criminals won't inevitable end up with guns and have a 'faith' in the elected officials to lead the gun stings efficiently and keep the nation safe. Once this is truly established, you'll find you don't even need to offer money for guns as people will happily hand their firearms over for the greater good (and those that won't will get caught and punished).

Gun control policy isn't flawed, the culture where the policy and all it entails is enacted can be what's flawed. It can work brilliantly when the culture accepts it and borders are properly controlled to have airtight prevention of gun smuggling from non-gun-controlled nearby nation-states.

If it can work and achieve precisely what it set out to do then what is the case Pro is making? I shall wait for Pro to make crystal clear what the flaw is and why the policy is what's flawed and not the culture or surrounding media influences at the times of employing it.
Round 3
Pro
#5
First of all,if you wanted to continue this debate,it made no sense to accept the other one. Now,we've got 2 exactly same debates. What are we gonna do,copy and paste the arguments? Anyway......


1. NARCISSISM 

You said I am a fantastic guy with fantastic facts and evidence. I was looking for a debate,not a lesson on self-esteem. I just said it was narcissism. Also,it took you 2 days to write your Round 1 argument. That's a fact too. I just said that and implored not to take another 2 days(which you did,incidentally). It's not the slightest bit rude.



2. PLAGIARISM

The link which you posted was the HTML page. The numbers beside it indicate the ACTUAL SOURCE. I just made your work easier by writing the sources beside it as well. Also,what is the plagiarism here? Are you blaming me of not writing anything else? Well,your Round 1 argument contained nothing except lines about how fantastic you and your facts are. What am I supposed to say to that? That was the reason I posted these facts with their ACTUAL SOURCES.


3. HOW IS IT FLAWED?

If a policy,any policy,has been tried countless number of times and has failed,then it's not a big logical leap to say that it's failed. Also,your whole argument about why gun control is not working in the US is because there is smuggling around the border. Well,the answer to that would rather be tougher and stricter border control. How is gun control the answer for that? If you ask me why it's failed:



There are more than 22,000 gun laws at the city, county, state, and federal level. If gun control worked, then we should be free of crime. Yet the U.S. government “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes” and also concluded in one study that none of the attackers interviewed was "hindered by any law – federal, state or local –that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership.  (First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws, CDC, Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Oct 3, 2003 – a systematic review of 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence)



Violent crime appears to be encouraged by gun control. Most gun control laws in the United States have been written since 1968, yet the murder rate rose during the 70s, 80s and early 90s.



In 1976, Washington, D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. The city's murder rate rose 134 percent through 1996 while the national murder rate dropped 2 percent.



 Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.



Maryland claimed to have the toughest gun control laws in the nation and ranked #1 in robberies and #4 in both violent crime and murder.The robbery rate was 70% more than the national average.These numbers were likely low because one of their more violent cities, Baltimore, failed to report their crime levels.  (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000)



In 2000, 20% of U.S. homicides occurred in four cities with just six percent of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. – most of which had a virtual prohibition on privately owned handguns at the time.  (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000)



New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation – and 20% of the armed robberies.  
 


In analyzing 10 different possible reasons for the decline in violent crime during the 1990s, gun control was calculated to have contributed nothing (high imprisonment rates, more police and legalized abortion were considered the primary factors, contributing as much as 28% of the overall reduction).  (Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s, Steven Levit, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004)



These are all past results of gun control laws. Pretty much all of them were failures and blaming them all on illegal smuggling is not a valid answer. Please don't spend 2 days finding out my sources on the Internet,instead just respond to them. How about all these facts? All of them can't be blamed on illegal smuggling.





4. AUSTRALIA


You quoted one source from a magazine and based your argument on that. What you failed to do is respond to my facts. You also did not do additional research. If you had,you would have found out:


Homicides were falling before the Australian firearm ban. In the seven years before and after the Australian ban, the rate of decline was identical (down to four decimal places). Homicides dropped steeply starting in 2003, but all of this decline was associated with non-firearm and non-knife murders (fewer beatings, poisonings, drownings, etc.).  (Australia Institute of Criminology, AIC NHMP 1989/90 to 2011-12)



Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year.  (Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002)


A ten-year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found [no] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides.  (Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007)



These sources are all from Australia themselves. Is a magazine from America a better source of facts or multiple sources from credible institutes from Australia themselves for a law implemented in Australia? Don't go searching for these facts on the Internet to see where I got them from because that would prove nothing. Why don't you just reply to them?




