Shefali Khanna 1-23-13 Gun Ban Debate Outline

Possible Negative Cross- Examination Points Basic summary questions o You stated your stance was., correct? o You believe., correct? o If I am not mistaken, you have conveyed that., correct? Are you saying you are planning to take away all guns? Does this include the guns for the secret service, police, etc.? Can people who currently have guns keep them? What makes you so sure this will work?

Negative Constructive Hello, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to speak on the negative of banning guns in the United States of America. The definition of the term guns is similar to what my opponent has revealed. Free Online Dictionary by FARLEX states that a gun is a weapon consisting of a metal tube from which a projectile is fired at high velocity into a relatively flat trajectory. In the US, many tragedies have occurred from the use of guns. There have been multiple shootings at schools and other public places, and this is all simply the cause of guns. It is all the guns fault! We should just spontaneously decide to ban guns! Thats it; it is so simple. Just ban guns and

there you have it; case closed! Why not?! This question of why not? is the specific reason I am here. Ladies and gentlemen, today I intend to prove that banning guns is not a well thought out idea. This resolution is not proper because it fails to address the root issue of dealing with the rising devastation and crime rates. We will still have those people who will own guns illegally. Once they are caught, they will be placed in a federal or state prison, thus filling up our prisons even more. This is a heated debate topic all across America and our fellow Americans are not going to let this banning of guns progress easily. Because of this, perhaps the government will have to provide more money for the building of more jails from people illegally owning a gun or guns. A proper fix to the problem in this debate could be to introduce some form of gun control. Background checks could be administered to each individual who wants to purchase a firearm. Of course, to refute this, it could be said that some of the most mental of all criminals have had clean records until they committed their large crimes. This is in fact true; however, enabling gun control will cut down on the amount of gun involved tragedies. It will set limits, too. For example, there could be a cutoff to the amount of guns a person can own. There could also be a limit on the type of guns sold to the public. Hunting is an American tradition. Hunters wait months for hunting season. Taking away their guns will not go down easily. Interfering with an old tradition is not the right thing to do here. Guns have been around since before our ancestors created America. After a massacre in Dunblane (UK), guns were outlawed. Six years later, gun crime had more than doubled. By 2009, gun crime had escalated by 89%. Thank you. I now stand for questioning.

Possible Negative Rebuttal Points Refute/ attack questions You have over 10 times as high a risk of dying in an automobile accident than you do a gun crime. 80% of the people in a poll stated guns should NOT be banned. Guns are used for self defense. According to the National Self Defense Survey conducted by Florida State University criminologists in 1994, the rate of Defensive Gun Uses can be projected nationwide to approximately 2.5 million per year -- one Defensive Gun Use every 13 seconds. Banning them would be a violation of the second amendment of the Bill of Rights. This is an easy fix for the government. If a food fight broke out, would the government ban children from eating food during school? If the matter is bad, then the government should CONTROL the issue by further investigating and rationalizing a conclusion rather than deciding to just ban firearms. Guns are inanimate objects. They cannot get up and go kill others. People have to physically use them to kill. Therefore, people kill with them. The actual guns do not do the killing on their own. Realistically, if my opponent really believes it is logical to ban guns because they are weapons, then what about baseball bats? Can they not be used as weapons? Then what about knives? By this logic, we can further say what about trophies? They are heavy and some are metal? They can be used as a weapon, too! Will the US government one by one ban all of those items?

 Ladies and gentlemen, the real problem is not specifically guns being out on the market. It is them being sold into the wrong hands. This issue needs proper planning. Guns are instilled in the core tradition of America and have forever been a part of us that cannot be eliminated. With the correct amount of logic and dedication, a proper resolution can indeed be worked out. Thank you judges and audience for your time and effort.