Politics

A2 Social Movements
1. Their evidence works against them - these movements fizzled out in the long term after the Brady Bill
2. Gun control groups will never be able to beat the NRA - that’s why nothing happens after shootings
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-the-movement-for-gun-violence-prevention-is-missing_us_59cab187e4b07e9ca11f6715
Goss argues that the pro-gun folks were much more successful than the gun-control crowd in building a mass movement for two reasons:
they were funded both by industry and private sources whose resources the gun-control groups couldn’t match; they took advantage of a
fragmented, federalist political system which rewards political initiatives at the local level but frequently restricts the implementation of
national policies even when such policies gain broad, popular support.

A2 Public Support
1. NRA doesn’t support
Economist, November 6, 2015
The politically powerful National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups
oppose universal background checks or indeed any law that could restrict gun
sales. They invoke the Second Amendment of 1791, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”. And they argue that guns prevent crime. After one
particularly horrific mass-shooting, the killing of 20 small children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, Wayne LaPierre, the boss of the
NRA, declared that school employees should have been armed because “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.

A2 Senate Budget Pass

Jim Naureckas, February 2009
It really is worth being specific on this: It does not take 60 votes to pass an ordinary bill in the Senate; it
takes a majority of the senators voting. If everyone is present, it takes 51 votes, or 50 votes if the vice
president votes to break the tie. Under the current rules of the Senate–which can be altered by a
majority vote–it takes 60 votes to proceed to a vote on a bill when some senators want to continue
debate forever, or filibuster.