One study shows that armed citizens responding to rampage killers result in 1/8th the number of casualties than when police intervene. In other words, waiting on the police results in eight times as many people deaths and injuries.  (Auditing Shooting Rampage Statistics, Davi Barker, July 2013)

So,civilians having guns would actually prevent gun deaths than civilians not having guns.





5. THE GOVERNMENT WILL PROTECT US!


See,this is the outcome of not looking at my arguments and accusing me of plagiarism. You say, "Gun control works but requires heavy funding. You need a lot of sting operations, educating people (to make them believe the endgame is possible where you don't need a gun as only the criminals have guns but instead you can relieve yourself of your firearm as the authorities are efficiently hunting down the suppliers and dealers)"

There's the problem. The authorities have been doing absolutely nothing to help people. Why do you think they don't appreciate it? If you had read my first argument,you wouldn't have said it. Let me say it again:



The government has failed to protect us time and again.
The government has failed us time and again when it comes to potential mass killers. Take this last school shooting in Florida, for example.Recent reports have confirmed that "the FBI was warned specifically about the Parkland shooter not once, but twice — and did nothing," "the Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the home of the Parkland shooter at least 39 times since 2010," the "Sheriff’s Office was warned multiple times about the Parkland shooter," and that "an armed officer was present during the shooting and did nothing."


And the FBI has dropped the ball in other recent catastrophes, too:
  • The Fort Lauderdale airport gunman told the FBI he was being mind controlled by the CIA before the rampage.
  • The Pulse nightclub shooter was on the terrorist watch list for two years and then taken off the list before he murdered in the name of Islam.
  • A 2014 report concluded that the FBI failed to act on warning signs over the would-be Boston marathon bombers.
  • And the list goes on.
How can the answer to government incompetence or malfeasance be to disarm the masses further and to rely even more heavily on the same institutions that have failed us?


In addition to that:


During the Clinton administration, federal prosecutions of gun-related crimes dropped more than 44 percent.  


Of the 3,353 prohibited individuals that obtained firearms, the Clinton administration only investigated 110 of them (3.3%).  


Despite 536,000 prohibited buyers caught by the National Instant (Criminal Background) Check System (NICS), only 6,700 people (1.25%) have been charged for these firearms violations. This includes 71% of the violations coming from convicted or indicted felons. None of these crimes were prosecuted by the Federal government in 1996, 1997, or 1998.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000)


Some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000)


Half of referrals concerning violent criminals were closed without investigation or prosecution.  (General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS, February 2000)


18-20 year-olds commit over 23% of all gun murders.None of these criminals are allowed by law to purchase a handgun, but the Federal government under Clinton rarely enforced this law.  (Federal Firearm Offenders report, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 4, 2000 – firearm suspects declined for prosecution by U.S. attorneys … some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”)



When the government does so little to help people,it's no wonder people wouldn't appreciate handing their guns over. They have to protect themselves from criminals since the government won't do it.


6. Interstate transportation of guns defeats local gun control

This is another lie put forth by gun-control activists. Con's whole argument is based on the myth that Interstate smuggling of guns causes problems. However:


The BATF reports that the average age of a traced gun is 11 years,meaning that most guns moving from state to state were transported when legal owners moved.  (BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012)

Fewer than 5% of traced guns in California, many of which were not crime guns, came from neighboring Nevada and Arizona.  (BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012)



California has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country and yet still ranks among the leading states for gun violence. As proved above,most of the guns found in California were not the result of interstate transportation. This is just one state. We can only imagine about the rest of the country.



7. Japan has strict gun control and a less violent society

Con conveniently mentions an article from Business Insider about Japan. However,he fails to mention that in Japan, the total murder rate is almost 1 per 100,000. In the U.S., there are about 3.2 murders per 100,000 people each year by weapons other than firearms.This means that even if firearms in the U.S. could be eliminated, the U.S. would still have three times the murder rate of the Japanese.  This itself shows that comparing Japan to USA doesn't make sense.


