Citizens should be allowed to purchase and own firearms

Observe first:

1. The failed prohibition of drugs and alcohol tells us that when there is a demand for something that can easily be manufactured/grown, governments fail to keep those objects outside of their nations borders. From this it follows that since their is a vast demand for firearms, then gun control will generally fail.

2. Governments exist to protect rights. It's only a discussion of which rights exist and therefore need to be valued; in my case I will explain how the ownership of firearms is a right.

Case

I. NAP

The non aggression principle (NAP) posits that aggression is inherently immoral. Aggression can be defined as the initiaion of coercion with force, threats, or lies. Essentially you have the right to do any action you wish that does not harm others. The NAP is self affirming because to attempt to logically disprove it uses it. That is, if my opponent comes to my house and shoots me, he hasn't rationally defeated my argument, he's just committed aggression. To rationally disprove anything requires the use of the non-aggression principle, so it is irrational to deny it.

The ownership of firearms is not inherently aggressive and is therefore morally justifiable under the NAP.

In fact, the FBI reports[1] that from 2005-2009, there were 72,828 murders using firearms, and during the same period there were 56,910,060 background checks for firearms purchased[2]. This means that EVEN IF we assumed that these were the only firearms in the United States during this time period (not at all) barely one in one thousand (.0013%) of firearms were used in homicides. Taking into account the greater number of firearms and the greater number of aggressive crimes unnaccounted for, we can assume that the percentage of weapons used for aggression is roughly the same if not lower. One in a thousand is not inherent aggression, it's an exception to a rule. Since firearm ownership is not an act of aggression, then ownership of them is justifiable and the resolution is affirmed.

II. Tyranny

An armed population has the ability to overwhelm their government with sheer numbers, and overthrow a tyrannical state. The threat of spilled blood is often enough to keep a leader in line--if they mistreat their people they will be over thrown and shot. For this reason, widespread gun ownership is the best way to ensure a peaceful and just regime.

The historical truth of this is widely observed, as virtually all major genocides had a restriction of weapon ownership preceding them. Zelman and Stevens, in their book "Death by "Gun Control"" report that in the 20th century, 89.8 MILLION individuals were murdered by their governments after being forced to disarm[3]. They explain the significance of this to the gun control debate:

"When the gun prohibitionists quote a statistic about how many people are killed by firearms misuse, the discussion sometimes bogs down into whose crime stats to believe and how to count crimes vs. the defensive firearm uses. Death by Gun Control works on a level that nobody can dispute: documented world history."

Disarming the population to be exterminated allows for governments to take them to their deaths with less resistance, which not only keeps the government from losing more soldiers and resources fighting them, but also allows for them to conduct their genocide in secret to the international community. While an essential civil war and uprising of a major minority population is a relatively easy thing for other countries to spot, secretly impounding defensless people who go quietly is not. So a decrease in gun ownership not only increases the probabality of a genocide, but it makes the genocide easier to carry out as well. Further, a governments legitimacy in the eyes of it's people is lowered if it's engaging in warfare with a segment of the population, even if that segment is considered to be subhuman.

III. Foreign invasion

There is a famous proverb/quote often attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of Japan, which is "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."[4]. An armed occupied population can make serious havoc for an invader, even without an organized military. The U.S. failure to conquer Vietnam, and the failure of the British to hold their colonies during the revolutionary war are many of the historical examples of what happens when an armed population faces down a hostile occupying power. It may be objected that ordinary citizens with their weapons could not hope to over come a modern war machine with Tanks, Planes, ect. but the point is that the population does not need to win a conventional war, just make the occupation so bloody and expensive that it's not worth it. In WWII, the Germans lost a significant portion of their power to the actions of partisans in the occupied countries; historically and logically an armed population helps to deter invasion.

IV. Self defense and crime

Criminals by definition do not follow laws. This means that criminals will commit aggression against law abiding citizens, even if all firearms were eradicated (observation one disproves this anyway), as the old adage goes: "outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have them". The negative correlation between Gun ownership and crime is pretty firmly established, so much so that John Lott was able to write a 236 page book on the matter.

To give a few examples of firearms and their effect on crime, John Stossel writes[5]:

"... the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.