Warrants
A2 UBC’s Effective
1. States just choose not to enforce
Lois Beckett, October 2017
In Colorado and Washington state, advocates spent millions of dollars, and two Colorado Democrats lost their seats, in the effort to pass
laws requiring criminal background checks on every single gun sale.
More than three years later, researchers have concluded that the new laws had little measurable effect, probably because citizens simply
decided not to comply and there was a lack of enforcement by authorities. The results of the new study, conducted by some of America’s
most well-respected gun violence researchers, is a setback for a growing gun control movement that has centered its national strategy on precisely
the kind of state laws passed in Colorado and Washington. A third, smaller state, Delaware, passed a background check law around the same time
and did see increases in the number of background checks conducted, the study found. But a similar background-check law in Nevada passed in
2016 has also run into political hurdles and has never been enforced.
2. NICS inadequate
a. Default proceeds
Joshua Eaton, June 2017
In that wake of the shooting, then–FBI Director James Comey ordered a review of why the FBI couldn’t complete Roof’s background
check within the three-business-day deadline. Speaking to reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., that July, he said that he
wanted to find out how, in the future, the agency could complete more background checks on time.
Despite promises to fix the system, however, new data the FBI shared with ThinkProgress shows that there were more than
300,000 default proceeds in 2016. Of all background checks performed that year, 3.24 percent resulted in default proceeds.
That figure is up from 3.02 percent in 2015 and 2.76 percent in 2014. Gun dealers don’t have to notify the FBI when they proceed
with a sale after the three-business-day deadline, so it’s unclear how many of those default proceeds resulted in an actual sale
without a background check. Government data also shows that many of these cases are associated with misdemeanor domestic
violence charges. States do not always share related records, and often domestic violence charges aren’t easily identifiable in FBI
databases. That raises concerns that firearms could get into the hands of convicted abusers.
Federal law requires a background check for all gun sales by licensed dealers —private sales are, controversially, exempt from
background checks in most states—to make sure the buyer isn’t prohibited from owning a weapon. Twelve states do their own
background checks for all sales by licensed dealers. For the rest, some or all checks go through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal
Background Check System, or NICS. The FBI gave an immediate yes or no to 88.64 percent of background checks it conducted last
year, according to data the agency shared with ThinkProgress. When the agency can’t immediately tell if a gun buyer is prohibited —
 for example, if its databases have an arrest record but no record of a conviction — FBI examiners delay the sale to do more research.
After three business days [after initiating a background check], however, the gun dealer can proceed with the sale whether or
not the FBI has completed its background check. The agency calls these sales “default proceeds,” but many gun-safety advocates
call it the “Charleston loophole.”
b. States don’t give up necessary information
Sarah Ferris, August 2014
Thirty states have passed laws mandating mental health reporting to NICS, four of which were added in the past six months. Yet no
organization has been able to address the larger concern that NICS is poorly designed to identify those in society most likely to be
violent. “It’s really casting a very wide net to try to find a few people, which is largely an impossible task,” said Michael Norko, head
of forensics at the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. “It’s not really a good public health measure.
We really need to find a better way of doing this.” Federally licensed gun dealers are required to conduct a background check, either
online or by phone, before each firearms sale. Within about 30 seconds, the system searches for criminal convictions and in 38 states a
history of severe mental illness as judged by a court. But states are not required under federal law to submit mental health
records to NICS. There are no consequences if states choose not to send records, resulting in major information gaps. Only
about 30 percent of the estimated 4.4 million mental health records in the United States over the past two decades can be
found in NICS, according to research compiled in 2012 by the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics and
the National Center for State Courts. Out of all gun purchases blocked by the FBI over the past 16 years, fewer than 2 percent
were because of mental health status. That amounts to 14,613 blocked sales since 1998. The files are costly to locate and store,