Con again posted a source from the Guardian,a paper known to have wild liberal bias. He conveniently ignores the unbiased facts and sources that I posted in Round 2,some of which were:


Ironically, firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned. (Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007)


Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population).  (The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S., Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations)



67% of British residents surveyed believe that “As a result of gun and knife crime [rising], the area I live in is not as safe as it was five years ago.”  (YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007)



U.K. street robberies soared 28% in 2001. Violent crime was up 11%, murders up 4%, and rapes were up 14%.  (British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002)


In 1919, before it had any gun control, the U.K. had a homicide rate that was 8% of the U.S. rate. By 1986, and after enacting significant gun control, the rate was 9% – practically unchanged. (Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction)



Comparing crime rates between America and Britain is fundamentally flawed. In America, a gun crime is recorded as a gun crime. In Britain, a crime is only recorded when there is a final disposition (a conviction). All unsolved gun crimes in Britain are not reported as gun crimes, grossly undercounting the amount of gun crime there. To make matters worse, British law enforcement has been exposed for falsifying criminal reports to create falsely lower crime figures, in part to preserve tourism.  (Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police, Daily Telegraph)



Comparing Japan and Britain to USA for forwarding an argument for gun control is not valid,as shown above.



The government has failed to protect us time and again,without showing any interest in apprehending criminals,which is the reason people don't want to hand over their guns,and they shouldn't.


Gun control cannot work,because it has been implemented in the past and has only brought forth failures. It is reason enough to call the policy flawed.






Con
#6
Alright, again I am putting a lot of effort (by being 'lazy') into avoiding 'gish gallop'. I could handle this with a ton of proof text etc but voters have expressed anger at me for tryharding in the past so I'll see what happens when I keep things as concise as possible.

Pro's case thus far is:

  1. That he concedes that there are nations that very efficiently enact gun control policy.
  2. That the failure of gun policy to be enacted is never to do with the policy but the culture of the nations etc (he admits this by not addressing my points on it).
  3. That murders happen anyway at even higher a rate  albeit not by guns.
I think point 3 is the only one that's making my case seem weak so let's look at the actual data.

Firstly, let's establish that gun control completely and utterly works, the homicides that 'happen anyway' are barely gun-related. In fact, I don't really know where Pro is getting his data from, his sources seem to not really support what he is saying. What kind of homicide has gone up and by how much? Gun control is there to stop gun-related homicide. If somehow knife killings go up as a result, this doesn't mean the overall homicide has gone up. Gun control stops firearm related deaths, this is simply a brutally true thing EVEN IN US States that enacted it, just less so as smuggling was too easy over the State borders from gun-friendly states.

Look at this chart:

A lot of smoke is being generated to cover up the fact that the horrific Florida school shooting that has left at least 17 dead results from a virtual absence of meaningful gun controls in the US, such that a few gun manufacturers are allowed to make powerful military-style weapons available to the homocidally insane and to gangbangers etc. The Las Vegas shooter, whom the US press has buried long ago, was not an immigrant. And, Britain has a lot of immigrants, too, but it has almost no gun murders.
The US policy of constantly endangering our children is enacted by a bought-and-paid-for Congress on behalf of 10 major gun manufacturers with an $8 billion industry. Most Americans don’t have or want a gun, and 50% of all guns in the US are owned by 3% of Americans, i.e. some 6 million people out of 320 million. That three percent would survive better security checks and a ban on assault weapons.
Last year, there were 1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days in the United States. (This statistic covered just part of the year).
You’ll note you don’t hear about mass shootings in Australia, Japan or for the most part the United Kingdom, or other civilized countries whose politicians have not been bought by 10 major gun manufacturers.
The United States continues to be peculiar in handing out powerful magazine-fed firearms to almost anyone who wants one and not requiring background checks on private purchases even if these are made at gun shows or by persons with a history of mental illness. 80% of civilian-owned firearms world-wide are in the US, and only Yemen vaguely competes with us for rates of firearm ownership; Yemen is a violent mess with Shiite insurgencies, al-Qaeda taking over cities from time to time, tribal feuding, southern separatism and US drone strikes. And even it has fewer guns per person than the USA.
It has gotten to the point where the increasing epidemic of mass shootings now threatens law enforcement.
The US is downright weird compared to civilized Western Europe or Australia (which enacted gun control after a mass shooting in 1996 and there have been no further such incidents).
In 2015-16 (the twelve months beginning in March), there were 26 fatalities from gun-related crimes in England and Wales (equivalent to 130 because Great Britain 1/5 the size of the US).
Police in the UK fired their guns 7 times in 2015.
Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2016: 11,004
Percentage of all Murders that were committed by firearms in 2016 in US: 73%
Suicides in US 2015: 44,193
Gun Suicides in US, 2015: ~22,000
Percentage of suicides where the method was guns in 2015: 49.8
Percentage of all murders in England and Wales that were committed by firearm: 4.5 percent.
Academic research shows that more guns equal more suicides.
Number of suicides in England and Wales, 2016: 5,668 (equivalent to about 28,330 in US or 36% lower)
Number of suicides by firearam in England and Wales, 2011: 84 (this is the most recent statistic I could find but the typical percentage is given as 1.6% of all suicides; that would be the equivalent of 707 suicides by firearm in the US instead of 22,000).

