Resolved: In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned



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Honeywell 14

Handguns are built to kill people.


Honeywell 14 Ken (editor-in-chief of Punchnel’s) “What is the Purpose of a Gun?” http://www.punchnels.com/2014/07/17/what-is-the-purpose-of-a-gun/ JW

What, after all, is the purpose of a gun? The purpose of a gun–if we’re being honest–is to kill something. It’s a tool that has enough power, when used properly (and very often improperly) to kill. Hunting rifles and shotguns are for killing animals. Handguns–if we’re being honest–are for killing people. That’s the purpose behind their designthey are portable, concealable, easy-to-use tools for killing a person. You may feel protected when you carry a gun, but guns are not for protection: They are for killing. Were I a paranoid person or on some sort of mystery-solving adventure, I might also feel safer if I carried my eight-inch chef’s knife that is for chopping vegetables. I might feel safer carrying a baseball bat or accompanied by a dog. (P.S.: The purpose of a dog is not to protect you. As far as I can tell, the purpose of a dog is to be a dog.) But guns are only for killing. So we have laws that make it easy for you and me and just about anybody to go to the gun store and buy a gun, and carry it damn near anywhere we please in Indiana, including our state parks. It only stands to reason that when lots of people are walking around the streets with tools that are made to kill people, people are going to die. I’m sure that if people were walking around with butcher knives, more people would get stuck. I’m also pretty sure that if more people were walking around with shovels, more people would get whacked in the melon with shovels. But I’ll bet more holes would get dug, too. And a gun is not for anything else. Except killing. Yes, target practice. But there’s a reason those targets are shaped like humans.


Moser 13

The plan makes black market guns expensive and difficult to find.


Moser 13 Whet “How Gun Control (and Isolation) Makes Illegal Guns More Expensive” Feb 18th 2013 Chicago Mag http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/February-2013/How-Gun-Control-and-Isolation-Makes-Illegal-Guns-More-Expensive/ JW

Which turns out to be pretty typical. In 2007, four academics—Philip J. Cook of Duke, Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago, Sudhir Venkatesh (now of Columbia) and Anthony Braga (now of Rutgers)—studied Chicago’s underground gun market and found that “the illegality of the gun market increases search costs for prospective trading partners” (PDF): Interviews by SV with 116 gun-owning non-gang affiliated youths (age 18–21) reveal prices paid that range between $250 and $400. Interviews with 11 local gun brokers, who handle a large share of retail transactions on behalf of importers, suggest most of their guns are sold for between $150 and $350. These prices are typically for guns of low quality, manufactured by companies such as Lorcin, Raven and Bryco. These names were often mentioned to SV in interviews and as noted above also show up frequently in administrative data on confiscated crime guns maintained by ATF. While SV’s inter- views do not include information on the condition of the gun, it is noteworthy that most pistols from these manufacturers listed on websites (such as gunsamerica.com) sell for between $50 and $100 (with a $10 mailing/transaction fee), even for those used guns that are reported to be in ‘excellent condition’. Of course, people are still able to obtain guns; they’re just expensive and more difficult to find. But one part of their research made me wonder how much the repeal of the gun ban will actually effect the black market here: Why do people tolerate these search costs when any Chicago resident can identify the location of numerous licensed suburban gun dealers with a quick search of the local phone directory or the Internet? Even those people who are themselves ineligible to buy a gun from a licensed gun dealer can get someone else, usually a wife or girlfriend, to make a ’straw purchase’ on their behalf if she obtained an Illinois Firearm Owners ID (FOID) card. The answer seems to be in part that the residents of SV’s neighbourhoods are very parochial, perhaps because gang turf increases the risks of travelling to other areas. One gang leader notes: ‘Most of us, we never been outside these four or five blocks, our neighbourhood. Now, how can you bring the guns here if you don’t even know how to get to other places? … Even if we go to jail, we really spend most of our time around where we live, where we work.’ In that sense, the weapons that enforce that isolation maintain their own, isolated black market.


Economist 14

Solvency disproves the disad AND we prevent the black market from growing.

Economist 14 [“What are the costs of gun ownership?” July 10th 2014 http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/07/guns-and-consequences JW]


But a comprehensive study of the social costs of gun ownership by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, published in the Journal of Public Economics, offers a more nuanced take on the problem. These researchers found that more guns empirically lead to more gun-related violence, largely because legally purchased guns somehow end up in the hands of criminals via theft or the secondary market (ie, gun shows and online sales, which are largely unregulated). And attacks with guns are more likely to be lethal, because they are much more effective at killing people than other weapons. This might not be a big problem in New Hampshire, but it is certainly one in Chicago, where data from 2008 show that 81% of homicides were committed with guns, 91% of them by people who had a prior arrest record. (More guns also lead to more suicides, which is a serious problem, though rarely one for headlines.)


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