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On balance, allowing civilians to own guns is detrimental to society

(PRO)
WINNER!
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(CON)
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RomaniiRomanii (PRO)

 Thanks for accepting, Stag.

I already posted this in the "rules" section, but just to re-iterate...

The resolution presumes a utilitarian framework, essentially stating that a world without civilian gun rights would be better off than a world with them. Burden of proof is on me to affirm this proposition. Aside from that, let’s note that 1) the resolution is *not* US-specific-- it refers to society and the world at large, 2) since the resolution explicitly mentions “civilians”, local police forces and the military would still be allowed to utilize firearms, and 3) this should *not* devolve into a gun control vs. gun ban debate-- Con may not advocate strict gun control measures such as gun registration, required training, bans on semi-automatic firearms, bans on handguns, etc... In other words, Con will be limited to advocating something similar to the current status quo in the United States (which is why I'll be using the US as a sort of "golden standard" of the harm civilian gun ownership causes to society).


C1) Homicides


Let' start with some general statistics: in the United States, the country with the highest rate of legal gun ownership on the planet, 67% of homicides are committed using a firearm [1]. This fact alone makes it highly unlikely that access to guns has no effect on homicide rates, because such a claim relies on the ludicrous assumption that if guns were not available, *all* of those murderers would simply switch to other weapons in order to commit their crimes. This view is absurd because if it were true, other developed nations with low rates of gun ownership would still have very similar homicide rates to ours, yet this is far from being the case [2]:  


Ignoring the few outliers* for now, we can see that the countries with low gun ownership don't have *nearly* the amount of homicides that the US has.  So we can conclude that murderers do *not* just switch to other weapons when guns aren't available. In other words,  guns facilitate violence in a way that no other weapon does. Guns provide a relatively quick, easy, and detached (compared to stabbing or beating someone to death) way to kill someone, meaning that having a firearm in the proximity makes it much easier for tense situations to escalate into fatal encounters, whereas they would otherwise have ended in heated arguments or fist fights. This has especially big implications considering that 79% of homicides occur between family, friends, and acquaintances [3],  60% of homicides occur at the victim's home [4],  and almost 40% of homicides stem from mere *arguments* [5]. It shows that the majority of homicides of impulsive in nature and occur in domestic settings-- they would most likely not have happened had there not been any easy access to lethal force (i.e. guns).

So on the basis of a few objective facts and some theoretical reasoning, it can be concluded that allowing civilian gun ownership is responsible for a substantial portion of homicides in society. That alone should be enough to show that civilian gun ownership is detrimental, considering immense negative utility that loss of life generates. But that's not all-- the conclusion that guns facilitate violence is corroborated by large number of professional statistical studies which do a much more thorough job of avoiding pitfalls such as faulty causation by controlling for various relevant external variables. Most of the following quotations come from peer-reviewed papers which were published in reputable journals:


---  "Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership [survey data], we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period (1988-1997).After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide." [6][7]


---  "Given the number of victims allegedly being saved with guns, it would seem natural to conclude that owning a gun substantially reduces your chances of being murdered. Yet a careful case-control study of homicide in the home found that a gun in the home was associated with an increased rather than a reduced risk of homicide. Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” [8].


---  "This paper uses a unique data set [gun sales as a proxy for gun ownership rates] to demonstrate that increases in gun
ownership lead to substantial increases in the overall homicide rate.
This is driven entirely by a relationship between firearms and homicides
in which a gun is used, implying that the results are not driven by reverse
causation or by omitted variables. The relationship between changes in
gun ownership and changes in all other crime categories is weaker and
typically insignificant, suggesting that guns influence crime primarily by
increasing the homicide rate.
" [9]


---  "Studies [from the Violence Policy Center] show that the
mere presence of firearms in [domestic violence] situations—no matter who actually owns the firearms—
increases the risk of intimate partner homicide five times more than in instances where there
are no weapons present
." [10] [11]


All lines of evidence examined thus far go overwhelmingly in support of the notion that allowing civilians to own guns leads to significant increase in homicide rates. 


* The outliers are easily explained by independent reasons, such as Estonia's astronomically high poverty rate [13] and Mexico's organized crime problem (which, as will be explained later, is largely fueled by a steady supply of guns from the US).