For more on murder by firearms in Britain, see the BBC.

The US has the highest gun ownership in the world and the highest murder rate in the developed world.

It seems pretty clear, as well, that many US suicides would not occur if firearms were not omnipresent.
There is some correlation between high rates of gun ownership and high rates of violent crime in general, globally (and also if you compare state by state inside the US):
- Cole, J. (2018). 11,004 Gun Murders in US vs. 26 (equiv. 130) in England Annually. [online] Common Dreams. Available at: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/02/15/11004-gun-murders-us-vs-26-equiv-130-england-annually [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].


Okay, let's continue:

In the case of Britain, firearms murders are 53 times fewer than in the US per capita. [Don’t bother with flawed citations of Switzerland or Israel, where most citizens are the equivalent of military reservists.]
- same source as above quote.

Brilliant ending statement.

Following the Christchurch shooting, in which 50 people were killed, New Zealand’s government has announced it will be reforming the country’s gun laws.
According to the GunPolicy.org website maintained by the University of Sydney, New Zealand currently has gun laws that are more restrictive in comparison to some countries but more permissive than others, such as Australia’s.
People must have a licence to own guns, and the licence requires background checks. While dealers must keep a record of the guns they sell, most guns are not required to be tracked in a central register to monitor changes in ownership due to private sales.

 
New Zealand law also permits ownership of semi-automatic rifles, such as the AR 15-style gun, used previously in US mass shootings. These rifles are able to be bought under a category A licence, but the licence only covers magazines that hold seven cartridges. While it has been confirmed that the Christchurch shooter legally obtained at least four guns, included two semi-automatic rifles, the shooter also reportedly used larger magazines capable of holding more ammunition.

In a press conference on Monday, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, made specific reference to Australia’s implementation of stricter gun laws following the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, in which 35 people were killed and 23 were wounded.

So, what happened with Australia’s laws, and how has gun control worked in other countries?

The Australian situation
Following the Port Arthur incident, Australia implemented the National Firearms Agreement (NFA).

New, uniform state gun laws banned rapid-fire guns from civilian ownership except under certain, restricted licences, and established a government buyback of semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns.

Another requirement was that all guns must be individually registered, with all gun sales tracked to record changes in ownership. Previously, registration varied by state and gun type. The laws reduced guns in Australia by about one-fifth, with more than 700,000 guns removed and destroyed.

There have been a number of studies published on the impact of the NFA on firearm-related deaths in Australia. According to a 2011 summary of the research by the Harvard Injury Control Research Centre, a number of studies suggested beneficial effects from the law changes, with a reduction in mass shootings, and a reduction in the rate of firearm-related deaths (both homicides and suicides) overall.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in 20062016 and 2018 looked at the number of mass killings before and after the NFA, and also whether the law changes affected the number of firearm-related deaths. They found that there was a drop in the rate of firearm deaths – particularly with suicides – but were cautious about attributing this to the NFA with the methods they used.