according to interviews with officials from 10 states. There were 2,083 agencies responsible for providing information for background
checks across the country in 2010, including courts, state health departments and psychiatric hospitals, according to the most recent
Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The system is also vastly overinclusive, six public health experts said in interviews. People’s
names are kept in the database based on a decades-old definition of “mentally defective,” which relies on court decisions rather than
doctors’ orders. Under federal law, individuals with histories of violent psychotic episodes can buy guns as long as they never set foot
in a courtroom. Every one of the country’s mass shooters since January 2009 could have slipped through NICS, according to a July
2014 study by the gun control organization Everytown for Gun Safety. In 12 out of the 110 incidents identified by Everytown, the
shooters had demonstrated some evidence of a mental illness, but there was no evidence that any of them had been mentally
adjudicated or involuntarily committed for treatment. Research over the past decade shows that it’s nearly impossible to predict
which individuals will commit gun violence, let alone find them through NICS. “The ability of mental health professionals to pick
out who’s going to be violent, it’s not much better than a coin toss,” said Jeffrey Swanson, a medical sociologist from Duke University
who studies the intersection of guns and mental illness. “To focus only on mental health is misguided.” In addition to the FBI’s annual
budget for NICS, the Department of Justice has handed out $56 million in state grants over the past five years to improve mental
health reporting.
3. No gun registry means no incentive to follow
Albania Law Review 17
The most likely way for the police to identify a SAFE Act violator is to persuade a person arrested for an armed offense to name the person from
whom he acquired the gun.97 (Prosecutors may be willing to make concessions to catch a major seller, but probably not to catch a casual seller.)
Unfortunately for law enforcement, most often the gun crime arrestee does not know the name, especially the real name, of the person from
whom he purchased the firearm. Even if he did know and still remembers the seller’s real name and whereabouts, the person he identifies will
almost certainly deny having made the unlawful sale. What proof is there? The current owner (the criminal defendant in this scenario) is highly
unlikely to have a signed receipt. Enforcement of universal background checking would be greatly facilitated if police had
access to a comprehensive firearms registry which would enable them to identify the last owner of a firearm recovered
from an armed criminal or at a crime scene. Without a registry, it is very difficult, except by means of a sting operation, to
prove that a particular individual sold someone a specific firearm.98 Unfortunately, there is no national firearms registry.99
Only the District of Columbia and a few states, not including New York, have attempted to create one.100 Therefore, a private gun seller who ignores the
SAFE Act’s universal background checking requirement faces practically no risk of apprehension. Some private sellers
will comply because they are habitually law-abiding or because they overestimate the risk of apprehension for unlawful
sale. But many casual sellers and, by definition, black market sellers will not comply.

4. Homemade guns
http://lawcenter.giffords.org/sighting-the-homemade-gun-threat/ 2014
1. Partial Receivers-A partial receiver is a partially finished metal component that holds the basic mechanisms that
allow a gun to operate. Partial receivers are not regulated federally or at the state level. They can be purchased
without a background check and turned into a fully functioning firearm with a relatively cheap and simple
mechanical process that takes only one to seven hours to complete. Despite the obvious dangers posed by partial
receivers, the startling reality is that authorities have no idea exactly how many have been sold. In an interview with the
Washington Post last year, one San Francisco-based ATF agent admitted that the numbers are unknown, although high,
and estimated the figure to be “tens of thousands [have been sold], just in California.” Also alarming is that,
according to law enforcement officials, firearms built with unfinished receivers are increasingly being found at crime
scenes.
2. 3D printed guns - Federal and state laws do not prohibit the private possession of mostly plastic 3D-printed
guns. Unless new measures are adopted, nothing will stop such guns from being printed at home by anyone, including
convicted felons, without even a simple background check. While early prototype 3D-printed guns have generally only
fired a single shot, the technology is rapidly evolving. Last year, a developer in Canada recorded a demonstration of a
3D-printed rifle which fired 14 shots before cracking. After the test, the developer announced that schematics
would be available online for anyone to download.