C2) Suicides


The logic here largely follows that of the first contention. Since the vast majority of suicides are impulsive, it makes sense to assume that many of them would not happen if the means to painlessly kill oneself were not readily available to the victim. A gunshot to the head is one of the easiest, most reliable, and most painless ways to die, which is why, unsurprisingly,  52% of suicides in the United States are committed using a firearm [13]. It logically follows that the absence of guns would make it much more difficult for the average person to commit suicide, thus forcing victims to take more drastic measures and substantially decreasing the likelihood that the victim will actually go through with it. And it shows-- [14]



It's quite safe to say that allowing civilians to own guns significantly increases suicide rates...


C3) Accidental Discharges  


Between 1965 and 2000, approximately 60,000 people in the United States were killed from unintentional firearm shootings [15]. To put that into perspective, that is more than the number of Americans who died in wars during that same time period. The impact of this should be clear-- deaths from accidental discharges are 100% impossible without private civilian ownership of guns, and thus represent yet another considerable toll of allowing civilians to own guns.


C4) Mass-shootings 


In the US, there about 16.4 mass-shootings per year, with 486 people having been killed in such shootings since 2000 [16]. That isn't a very big number; however, like terrorism, the primary harm of mass-shootings is not in the number of deaths, but in the collective psychological effect that such incidents have on a society: “Mass shootings are a marginal concern, even relative to other forms of gun violence, but they cause an unusual degree of terror and grief—particularly when children are targeted. Given the psychological and social costs of certain low-frequency events, it does not seem irrational to allocate disproportionate resources to prevent them… our perception of danger is easily distorted by rare events. Is gun violence increasing in the United States? No. But it certainly seems to be when one recalls recent atrocities in Newtown and Aurora. In fact, the overall rate of violent crime has fallen by 22 percent in the past decade.” [17]. This is confirmed by the results of a survey released by Pew Research Center, which showed that only 10% of Americans feel that gun violence has decreased over recent years. [18].

Guns are not responsible for all incidents of mass-murder, of course, but they undeniably make mass-murder much, much easier. Their long range enables the rapid shooting of multiple people at a time, and the "detachment" effect of shooting a gun allows for mentally unstable people get more satisfaction out of killing than they would from stabbing or setting a fire. Moreover, a mass-shooting is far more likely to end up in numerous deaths (instead of just injuries) than other forms of mass-murder; knives only kill if they hit a vital organ, and most modern buildings have fire escapes. It is simply absurd to claim that in absence of guns, mass-murders would continue occurring at the rate they currently do. The fact is, that incidents of mass-murder do not occur *nearly*  as much around the world as they do in the US [19]. Allowing civilians to own guns greatly increases the frequency of mass-murder incidents, which has a profoundly negative impact on society by making its inhabitants feel less secure.


C5) Injuries


One thing which is commonly overlooked in analyzing the impacts of civilian gun ownership is injuries from firearm violence, which occur far more often than homicides or suicides. According to the CDC, about 84,000 Americans are suffer injuries from firearms every year [20], which has been estimated to cost over 2.3 Billion dollars per year in medical costs [21]. This kind of financial expense is quite detrimental to the welfare of a society, because not only can that money be spent on more productive ends, but National Healthcare and emergency room regulations cause much of the burden of that cost to fall upon tax payers (in the US, it is roughly half of that burden). Following the logic outlined in C1 and C2, we can conclude that many of these injuries would not have happened without the 



I was going to make another argument, but I'm running low on time, so I'll just save it for next round.... 

Spoiler: it's about increasing the risk of civil wars in third world countries.



CONCLUSION: I have shown that allowing civilians to own guns results in a number of highly detrimental costs to society such as causing . It substantially increases homicide and suicide rates by providing the means for relatively minor events (e.g. heated arguments, fist fights, road rage, anxiety attacks, depression, etc.)  to escalate into such fatal occurrences, and it also makes possible death by accidental discharge, which claims a considerable number of lives as well. Furthermore, guns makes mass-shootings-- the most frequent and most common form of mass-murder-- possible, which has a demonstrably negative effect on a society's collective psychology akin to that of international terrorism. Lastly, civilian gun rights result in a massive number of injuries, which has a high financial toll on society.  


Given all that, we can only believe that allowing civilians to own guns is detrimental to society. Thus, the resolution is affirmed.


I look forward to seeing Con's case! 



SOURCES

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States (citation #2 has a link to a UNODC data table)

2. http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/tag/more-guns-less-crime/

3. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data

4. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/domestic-violence-murder-stats

5. http://tinyurl.com/lts9uzv (books.google.com)

6. Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. Household firearm ownership levels and homicide rates across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997.American Journal of Public Health. 2002: 92:1988-1993.

7. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

8, Arthur L. Kellermann et al., Gun Ownership As a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home, 329. New England Journal of Medicine. 1084, 1087 (1993)

9. https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/dranove/htm/dranove/coursepages/Mgmt%20469/guns.pdf

10. http://www.ncdsv.org/images/NTFESDVAW_LetterToSenateOnGunSafetyBill_4-8-2013.pdf

11. J. C. Campbell, J.C.,Webster, D., Koziol-McLain, J. and et al. (2003). Risk Factors For Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results From A Multi-Site Case Control Study. American Journal of Public Health. 93(7).

12. http://www.stat.ee/65388

13. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm

14. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suicide-the-hidden-toll/

15. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_07_08_07_290_PetitionerAmCuMajorAmerCities.authcheckdam.pdf (pg. 17)

16. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html?_r=0

17. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

18. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

19. http://world.time.com/2012/12/17/when-massacres-force-change-lessons-from-the-u-k-and-australia/

20. http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe

21. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/04/us/annual-cost-of-treating-gunshot-wounds-is-put-at-2.3-billion.html




Return To Top | Posted:
2015-02-25 12:25:22
| Speak Round
BlackflagBlackflag (CON)
Thank you too, Romani
My side fully recognizes the  harms of gun ownership in peacetime. The most important idea of gun control I will be promoting, is the point most often ignored.

In War: Everyone Is a Soldier 
In peacetime, it would make a lot of sense to limit the amount of firearms. As much as the average Western gun owner would care to believe, we are not in any immediate danger that would require us to be locked and loaded. ISIS will not be pillaging through our summer homes and massacring our families anytime in the near future.  We do though, need to live in constant fear of the day that danger will reach us. If history has taught the world anything, it is that one day, danger will reach us all. This danger I speak of is called war.

In over 90% of the wars waged in human history, there have been more non-combatants killed than soldiers! A wild, but true statistic. How can this statistic be explained? I am sure there are numerous answers, all of which reach the same foregone conclusion. You are more probable to die without a gun  than with one in war. 

Taking away firearms might not have much of an effect on society within the next couple of years, but what about the next couple of decades? War can reach us at any point in time.  The regulation of firearms is an elitist plot to disadvantage the common man. How come every time a war happens it is the poor farmer who gets killed and not the billionaires? Billionaires have guns and manpower, which in a regulated society, the common man would be denied. The elites control the government, the military, but why should they control the common man too? Why should the common man be denied the smallest of protections?

It is a gross inhumanity that the elitist backed society supports the practice of arming trained killers, and then turns around and distrusts its own citizens who are legally on an equal level.  It is a classic imbalance of power. Gun regulation is an authoritarian measure, and it will lead to millions of casualties in the event of an inevitable war. A war that the authoritarian elitists will surely back in order to make  money on the average mans suffering. 

There is much sympathy among those who believe in war readiness to the arguments of the affirming position. We acknowledge that these problems exist. We are simply aware that this kind of extreme protocol isn't the answer. The right solution would be much more moderate. Stripping concealed weapon permits, and performing more orthodox inspections into gun owners armories would lower crime significantly. Until these moderate solutions are tried and tested, there is no reason to advocate for such an extreme non-solution.

We must bear with the dangers of firearms, because if we do not, then the consequences will be much more severe in times of real widespread danger. Everyone in war is a soldier. Should we segregate who can protect their families  simply due to an elitist backed status quo. The opposing position rests its case.

Return To Top | Posted:
2015-03-11 11:33:46
| Speak Round
RomaniiRomanii (PRO)
Well... this debate took an unexpected turn... 

Con's argument really just has one fatal flaw to it:

In modern warfare, a huge variety of extremely dangerous weapons are used, from fighter jets to landmines to grenades to tanks to bazookas to chemical weapons to bombs. Almost every national military in the world is equipped with such weaponry; additionally, in order to successfully carry out an attack on civilians, the invading army would have had to be powerful enough to defeat the defending country's army. To claim that a hastily-assembled militia made of citizens armed with petty firearms could possibly make a successful effort at resisting a full-scale invasion from a relatively strong military is absolutely absurd. The citizens would easily be overwhelmed by the superior military technology of the invading army. No amount of guns can put up a serious fight against an air strike. In fact, TURN this argument; by arming civilians and allowing them to try engaging in such futile resistance, there would just be *more* casualties because it would force the invading army to use more force than would otherwise have been necessary.

Thus, Con's argument refutes his own case. 

The resolution remains affirmed.

Return To Top | Posted:
2015-03-23 13:02:50
| Speak Round


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