Imabench

I couldnt even think of how someone could argue contrary to the claim that the US is currently the most powerful country in the world. FF

Forfeited

Both sides failed to back their arguments with evidence and both sides forfeited numerous rounds. Therefore I have to leave the debate as a tie

How do you forfeit the first round of your own debate?

forfeited

Forfeited

Forfeit :/

While Pro introduced a number of good points showing that smartphones can be entertaining, useful, and even important to have, arguments that con really failed to negate and instead wasted a lot of time trying to pass off the benefits of smartphones as irrelevant, Con also really shot himself in the foot by barely diving into his main counter argument of how smartphones can cause addiction and hamper test scores in school. A vast majority of Con's arguments are spent counting Pro's sensible claims, while the strongest argument Con has regarding addiction and test scores are almost afterthoughts left at the end of individual debate rounds.

Pro almost loses the debate when countering the arguments of smart phone addiction and test score problems by making excuses that its the own persons fault and that it can be overcome. While that is true, its still a weak defense, and Pro would have been much better off by arguing that smartphone addiction only effects a fraction of people, measures can be taken up in the classroom to preserve test scores without flat out banning smartphones, etc.

In the end, Pro's arguments are ultimately saved by the proven usefulness and access to information that smartphones bring. While some of this info and uses can be found in other devices, entertaining games and GPS for example, that doesnt prove the idea that smartphones are somehow 'not good' simply because other devices are sometimes similar in use. For that reason, argument points go to Pro.

Pros incredible lack of understanding in addition to a complete lack of evidence that God did any of the things Pro alleges he did gave argument points swiftly to Con who presented far more feasible and probable reasons for the design of animals compared to pros arguments. Round 2 in particular showed Pro's complete lack of knowledge in evolution and how it works, where Pro goes so far to claim that 'genetic mutations can be prevented so evolution is impossible' and 'it is impossible for all plant eaters to evolve because they eat green grass which prevents mutations', both of which are objectively wrong and incredibly stupid statements to claim. Argument points easily won by Con.

Source points also go to con since pro's sources come from either youtube or incredibly biased and misinformed religious sites. One of his sources literally is from a Pastor talk show where Pro only cites the link and leaves it at that rather then elaborate on what the link is even arguing.

Clear-cut win by Con here.

First off: Fantastic fuckin debate by both sides. Its been a long ass time since I saw a debate creep into the voting section and immediately caught my interest, and both sides did a tremendous job with their cases.

The fundamental problem with the debate though is that both sides chose techniques which have been practiced on a very limited scale or not even practiced entirely. Execution by firing squad is super rare, and execution by Nitrogen Asphyxiation is a completely new form of execution. The incredibly limited sample of both forms of execution make it fairly hard for certain sides to make convincing arguments for their cause, since the arguments are entirely theoretical depending on context.

For Pain and Quickness of death: While Nitrogen Asphyxiation could probably feasibly be botched if a number of circumstances are met, its more conceivable to see why a firing squad could conceivably fail in their task of painlessness and quickness of death. Both sides take precautions to ensure why their method would have minimal failures, so then the argument becomes IF a botched attempt occurs, how painful is the aftermath? While NA is only a theoretical procedure, worst case is that the condemned gets a little woozy for a bit before the issue is resolved or retried at a later date, whereas a botched execution by firing squad could cause far worse effects for the condemned. For this reason, Con barely wins this argument.
For Affordability: Both sides appear to be affordable enough to serve as the primary form of execution for capital punishment compared to the current standard of lethal injection. Tied on this count

For being Proven as methods: With Pro easily meeting the burden of proof that firing squad has historically worked, Con saves his ass by tying Nitrogen Asphyxiation to Hypoxia in round 3 as evidence that the method would work with close to perfect accuracy. (There is actually an instance of a civilian airline in Greece going down because the oxygen in the oxygen bags ran out after 7 minutes, and everyone drifted off peacefully into their sleep/death except for one flight attendant who used multiple bags to stay awake/alive). Tied on this count.

For Staff effects behind both forms of execution, there are two sub-arguments here: Pro does well in pointing out that the need for medical professionals to administer executions by Nitrogen Asphyxiation could run into issues, or at very least is lower than the number of qualified people needed and willing to carry out a Firing Squad execution.... On the other hand though, Con makes a solid argument that staff behind Nitrogen Asphyxiation executions would likely be far less likely to develop sorts of PTSD or other forms of trauma from witnessing the execution compared to those who would participate in a Firing Squad execution. Since both of these relate to the argument of staffing for both forms and each side wins one of these points, this count also remains a tie.