Their research also showed that while there had been 13 mass shootings (using the definition of five or more people killed) in the 18 years before the law changes, there had been none in the 22 years following (though there was one mass shooting involving seven members of one family at Margaret River in Western Australia in May 2018).
Modelling suggested that if shootings had continued at a similar rate as that prior to the NFA, then approximately 16 incidents would have been expected by February 2018.
- Evershed, N. (2019). Strict firearm laws reduce gun deaths: here’s the evidence. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/mar/20/strict-firearm-laws-reduce-gun-deaths-heres-the-evidence [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

The Relationship Between Gun Laws and Gun Deaths
Southern states along the Mississippi River have consistently reported some of the highest rates of firearm deaths. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas currently fall within the top 10 for firearm deaths. One legislative similarity that all of these states share is that none of them require license, registration or permit to buy a gun, though there are dozens of other states with the same regulations. Still, the states surrounding the Mississippi River Delta were rated as some of the most lenient in terms of gun law stringency, according to Crimadvisor.
A Side-by-Side Look at Firearm Deaths and Gun Laws
Conversely, while Washington and Rhode Island have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S., they fall on the lower end of firearm death rates in the country. Six out of the top 10 states for firearm deaths enacted "stand your ground" laws around 2006.
- SafeHome.org. (2019). Gun Laws and Deaths - SafeHome.org. [online] Available at: https://www.safehome.org/resources/gun-laws-and-deaths/ [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

I don't see the proof that somehow the 'non-gun related homicides go up MORE THAN or ANYWHERE NEAR TO what the gun-related death tolls/rates were. Really, is this Pro's actual argument? Of course once you get rid of guns, more people will kill with knives or poison etc than they used to, that's because guns are gone but the number is much, much smaller than the one that guns enabled.

According to this source: "UNODC Statistics Online". United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime. Retrieved 12 May 2018.".

The nations with the lowest rates of homicide are overall much, much stricter on guns than the ones with the highest ones, I am not going to gish gallop and go into every detail.

Japan, South Korea, Australia, UK and Norway etc are among the lowest. Meanwhile, US is medium (and that's only thanks to their gun control states, I am sure) with the highest ones being brutally crime ridden nations like Honduras, I mean it's fair to say culture matters more than policy here but that policy combined with anti-gun culture ends up with a nation that scores so low. Japan's culture is very knife/sword friendly and they 'invented' Samurai and Ninja culture. It's very clear that guns are the key thing that when a nation doesn't hate it and love the absence of it, it will become a more murderous nation.
Round 4
Pro
#7
1. ASSUMPTIONS.


So,far,Con has neglected to respond to even a single of my rebuttals regarding the failed gun control policies of Great Britain and Australia. Instead he assumes,that I have conceded that there are nations which have efficiently enacted gun policy,whereas I have never said anything like that. What Con is doing is running circles around the voters,so that they feel confused.



Like I posted,



The BATF reports that the average age of a traced gun is 11 years,meaning that most guns moving from state to state were transported when legal owners moved.  (BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012)

Fewer than 5% of traced guns in California, many of which were not crime guns, came from neighboring Nevada and Arizona.  (BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012)



California has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country and yet still ranks among the leading states for gun violence. As proved above,most of the guns found in California were not the result of interstate transportation. This is just one state. We can only imagine about the rest of the country.



Con conveniently chooses not to respond to this and blame everything on state border smuggling. 




However,the biggest statement that Con has made is that gun control has been successful in the US. Like I posted,



There are more than 22,000 gun laws at the city, county, state, and federal level. If gun control worked, then we should be free of crime. Yet the U.S. government “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes” and also concluded in one study that none of the attackers interviewed was "hindered by any law – federal, state or local –that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership.  (First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws, CDC, Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Oct 3, 2003 – a systematic review of 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence)


Violent crime appears to be encouraged by gun control. Most gun control laws in the United States have been written since 1968, yet the murder rate rose during the 70s, 80s and early 90s.



In 1976, Washington, D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. The city's murder rate rose 134 percent through 1996 while the national murder rate dropped 2 percent.



 Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.



