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than the attorney vis a-vis the client, can government attempt to insert itself into the consciences of those whose interests it
the sovereign state cannot make such judgments. When it accepts the responsibilities of governing, implicit in that acceptance is the
assumption that it is right that the state should be sovereign, that the integrity of its political life should be assured, that its people
should enjoy the blessings of military security, material prosperity and a reasonable opportunity for, as the Declaration of
Thus, the side that saves the most lives should win this debate.
Contention 1: Having a gun around the house increases the risk of accident.
Hugh LaFollette, [Professor in Ethics, University of South Florida], Gun Control,
Ethics Vol. 110, 2000.
Third, having
a gun around the house (or on the person) even for self-protection
increases the chance that someone in the family will kill themselves with the gun or
will be the victim of a homicide or an accident. One study found that for every time a gun in the
implies that for every
home was involved in a self-protection homicide, they noted 1.3 unintentional deaths, 4.5 criminal homicides, and 37 firearm suicides.
case where someone in a gun-owning household uses a gun to successfully stop a lifethreatening attack, nearly forty-three people in similar households will die from a
gunshot. Taken together the evidence does not prove that widespread availability of guns increases the number of homicides.
This
However, that empirical evidence, bolstered by earlier armchair arguments, makes the claim highly plausible.
This means regardless of crime rates, guns increase the rate of deaths in households with
Contention 2 is Crime.
A. Most crimes are from handguns.
FBI 2014 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.2014/cius-home
Nearly 68 percent (67.9) of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data
in 2014 involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 68.5 percent of the
firearms used in murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents in 2014. (Based on
Expanded Homicide Data Table 8) Among the robberies for which the UCR Program received weapon information in 2014, strongarm tactics were used in 43.0 percent, firearms [were] in 40.3 percent, and knives or cutting instruments in 7.9 percent. Other
dangerous weapons were used in 8.8 percent of robberies in 2014. (Based on Table 19) Of the aggravated assault offenses in 2014 for
which law enforcement provided expanded data, 26.9 percent were committed with personal weapons, such as hands, fists, or feet.
Firearms were used in 22.5 percent of aggravated assaults, and knives or cutting instruments were used in 18.8 percent. Other weapons
were used in 31.9 percent of aggravated assaults. (Based on Table 19)
Across the basic seven Index I crime categories, the strongest evidence of a statistically significant effect would be for aggravated
assault, with 11 of 28 estimates suggesting that RTC laws increase this crime at the .10 confidence level. An omitted variable bias test
on our preferred Table 8a results suggests that our estimated 8 percent increase in aggravated assaults from RTC laws may understate
the true harmful impact of RTC laws on aggravated assault, which may explain why this finding is only significant at the .10 level in
many of our models. Our
Prefer Anejas study because unlike Neg studies it study accounts for:
31 years of evidence
The Cocaine epidemic between 1999 and 2010
And State trends
Contention 3 is Suicides
Handguns uniquely fuel suicide rates.
Harvard School of Public Health reports
Ecologic studies that compare states with high gun ownership levels to those with low gun ownership levels find that in the U.S., where there are
more guns, there are more suicides. The higher suicide rates result from higher firearm suicides; the non-firearm suicide rate is about equal across states.
Women are more than twice as likely to be shot by their male intimates as they are
to be shot, stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned, or killed in any other way by a stranger (Kellermann and Mercy 1992).
A handgun is the weapon of choice. In addition, as shown in Figure 4, the most recent data
available indicate that as homicides of women by strangers have decreased, the
number of homicides by intimates with hand-guns has increased.
Fatalities are not the only way in which firearms and other weapons are used in intimate partner violence. This observation is
important because most intimate partner violence is ongoing, nonfatal abuse. Fewer than one quarter of 1% of intimate partner assaults
are fatal. Nonetheless, when there has been a history of violence against the woman by her male intimate, regardless
of
other demographic characteristics of the victim or the assailant, characteristics of their relationship, forms of prior abuse,
and a host of other variables, his access to a gun is a potent predictor of a fatal assault (Campbell et al.
2003).
Recent research indicates that the gender discrepancy in firearm use among intimates holds for nonfatal as well as fatal violence.
National hospital discharge data document that men are 8 times more likely than are women to be treated for a gunshot wound (Gotsch
et al. 2001) but that women are 3.6 times more likely than are men to be shot by a current or former spouse than by a stranger (Wiebe
2003). In
a national survey of the general population, women were more likely than
were men to have a gun used against them by an intimate partner: threatened with a gun (3.5% for
2000). Whereas the base rates are low, these
women vs. 0.4% for men) and gun used against them (0.7% for women vs. 0.1% for men
percentages translate to unsettling numbers: 16 in every 1,000 U.S. women have
been threatened with a gun, and 7 in 1,000 have had a gun used against them by an
intimate partner.
; Tjaden and Thoennes
Firearms are used in ways that do not result in firearm-related injuries. A gun can be used to coerce behaviors
such as sex, as a means to inflict terror, and so on. Firearms, particularly handguns, may be more
common in homes where battering has occurred than in the general population. In a
statewide survey of residents of battered womens shelters, more than one third (36.7%) of the sheltered women reported that there was a firearm in the
home (Sorenson and Wiebe 2004). Only about one sixth (16.7%) of women in the general California population report that there is a firearm in the home
there was a gun in the home where battering had occurred, it commonly was used against the woman.
Through accident, suicide, crime, and domestic violence prevention, banning handguns
will simply save lives. Thus, I urge an affirmative ballot.