In the end, I would support both forms of these executions over Lethal Injections any day. Damn near every point made in the debate was tied due to how incredibly well both sides argued their sides. Because the argument regarding effects felt by the condemned if the execution is botched was won by Con's side of Nitrogen Asphyxiation though, I cannot leave argument points as a tie overall, and have to award points to Con despite many of the other arguments made being effectively tied..... This is chiefly in part due to the theoretical nature of Nitrogen Asphyxiation Executions though since they have not been utilized at any large enough rate to really evaluate effects a botched procedure would have, without going into pure speculation.

If the debate was structured in a way where Pro argued that execution by firing squad would be the best form of execution -to be utilized right away for all death penalty cases-, then he may have won that debate using the same arguments he used, since firing squads have been practiced in the past and could be readily implemented nation wide, whereas Nitrogen Asphyxiation could still be years or decades away from being able to be utilized on a large scale. However, because the debate strictly limits its scope simply to best form of capital punishment, the 1 tiebreaker won by con out of the multiple other arguments that remained a tie BARELY gives him the win here.

Again, I just want to emphasize this, fan-FUCKING-tastic debate to both sides. I legit enjoyed reading this whole damn thing and learned a good deal from it

Had Pro kept the resolution of the debate restricted to "Antifa is a hate group" or "Antifa should be classified as a hate group", then this debate would have been far more interesting to read and weigh the merits that both sides could bring up to discuss. However, by going so far as to claim that the Antifa is the equivalent of the KKK, Pro set themselves up for too much of a burden of proof to overcome, and his arguments reflect that as he relies too much on his own bias rather than tangible facts.

The biggest issue for me as a voter here is not whether or not the Antifa is a hate group or not, but whether or not they are 'equal to' the KKK in terms of membership, history, impact, and body count. Con comes right out fo the gate in round 1 and points out that while the Antifa have clashed with police once in a while and made some threats in heated conflicts, the KKK have been responsible for lynchings and bombings and the deaths of at least a thousand different people throughout history, vastly dwarfing anything the Antifa has ever done..... Pro's claim that 'the Antifa would do the things the Klan did in the past if national security was much laxer than it currently is' falls far short of making the two equivalent which was the goal of the debate, while Con points out in the next round that Pro is unable to point out when the Antifa has killed anyone ever.... Intent to kill from both sides means nothing when one side has a proven bodycount behind them while the other one so far has been pretty much just talk.... The round 3 FF and round 4 extension of the FF leaves argument points squarely in possession of Con, since most of the debate devolved into an analysis of a video Pro tries to rely on as evidence that as Con points out has been heavily edited and is from a notorious source of fake news..... Miscellaneous arguments about Klan membership and historical notoriety also push arguments more in Con's favor, but the sheer death count was more than enough to disprove the notion that the two groups are equal.

As disorganized and misguided as the Antifa are, they are by no means the equivalent of the KKK by any stretch of the imagination, as Con wholly proved in the debate. Source and Spelling points tied since both sides used at least some links for their arguments, but the late round FF does give Con the conduct point.

Full forfeit of just about every round + plagiarism

Let me start off by stating that prior to this debate: I had zero stance on the position of whether or not reparations should be paid for slavery. I came into this with 100% an open mind and interested to see arguments from both sides.... Ironically, as a result of this debate I am more open to the idea of reparations to the descendants of slaves, but feel that Con's arguments were superior.

There are basically 3 arguments between both sides = Cost, Justification, and Morality.... Of these three, the cost argument in my opinion was the most important point that held the most weight, and Pro dropped the ball massively on this one.

When Con introduces his claim that Reparations would cost $60 TRILLION, the random source he pulls that from operates on the belief that the 40 million descendants of slaves deserve $1.5 million each.... Pro could have easily provided a different number to give an idea of how much it would cost (40 million descendants getting $100k each would bring the cost down to $4 Trillion, which would put it at about 1.5 times the cost of the Iraq War..... Instead though, Pro concedes the $60 trillion figure to con and tries to argue that 60 trillion is not that much, which is a tremendously bad line of reasoning to argue. Pro's comparison of a $3 billion farmers bill in comparison falls tremendously short, so Con absolutely won this aspect of the argument.