A2 Less guns good

1. Turn - people will be afraid of a full gun ban and stock up on those weapons.
Esposito and Finley 14
Specifically, the Second Amendment became a tool to defend White male privilege against the threat of an activist government (what by the 1980s become widely known as the
"nanny state") that supported feminist ideals and coddled racial minorities and other presumably "undeserving" groups. These fears, combined with laws such as the Gun
Control Act of 1968, are also what, at least in part, prompted the radicalization of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Indeed, by the 1970s, the NRA
"underwent a political revolution" and went from being primarily a sports organization to a far right pro-gun lobby (e.g., Melzer 2009). By the early 1980s, neoliberalism
gained prominence under the Reagan administration. Interestingly, it was during the Reagan administration's neoliberal restructuring of the
"American political, economic, and cultural landscape" that this country witnessed an increase in gun violence and especially a rise in mass
shootings.5 As Reagan's neoliberal reforms gutted the welfare state and the idea of self-reliance became promulgated as synonymous with a free society, success became
increasingly "defined in terms of power, economic attainment, and social status" (Klein 2012, p. 156). All these measures, according to various critics, promoted an apathetic
society where social bonds became increasingly eroded and replaced by hedonistic materialism, rabid individualism, extreme competition, and narcissism (e.g., Klein 2012, see
also Hall, Winlow, and Ancram 2005). To a large extent, this trend continues to this day. As has been widely documented, since the Reagan era, there has been a dismantling
of community in favor of a hyperindividualized type of liberty in which the unrestrained pursuit of selfgain is valued over everything else (e.g., Giroux 2008; Esposito, 2011). In
recent years, millions of Americans who embrace the neoliberal emphasis on individual liberty over everything else have become particularly suspicious about the U.S.
government under President Obama. Because the president has, to some extent, shown more willingness than many previous presidents to deploy the power of the state to
promote a variety of social and economic objectives-e.g., signing the Recovery Act, passing Healthcare Reform, strengthening the nation's safety net for the needy, etc.-
millions of Americans regard this as a shift to "socialism." Consistent with neoliberal philosophy, a large segment of the American electorate believes that Obama's presumably
interventionist policies signify the onset of a growing state apparatus (an unprecedented "big government") whose influence will gradually seep into every facet of social life and
undermine personal liberty, self-reliance, and the free market. In short, millions of Americans believe that Obama's policies are paving the "road to serfdom" feared by Hayek
(1944). In recent months, calls for tighter gun control among President Obama and other people in government (e.g., Senator Dianne Feinstein's proposal to
re-instate a federal ban on assault weapons) have further reinforced fears of tyranny and government intrusion on Americans' "private
lives."6 Stated simply, the Second Amendment, which is often regarded by the pro-gun/anti-gun control community as a requisite for freedom and the primary
basis for all other individual rights, is believed by millions of Americans to be currently under attack. Even a cursory reading of some of the statements put out
by the NRA and other pro-gun groups-particularly against President Obamaclearly reveals this sentiment. For example, in his recent book titled America Disarmed, Wayne
LaPierre (2011), CEO of the NRA, argues that President Obama is the most anti-Second Amendment president the country has ever seen. LaPierre associates the president's
presumably anti-gun zealotry to allegations that Obama has been profoundly influenced by supporters of communism such as Frank Marshall Davis and other alleged
sympathizers of totalitarian governments. LaPierre even suggests that Obama's own fatheran alleged "anti-Western Communist"- might have shaped his presumably fanatical
anti-gun/anti-Second Amendment stance, as Obama Sr. "favored the kind of oppressive discriminatory government that almost necessarily requires a disarmed populace"
(LaPierre, 2011, p. 265). Important to note is that this fear of tyranny promoted by LaPierre and the NRA in general has undoubtedly
benefitted the gun industry. As Fang (2012) notes: Fear that the government will disallow guns has resulted in Americans
flocking to stores to stock up on weapons-lots of them. From Alaska to Florida, gun sales across the country are going through the roof...In Tennessee,
officials say gun purchases likely hit an all-time high. Walmart has reportedly run out of semiautomatic rifles in five states. Interestingly, the NRA itself benefits financially from
gun and ammunition sales, a fact not widely known by the public. As suggested by Dreier (2013): On its website, the National Rifle Association claims that it is not affiliated with
any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition. This is a lie, as a number of recent reports have documented. In fact, the
NRA is primarily a front group for the nation's gun manufacturers. The NRA receives a dollar for every gun or package of ammunition sold at participating stores. Other NRA
corporate fundraising initiatives also allow customers to make donations to the NRA at the time of purchase. Some, like Sturm, Roger & Co., even mandate contributions for
every purchase. And, importantly, since these deals are part of the NRA's 501(c)4 affiliate, not its' 501(c)3 status, the funds can be spent on political advertisements and for
lobbying for gun-friendly legislation (Fang, 2012). Sugarmann (2012), for example, notes that between 2005 and 2010, the NRA received somewhere between $19.8 and $52.6
million in contributions from corporate partners, most of which (74%) are gun or ammunitions manufacturers or producers of other shootingrelated products. Considering all this,
the argument can be made that the fear tactics used by the NRA are consistent with what Naomi Klein describes in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism. Namely, by encouraging fear that "Obama will take our guns," the NRA manipulates public opinion to push a neoliberal agenda
associated with de-regulation that benefits the gun industry. The NRA, of course, is not alone in promoting this sort of fear mongering. Similar
arguments about Obama's and other politicians' proposed gun controls being an attempt to disarm Americans in an effort to institute a tyrannical "big government" have been
made in recent months by various public officials, media pundits, and at anti-gun control rallies, which are overwhelmingly attended by White men.7 According to various
writers, this fear of disarmament and tyranny are also typically racialized in that they are often expressions of "anxieties
associated with White men's declining status" (Carlson, 2012, p. 1113). On this point, Tom Diaz, author of several books about the gun industry, recently
noted the following in an interview: If you look at where these guns are sold, this is primarily a Red State phenomenon. People are driven by a fear of the other. NRA President
Wayne LaPierre talks often in terms of race and ethnicity. The gun industry's consumers are afraid, the world is changing around them, and they think guns will protect their way
of life (Winston & Graham, 2013). These fears, however, also go beyond a racial issue. Indeed, what is at stake, according to many gun supporters, is not simply a threat to
White privilege and gun ownership but the future offreedom itself Referring to the alleged menace of gun control, Forbes magazine's Lawrence Hunter (2012) recently wrote: It's
not really about the guns; it is about the government's ability to demand submission of the people. Gun control is part and parcel of the ongoing collectivist effort to eviscerate
individual sovereignty and replace it with dependence upon and allegiance to the state. Another related narrative used among gun supporters to oppose gun controls is that
such measures leave responsible, law abiding citizens without any viable means of protecting themselves against criminals and/or violent predators. Consistent with the
neoliberal claim that government is inept, this common argument is predicated on the idea that the state (this includes the police and other law enforcement agencies) is
inefficient and thus largely incapable of protecting citizens (see Carlson 2012). Disarming the public is thus akin to a proverbial "throwing the lambs to the wolves" scenario. This
distrust of government, along with the fact that fear of crime in the U.S. is out of proportion to actual crime rates (e.g., Shelden,
2010), encourages an insistence among millions of Americans to want easy access to guns as a way to protect
themselves, their families, and their property.