Maryland claimed to have the toughest gun control laws in the nation and ranked #1 in robberies and #4 in both violent crime and murder.The robbery rate was 70% more than the national average.These numbers were likely low because one of their more violent cities, Baltimore, failed to report their crime levels.  (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000)



In 2000, 20% of U.S. homicides occurred in four cities with just six percent of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. – most of which had a virtual prohibition on privately owned handguns at the time.  (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000)



New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation – and 20% of the armed robberies.  
 


In analyzing 10 different possible reasons for the decline in violent crime during the 1990s, gun control was calculated to have contributed nothing (high imprisonment rates, more police and legalized abortion were considered the primary factors, contributing as much as 28% of the overall reduction).  (Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s, Steven Levit, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004)



Con doesn't have an answer to any of this and just chooses to repeatedly say that "gun control has reduced crime in the US". 




The top 100 countries for homicide do not include the U.S. The top ten countries all have near or total firearm bans. (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010)



Outside of war, the greatest loss of human life in the 20th century came from governments. In nearly every case, disarmament preceded mass murder. Though some nations have been functionally disarmed without such atrocities, it is worth remembering:

• In 1911, Turkey established gun control. Subsequently, from 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million Armenians, deprived of the means to defend themselves, were rounded up and killed.

• In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then, from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20-millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.

• In 1938 Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945 over 13-million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, union leaders, Catholics and others, unable to fire a shot in protest, were rounded up and killed.

• In 1935, China established gun control. Subsequently, between 1948 and 1952, over 20-million dissidents were rounded up and killed.

• In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977) over one million "educated" people were rounded up and killed.

• In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and killed as a result of their inability to defend themselves.

• In 1970, Uganda embraced gun control. Over the next nine years over 300,000 Christians were rounded up and killed.


Over 56-million people have died because of gun control in the last century



Con's argument with Australia seems to be that since gun control was enacted,mass shootings have stopped. Well,what about homicides? This seems full of hypocrisy when Con includes homicides,mass shootings and even suicides when talking about the US,but to emulate the gun control policy,only talks about the lack of mass shootings in Australia.



As I posted,

Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year.  (Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002)


A ten-year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found [no] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides.  (Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007)



Con doesn't respond to any of these. Con also hasn't responded to the facts that the British police itself admitted that it fakes the crime figures and then presents it:


Comparing crime rates between America and Britain is fundamentally flawed. In America, a gun crime is recorded as a gun crime. In Britain, a crime is only recorded when there is a final disposition (a conviction). All unsolved gun crimes in Britain are not reported as gun crimes, grossly undercounting the amount of gun crime there. To make matters worse, British law enforcement has been exposed for falsifying criminal reports to create falsely lower crime figures, in part to preserve tourism.  (Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police, Daily Telegraph)



Con also doesn't respond to the studies carried out by independent institutes that showed gun violence has not stopped since gun control:



Ironically, firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned. (Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007)


Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population).  (The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S., Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations)



67% of British residents surveyed believe that “As a result of gun and knife crime [rising], the area I live in is not as safe as it was five years ago.”  (YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007)



U.K. street robberies soared 28% in 2001. Violent crime was up 11%, murders up 4%, and rapes were up 14%.  (British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002)


In 1919, before it had any gun control, the U.K. had a homicide rate that was 8% of the U.S. rate. By 1986, and after enacting significant gun control, the rate was 9% – practically unchanged. (Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction)



Also,Con doesn't respond to the facts which I posted that showed that the government doesn't do anything ti protect us:



The government has failed to protect us time and again.
The government has failed us time and again when it comes to potential mass killers. Take this last school shooting in Florida, for example.Recent reports have confirmed that "the FBI was warned specifically about the Parkland shooter not once, but twice — and did nothing," "the Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the home of the Parkland shooter at least 39 times since 2010," the "Sheriff’s Office was warned multiple times about the Parkland shooter," and that "an armed officer was present during the shooting and did nothing."


And the FBI has dropped the ball in other recent catastrophes, too:
  • The Fort Lauderdale airport gunman told the FBI he was being mind controlled by the CIA before the rampage.
  • The Pulse nightclub shooter was on the terrorist watch list for two years and then taken off the list before he murdered in the name of Islam.
  • A 2014 report concluded that the FBI failed to act on warning signs over the would-be Boston marathon bombers.
  • And the list goes on.
How can the answer to government incompetence or malfeasance be to disarm the masses further and to rely even more heavily on the same institutions that have failed us?