Regarding the Justification and Morality arguments, these arguments by Con were not as strong as his argument for the cost of the program, but Pro's counter arguments to these points were almost non-existent. For example, when Con first mentions that the US were not the only ones to benefit from the enslavement of black people such as Europeans and even African warlords who profited off of the slave trade, Pro didn't even give a counter argument to these points in round 2, and counter arguments after that revolved around similar reparation payments to Jews and Native Americans rather then the lack of reparations to slave descendants from other places that benefitted from the enslavement of black people.

In summary, while some of Con's arguments left more to be desired, Pro's arguments completely failed to make a case in favor of reparations. The concession that reparations would allegedly cost $60 trillion was a massive blunder by Pro's part, and the majority of the debate descended into an argument over who all benefitted from the after-effects of slavery once it was eliminated..... Con wins argument points by a wide margin, and his arguments were the most well sourced by a substantial margin as well.

Overall, Con far and away had superior arguments compared to Pro

1 - GDP - Pro argues that two former colonies have high GDP's, but Con points out that not only is Africa improving on its own, but a continent-wide war would damage America's GDP since Iraq managed to do that on its own. The 'trade deal' Pro pulls out of nowhere to try to justify the benefits is a complete fiction and would never in reality come to fruition.

2 - Human Rights - This is Pro's strongest argument he makes in the whole debate, but even then, Con points out that the US is hardly the beacon of supporting Human Rights. From then on the argument devolves into whether or not the US should be the world police, and how many would die in the initial invasion so the argument is effectively abandoned.

3 - Impractical - Con is correct that the US invading all of Africa is entirely impractical, and Pro's assertion that an invasion would be 'easy to win' is hilariously short-sighted given recent US performance in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, etc.... Con also points out how other nations outside of Africa would oppose our actions, making an invasion even more impractical, which ties into the foreign relations argument made later on.

4 - Cost - This is far and away the worst argument that Pro makes, where he claims the cost of invading a continent would be cheap because 'its easier to defeat a state than an idea.' This does not defeat the fact that the war would be incredibly costly regardless of whether its against states or widespread beliefs, and Pro points out that the US's high military spending does not equate to wars being easy to win.

Pro's more outlandish claims which desperately needed to be sourced to hold any weight were instead just left as unsubstantiated claims. Con used a wealth of examples and solid reasoning across the board to show why the US should not invade the entire African continent, and easily clinched arguments in the debate.

Point 1 (Destructiveness) indicates how many people even a single nuke could kill. Pro attempts to argue that it wont happen because of how many people nukes can kill, basically saying nukes are so dangerous that therefore they are not dangerous, which completely undermines his own argument that they are safe. Its the equivalent of claiming that a crazy guy with a gun is so dangerous that everyone will avoid trying to interact with him for their own safety, therefore the crazy guy with a gun is safe, since he is so dangerous no one wants to find themselves in a conflict with him. That is incredibly nonsensical, as Con points out.

Point 2 (Environment) is entirely dropped by Pro who wrongly claims that a nuclear war has to be proven to take place for this argument to hold weight. That is blatantly false. A nuclear war does not have to actually occur in order for people to realize that it would be entirely devastating to the environment of the regional area, if not global community. It's the same as claiming that an oil spill from a tanker onto a coral reef cannot be proven to be bad for the coral reef until it actually happens so we can see for ourselves, which is a terrible line of reasoning to try to defend as Pro attempted to do.

Point 3 + 4 (Saved lives + prevents war) is the only argument by Pro that is somewhat defended, and con did a poor job of trying to rebut it, but the argument is undermined by the very next point in the debate mentioning instances where wars were almost provoked entirely because of the existence of nukes to begin with.

Point 5 (Cost) Pro completely drops the ball on by trying to argue that $105 Billion a year to maintain the nuclear arsenal is, somehow, not a lot. Con correctly points out that $100+ Billion on nukes is more than what some powerful countries spend on their entire military, which seals this argument in con's favor by a wide margin.

Of the 5 arguments made in the debate, Con wins nearly all of them in spite of the late round forfeiture. Spelling and conduct were fine on both sides, both sides utilized sources, so the deciding factor was arguments, where Con far and away won the majority of them.

Sources, spelling, and conduct were all on par for both sides where each side conducted themselves professionally, each cited a wealth of information, and each had spelling good enough to understand the arguments being made. Awarding argument points, as always, was the biggest challenge, the fact that there were a multitude of different arguments being made only made this that much harder.... The debate is actually a collage of four different debates all being argued at the same time: Concealed Carry, Gun laws in general, Assault weapons, and constitutionality.