A2 Culture Shift
1. Cultural change is empirically disproven – even modest gun proposals in liberal
states had drastic backlash in America and low compliance which proves the AFF
doesn’t change culture
Mehta 15

Both New York and Connecticut imposed strict new rules on the possession and
sale of guns after Sandy Hook. Among these were requirements for the registration of so-called assault rifles in both states and in New York
a ban on “high-capacity” magazines regardless of when they were manufactured or purchased. Compliance with the registration

requirement has been modest at best, as hundreds of thousands of gun owners in both states
refused to register their weapons. So far, then, the laws have been most successful in creating
hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers who feel obligated to break the law. New York and
Connecticut are two of the “bluest” states in the Union, states with staunchly liberal Democratic governors and legislatures dominated by Democrats and Northeastern

residents of these states have refused to go along with the

Republicans who vote for gun control. Yet the

kinds of laws that gun-control advocates view as a minimum for what they would
like to see adopted at the federal level. If New York and Connecticut won’t go along, what do they expect would happen in “red”
states? Progressives will not answer that question because they never ask it, not even to themselves, lest somehow they say it out loud. On guns, the Left is incoherent, even
insincere. It won’t say what it wants because what it wants is “a nonstarter politically, unfeasible in reality, and, by the way, completely unconstitutional”—that is, confiscation on
the Australian model. Liberals refuse to confront the implications of their Australian dream because doing so would force them to give that dream up. Those implications are

A national gun buyback law would turn a significant portion of the

easy to spell out, though.

American people into criminals. Residents of New York and Connecticut snubbed
their new laws. The other 48 states are not New York and Connecticut. Civil
disobedience on a national scale would ensue. The Australia Plan Would Require
Coercion and Conflict New York and Connecticut authorities so far have shown no inclination to enforce their laws by going door to door to round up
unregistered guns and arrest their owners. But that’s what would be necessary to enforce the law. A federal law, therefore, would require sweeping, national police action
involving thousands of lawmen and affecting tens of millions of people. If proponents of gun control are serious about getting guns out of Americans’ hands, someone will have
to take those guns out of Americans’ hands. Australian-style gun control, in other words, would require government force and coercion on a massive scale. Now, progressives
don’t understand the nature of coercion, so maybe they would not see police action to enforce gun confiscation as coercion. Or, perhaps, they actually do understand that their
ideal form of gun control requires it, which is why they keep speaking in code and talk about “Australia” and not “wholesale confiscation.” Let there be no doubt. Gun confiscation
would have to be administered by force of arms. I do not expect that those who dismissed their fellow citizens for clinging bitterly to their guns are so naive that they imagine
these people will suddenly cease their bitter clinging when some nice young man knocks on their door and says, “Hello, I’m from the government and I’m here to take your
guns.” As though somehow those who daily espouse their belief that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow citizens to resist government oppression and tyranny will
not use the Second Amendment to resist what they see as government oppression and tyranny.

Ways People Die

A2 Homicide
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-stale-claim-that-40-percent-of-gun-sales-lack-background-
checks/2013/01/20/e42ec050-629a-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_blog.html?utm_term=.1e28ad230ea7

1. Criminals Find Other Ways to Get Guns

David Hemenway. April-10-2017
Virtually every gun in the United States begins as a legal gun, manufactured legally and initially sold by a federally licensed gun dealer to an individual who passes a federal background check. However, many
people with known anger, violence and/or alcohol problems can pass a federal background check (Swanson et al. 2015) and many people who cannot pass a background check still have easy access to

firearms.The movement of guns to individuals who cannot pass a background check

occurs via various mechanisms, including straw purchases, gifts, sales without a
background check (Miller et al. 2017), and gun thefts. Estimates over the past two decades suggest that 200,000 to 500,000 guns are stolen each year in
the United States. Such estimates have come from several sources, including the National Crime Victimization Surveys (Langton 2012), police reports of stolen guns (DoJ 2012) and surveys of gun

owners (Cook and Ludwig 1996).

Phillip J. Cook, 2015

The results can be briefly summarized. The state prisoner survey is largest and is the focus here, although it is reassuring that the results from the
Only 10% of recently
other two surveys are similar. First, it is rare for offenders to obtain their guns directly from the formal market:
incarcerated state prison inmates who carried a gun indicate that they purchased that gun
from a licensed dealer (gun store or pawnbroker). Rather, most of the transactions (70%) are with social connections (friends
and family) or with “street” sources[:]. The latter may include fences, drug dealers, brokers who sell guns, and gangs.

C.D Mitchell. 2013

Most important is that criminals disobey such laws (and according to the Supreme Court in their Haynes vs. U.S. decision, criminals are not legally obligated to). In a report titled
“Firearm Use by Offenders”, our own Federal Government noted that nearly 40 percent of all crime guns are acquired from street level dealers, who are criminals in the black
market business of peddling stolen and recycled guns. Standing alone, this shows that “universal” background checks would have an incomplete effect on guns used in
crimes.The story gets worse. The same study notes that just as many crime guns were acquired by acquaintances, be they family or friends (this rather lose category also

80 percent of crime guns are

includes fellow criminals, who are equally unlikely to participate in “universal” background checks). Totaled, nearly

already outside of retail distribution channels (which are 14 percent of crime gun sources) and outside of transactions made by
the law abiding folks who would participate in “universal” background checks at
gun shows (0.7 percent).