In addition to that:


During the Clinton administration, federal prosecutions of gun-related crimes dropped more than 44 percent.  


Of the 3,353 prohibited individuals that obtained firearms, the Clinton administration only investigated 110 of them (3.3%).  


Despite 536,000 prohibited buyers caught by the National Instant (Criminal Background) Check System (NICS), only 6,700 people (1.25%) have been charged for these firearms violations. This includes 71% of the violations coming from convicted or indicted felons. None of these crimes were prosecuted by the Federal government in 1996, 1997, or 1998.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000)


Some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000)


Half of referrals concerning violent criminals were closed without investigation or prosecution.  (General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS, February 2000)


18-20 year-olds commit over 23% of all gun murders.None of these criminals are allowed by law to purchase a handgun, but the Federal government under Clinton rarely enforced this law.  (Federal Firearm Offenders report, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 4, 2000 – firearm suspects declined for prosecution by U.S. attorneys … some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy")



Since Con wouldn't respond,I have little choice except to post some more facts:



Though illegal, side-street gun makers thrive in the Philippines, primarily hand crafting exact replicas of submachine guns, which are often the simplest type of gun to manufacture. Estimates are that almost half of all guns in the Philippines are illegal. (Filipino gunsmiths are making a killing, Taipei Times, May 7, 2005)



Chinese police destroyed 113 illegal gun factories and shops in a three-month crackdown in 2006. Police seized 2,445 tons of explosives, 4.81 million detonators and 117,000 guns. (China Radio International Online, September 7, 2006)



Con says we have to convince people to hand over their guns and tell them that the police will save them.


Tell that to 14,196 murder victims, 345,031 robbery victims, and 79,770 rape victims who the police could not help. (FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2014)


There are not enough police to protect everyone. In 1999, there were about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time.
• This is on-duty police. This includes desk clerks, command sergeants, etc. – far fewer than 150,000 cops are cruising your neighborhood.
• There were approximately 271,933,702 people living in the United States in 1999. 
• Thus there is only one on-duty cop for every 1,813 citizens!



Con heralds Australia as an example of violence-free country because it has less mass shootings. So,by Con's logic,applying the same laws here will stop mass shootings. What I want to ask is :


Harris and Klebold violated close to 20 firearms laws in obtaining weapons. Would 21 laws really have made a difference in the Colombine Massacre? The two shotguns and one rifle used by Harris and Klebold were purchased by a girlfriend who passed a background check, and the TEC-9 handgun used was already banned.


90% of all violent crimes in the U.S. do not involve firearms of any type.(Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force, Dr. Gary Kleck, Social Problems). I fail to see how gun control would solve this.


I hope this time,Con would try to rebut some arguments,at least. If not,then I'm afraid that this will just turn out to be a big waste of time.


Con
#8
Plagiarism? 



That was linked to by the original source he plagiarised from anyway.


Again, this is not the source that Pro gives, again he gives references/sources that the source he copy and pasted from gives itself.

Past R3, Pro has ceased to properly address my case and instead has begun to just rant and bring brand new data and points again and again. This literally is gish gallop on Pro's part.

Pro's R3 is also taken from his R2 source as well as these:


Well, the remainder he links to but basically his entire argument is quoting without explaining.

I will make this very crystal clear. Pro's case involves only studying shortly after gun control begins, it relies on looking at the homicide rate involving non-firearm related deaths and ignoring the long-term effect on overall homicide in the nations. I have proven with the ending of my R3 source that even if we ignore firearm-deaths having brutal correlation in being curbed and gun control being employed, we still can see homicide go down over time when gun control is enacted. The key ingredient is that the nation needs to culturally loathe violence and murder. American states where exceptions have ever occurred have been neighbouring states that were gun and violence-friendly. It's pretty simple to understand. 

Gun control works and the error is not with the policy. I don't know how to say it simpler but Pro has yet to prove flaws in the policy, only in implementation of the policy, which don't add up anyway as I proved it's been done very well when nations properly control their borders and influence their cultures.
Round 5
Pro
#9
Forfeited
Con
#10
Coward.