For concealed carry: Con goes off on a tangent with the police officers comparison, then tries to poke holes in Pro's sources, then tries to downplay the overall effect that concealed carry has on increased crime rates. Both sides also use the argument that correlation =/= causation, which can be applied to every argument made in the debate. Because Con spends his time on the defensive rather than use arguments in support of conceal-carry or really indicate why conceal-carry is beneficial for society overall, Pro wins this argument overall. Score is Pro 1-0 in arguments.

For Gun laws in general: Con cites England as his only example of crime going up after a gun law was put into effect, showing that crime did go up by a hefty amount after being implemented. Pro uses the correlation =/= causation argument and stresses murder rate over crime rate, but by the time Pro finally tries to tweak his arguments in the final round when Con cant respond, Con's main argument has made its point: That gun laws impact on crime had little if not the opposite effect on crime overall. Had Pro used gun laws in other countries to support his argument, that would have helped, but by focusing just on England, Con's argument triumphs. Score is tied at 1-1 for arguments.

Next is Assault Weapons, where Pro argues there is no positive use to them and that they should be banned, including info showing they are the weapon of choice for mass-shooters. Con counter argues that handguns inflict far more damage and can fit under the description of 'assault weapon' depending on how it is defined. Pro clarifies he is arguing about rifles and not handguns, and cites pretty good evidence about the effects it had on crime before and after implementation. Con responds with data showing mass shooter rates going down, but overall murder rates being largely unaffected, before making a semantical argument about knives. While the effect on murder rate for assault-weapons-bans is almost non-existent, Pro's argument about its effect on mass shootings still stands, and so he wins this argument. Score 2-1 for Pro.

The final argument is about Constitutionality, which was the worst arguments made in the debate. The vagueness of the 2nd Amendment and its application 250 years in society later makes the legality of gun control more tied to how US Courts interpret the Constitution and its scope, rather than how the two individuals in the debate interpret the Constitution, so sources cited for legality based on court rulings hold the most weight of all in this argument. Con concedes many of the supreme court arguments cited by Pro in the opening round, and instead focuses on a whirlwind of general ideas about what would happen with or without the second amendment based on the other bad arguments Pro makes about the age of the Constitution. If anything, Con seemed to concede the Constitutionality of some gun control measures and in response focused counter arguments on the overall importance of the 2nd Amendment, which wasn't the argument in the first place. The argument was whether or not the 2nd Amendment allows for gun control measures Pro argues for, not whether or not the 2nd Amendment should be repealed.

Pro wins the fourth argument in addition to the first and third, making the final count 3-1 for Pro. Therefore, Pro gets full argument points.

This was a bit of a convoluted debate, It was interesting, but would be much better if the overall scope of the debate was narrowed down to one or at most two different aspects of gun control, rather than 4

This debate is titled to ask whether the US should or should not require a Universal Background Check for all firearm transactions, but a vast majority of arguments were instead focused on the legality of UBC's rather than their potential effectiveness or ineffectiveness. The contender side offers a brief argument about why UBC's can be useful and beneficial, which the pro side does not really respond to (makes an argument about the bureaucratical requirements of having a UBC) , and then the debate shifts purely to a debate about legality rather than the actual benefits of a UBC system. Both sides tied the main legality argument in my opinion, with evidence of UBC's conflicting with and fitting within the law. What should have been the main focus of the debate was somewhat uncontested after it was introduced by pro, so for that reason I give argument points to the con side by a nose, and leave the rest of the criteria tied. Pretty good debate!

The last round forfeit was the final nail in the coffin, but Pro set himself up to fail almost from the beginning by trying to argue that Capitalism is obsolete, rather then instead argue that it is exploitative, unscientific, or unsustainable as he did in his opening round. I also gave spelling/grammar to con because close to 90% of Pro's round 2 arguments were in bold which after a while started to make my eyes bleed and really fail to see which points Pro was trying to stress the most. That might be a little nitpicky, so I'll leave the other two criteria even

Con far and away had better arguments showing that MSG for the most part is safe, and that people who claim to have sensitivity towards MSG in actual trials have indicated that they mostly do not. The sources con uses for their arguments are also strongly recognized as reliable and fair sources, pro failing abysmally to challenge the sources as unreliable when given the opportunity. Pro's conduct was also quite poor towards the end of the debate, spelling and grammar not much of an issue. Easy win.