Yonah Vang

NEG
The 2nd U.S. president John Adams once said, "Arms in the hands of
citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense." The right to
bear arms for the interests of self-defense is extremely important because it
ensures the safety of the people.
It is because I agree with Adams that I NEGATE the resolution, Resolved:
In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned.
Definitions:
private ownership: owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by
the state or a public body (Collins English Dictionary)
handgun: a small gun designed to be held and shot with one hand (Merriam
Webster)
ban: to forbid people from using (Merriam Webster)
Today I value safety defined as the state of not being dangerous or
harmful. The private ownership of handguns is the most important because it
ensures that the citizens are able to defend themselves when they are put in
hostile situations. In order to uphold my value, I offer the value criterion of
upholding Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative.
Kant states that we must treat each other never as a means to an end, but as an
end to itself. It is important that we all seek to achieve the ends of safety because
it is something every person wants equally.

Contention 1: Criminals will not follow the law

Kates

Don B.
(LL.B., Yale, 1966) is an American criminologist and constitutional lawyer associated with the Pacific Research Institute,
San Francisco. Gary Mauser (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1970) is a Canadian criminologist and university professor at Simon Fraser
University, Burnaby, BC Canada. WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE? A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND SOME
DOMESTIC EVIDENCE. Harvard Journal of

2007.

Law & Public Policy. Vol. 30, No. 2.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Indeed, murderers generally fall into a group some criminologists have called violent predators, sharply differentiating them not only from

felons indicate that when not imprisoned the ordinary

felon averages perhaps 12 crimes per year. In contrast, violent predators spend much or most of their
time committing crimes, averaging at least 5 assaults, 63
robberies, and 172 burglaries annually. A National Institute of Justice survey of
2,000 felons in 10 state prisons, which focused on gun crime, said of these types of respondents:
[T]he men we have labeled Predators were clearly omnibus felons . . . [committed] more or less any crime
they had the opportunity to commit which....The Predators (handgun and shotgun
the overall population but from other criminals as well. Surveys of imprisoned

combined) . . .

crime

amounted to

about 22% of the sample and yet accounted for

51% of the total

[admitted by the 2,000 felons] . . . . Thus, when we talk about control--

We can clearly see that even if we try to ban private ownership

of firearms, citizens' safety will still be at risk because
criminals will always go back to their original ways.

Contention 2: Handgun ownership deters criminals

from committing violent crime.
Endorf,

Robert J (Graduate of NYC Law School and Lawyer in Kentucky). The District of Columbia Gun Ban: Where

the Seductive Promise of Gun Control Meets Reality. Journal on Firearms & Public Policy. Vol. 19, pp. 46-92,

2007.

Not only do firearms provide citizens an effective means of self-defense when directly confronted with violent crime, firearm ownership also

A survey of incarcerated felons found

that forty-three percent had decided not to commit a specific
crime because they believed that the victim might be armed.
acts as a deterrent to many types of violent crime."

Knowledge that an intended victim might possess a gun plays a role in many criminals' decision to either commit the crime through direct
confrontation with the victim, through a more indirect method, or whether to commit the crime at all. Such is the likely reason the United

Nations with strict

gun control, like Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Canada, have rates of burglaries into an
occupied home at around fifty percent of all residential burglaries; the rate in the
United States is usually around ten percent. When a criminal enters an occupied
States has a lower rate of burglars victimizing occupied homes than countries with strict gun control.

home, there is a serious risk that the criminal will assault the legal occupant. Increasing the rate at which burglars victimize occupied homes is

Therefore, firearm ownership

reduces violent crime because it deters criminals from directly
confronting their victims, especially through burglars' avoidance of occupied homes.
thus likely to increase rates of violence as more burglars assault occupants.

Contention 3: Most cannot always rely on the police for

defense.
Endorf,

Robert J (Graduate of NYC Law School and Lawyer in Kentucky). The District of Columbia Gun Ban: Where the Seductive

Promise of Gun Control Meets Reality. Journal on Firearms & Public Policy. Vol. 19, pp. 46-92,

2007.

When confronted with a violent criminal act, many have no choice but to respond in self-defense or acquiesce to the criminal's will.

Eighty-three percent of Americans will be victims of violent

crimes sometime in their lives. Most of those victims will not be able to rely on police protection during the commission of the
crime, but instead must rely upon themselves. Police forces react to crime by finding the perpetrator and
by acting as a general deterrent to crime; however, they are not personal bodyguards and usually cannot disrupt a crime in progress . Even
when only responding, the Metropolitan Police take an average of eight and
a half minutes to respond to their highest priority 911 calls. The
police are not responsible for the protection of individual citizens; the highest court for the District of Columbia has ruled that it is a
"fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police

, and
for many of them self-defense with a firearm is statistically the best
option. The law-abiding citizens of the District of Columbia do not have that option for survival, despite living in one of the most
protection, to any individual citizen." The reality is that most people will be the victim of a violent crime at some point in their lives

crime-ridden areas in the nation. Pg. 70.

Citizens can not always rely on police officers as a way for

protection and if we deprive them of the ability to defend

themsevles with handguns, we deprive them of their safety.

Contention 4: Banning handguns violate the right to

privacy
Tahmassebi, Stefan B. (Assistant General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel of the National Rifle Association of
America). Gun Control and Racism. Civil Rights Law Journal. Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 67-99 (1991).
. A former
Ohio prosecutor has stated that in his opinion fifty to seventy-five
percent of all weapon arrests resulted from questionable, if not clearly illegal,
searches." A study of Detroit criminal cases found that eightyfive percent of concealed weapons carrying cases that were dismissed, were
dismissed due to the illegality of the search. This number far exceeded even the fiftyThe most common and, perhaps, the primary means of enforcing present firearms laws are illegal searches by the police

seven percent for narcotics dismissals, in which illegal searches are frequent." A study of Chicago criminal cases found that motions to
suppress for illegal evidence were filed in thirty-six percent of all weapons charges; sixty-two percent of such motions were granted by the
court."
Pg. 92

If illegal searches are being used to invade the privacy of

armed citizens, it leads to a violation of our privacy. As a
result, we lose our sense of safety because we are stripped of
our rights that we were once told that we had.