2. Criminals Pass Background Checks

NYT, October 5th, 2017

A vast majority of guns used in 17 recent mass shootings, including guns believed to
be used in the Las Vegas shooting, were bought legally and with a federal
background check. At least eight gunmen had criminal histories or documented
mental health problems that did not prevent them from obtaining their weapons.

3. Background Checks Don’t Work

Lott, John. [President of the Crime Prevention Research Center]. “Background checks
do not diminish crime rates, but can increase them,” The Hill. October 5, 2017.
Research looking at U.S. data has consistently found no evidence that any type of
background checks reduce rates of violent crime. Michael Bloomberg’s groups are
the source of contrary claims, but they fail to analyze the national data in an academic
manner. They [This research] compare[s] states with background checks next to
those without them. They do not compare states before and after background
checks are imposed.

A2 Suicide
1. TURN: Harder to transfer guns out of household
Julia Dahl, November 22, 2016

There is one question Carol Runyan considers vitally important to ask the parents of suicidal teens: Is there a gun in the house? Runyan, the director of Program for Injury Prevention, Education, and Research at
the Colorado School of Public Health, knows the presence of a firearm in a home increases the odds that someone who lives there will take his or her own life. Guns are reliably lethal — research indicates that
Runyan’s advice to clinicians
suicide attempts involving a firearm result in death 85 percent of the time, compared to less than three percent when the means is a drug overdose.
counseling a parent who owns firearms and has a suicidal child is to tell them to get the weapons out of the home as quickly
as possible. Colorado is one of 18 states that require background checks on at least some private gun sales and transfers, so this directive can be complicated to carry out. There are exceptions to the
Colorado law for transfers to immediate family members, such as grandparents. There is also a waiver for temporary transfers to friends — but the latter is good for just 72 hours, which may not be sufficient time
for a suicidal episode to pass. Some other states with universal background check laws, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, don’t have any allowances at all for emergency transfers. These
A new paper, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, which examines the legal obstacles to temporarily transferring a firearm away from a suicidal person. The
are the findings of
authors conclude[s]
that universal background checks may have “unintended consequences” that might adversely affect
suicide prevention efforts. “When we’re making gun policy we’re thinking of the high profile incidents: Orlando, Sandy Hook, what’s happening in Chicago every weekend,” explains Runyan,
one of the paper’s co-authors. “And that’s really important, too, but we don’t talk about suicides.”

2. TURN: Decreases chance that people will receive help

Gun control legislation shifts the focus away from treatment and recovery

Carolyn Reinach Wolf; Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Fall 2015

Recent gun control legislation creates a barrier to participation in counseling and treatment and further stigmatizes those
suffering from a mental illness. Instead of focusing on treatment and recovery, new gun control legislation asks mental
health professionals to predict which patients may act on their violent thoughts.86 This type of legislation adds to the negative stereotype
that individuals with mental illness are more prone to violence. For the most part, medical and mental health practitioners are frustrated with recent attempts to legislate gun
restrictions and sweep in ment

People will be less likely to seek treatment for fear of being put in a database/registry and having their rights lessened

Carolyn Reinach Wolf; Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Fall 2015

The mental health reporting requirements recently passed by many state legislatures91 threaten doctor-patient trust; patients
al illness.87
may fear that their openness will lead to a report to a federal or state database and may jeopardize their current or future
employment and gun license.92 This directly impacts the formation of a doctor-patient relationship and may cut off the mentally ill from the social support and
medical or mental health care that is necessary for their recovery.93 This type of legislation may have the unintended consequence of reducing
the number of individuals who seek treatment, which, in turn, could result in an increase of the occurrence of suicide or
violence. 94 Treatment is an essential piece of recovery from a mental illness, and new mental health reporting systems pose "one
more obstacle" to obtaining such treatment.
Treatment is the only long term solution
Carolyn Reinach Wolf; Fall 2015

The truth is that mental illness is not a major risk factor when it comes to potential for violence." 5 In fact, the U.S. Surgeon
General has found that "the overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally
small."' " 6 Most individuals suffering from mental illness are more often victims of violence than perpetrators." 7 However, if an individual
suffering from mental illness is aggressive or violent, treating that individual significantly decreases any potential for
violence." 18 Treatment-such as the use of antipsychotic medications or court-ordered assisted outpatient treatment-has resulted in the reduction of
aggressive behavior or violence.1 ' 9 By stigmatizing mental illness and associating it

3. It’s impossible to know who’s a threat without adding millions of

people who are harmless to the database
GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA 2013 (The Atlantic)
This is the great problem at the heart of efforts to turn improved mental health reporting into our primary form of gun control. More than half of
Americans experience one or more mental illnesses over the course of their lives, and around 26 percent of Americans over age 18 each year
experience at least one, primarily anxiety disorders and mood disorders like depression. The overwhelming majority of them are no danger to
anyone at all. But with so substantial a portion of the country going through bouts of one thing or another over the course of their lives,
the idea that any federal database could capture enough information to encompass every one who might one day be a threat anywhere is
[ridiculous] akin to hoping for a government staff of precogs. And that’s not even getting into the highly problematic question of whether
the government should mark millions of people who will never hurt anyone for a carve-out from the Second Amendment, and the privacy
and stigmatization issues involved in cataloging harmless people who suffer from common mental illnesses in order to label them as potential
threats in a federal government database.

4. The database is ineffective - poor coverage and reporting

James Jacobs 2017
NICS background checking is not effective in identifying persons too dangerous to possess a firearm due to mental illness. The Brady Law
prohibits purchase of firearms by a person who has ever been civilly committed to a mental hospital or been adjudicated as mentally
defective.157 As indicators of dangerousness due to mental illness, these categories are both over and under-inclusive. Involuntary
mental hospital commitments have decreased precipitously over the past several decades. The inpatient population decreased from 550,000
in the mid 1950s to 30,000 in 1990.158 Adjudications of persons as mentally defective are rare, mostly triggered by a family’s desire to
establish a guardianship over a (usually elderly) person who might otherwise dissipate his or her resources.159 Moreover, states have been very
reluctant to submit even these names to NICS, citing state privacy laws.160 Despite the George W. Bush Administration’s attempt to
encourage states to submit to NICS the names of persons who have been civilly committed or adjudicated mentally defective,161 in 2011 twenty-
three states and the District of Columbia submitted fewer than one hundred names to NICS.162 Seventeen states submitted fewer than
ten names; four states submitted none.1

5. Background checks don't empirically reduce suicides

Jessica Amaya/William Jessup University, April 2014

There are other states that have minimal gun control laws, and have roughly the same suicide rate as California. Florida and Texas are both considered to be a gun friendly
state. Florida has a three day waiting period when purchasing handguns, however individuals who have a concealed carry permit or those who are trading in their handgun are
exempt from the waiting period. There is no waiting period in Florida when purchasing a rifle. Texas does not have a waiting period; an individual can go into a gun store make a
purchase and walk out with the gun the very same day. In 2010, Texas had 1,702 firearm related suicides while Florida had 1,454 firearm related suicides33.

California has implemented means restriction through background checks and

waiting periods, yet California still has an extremely high rate of suicide, compared
to states that do not have extensive means restrictions for gun s. If California’s laws are
working, then suicide rates should be much lower than Texas and Florida.

6. People will commit suicide in different ways - 36 country analysis

proves no correlation
Kates and Mauser 07
(Don B. Kates (LL.B., Yale, 1966) is an American criminologist and constitutional lawyer associated with the Pacific Research Institute, Gary Mauser (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1970), WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER
AND SUICIDE?, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 30 No. 2], 2007. NS

that “limiting access to firearms could prevent many

The mantra more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death is also used to argue
suicides.” 141 Once again, this assertion is directly contradicted by the studies of 36 and 21 nations (respectively) which find no statistical
relationship. Overall suicide rates were no worse in nations with many firearms than in those where firearms were far less
widespread.142 Consider the data about European nations in Tables 5 and 6. Sweden, with over twice as much gun ownership as neighboring Germany and a third more
gun suicide, nevertheless has the lower overall suicide rate. Greece has nearly three times more gun ownership than the Czech Republic and somewhat more gun suicide, yet
the overall Czech suicide rate is over 175% higher than the Greek rate. Spain has over 12 times more gun ownership than Poland, yet the latter’s overall suicide rate is more
than double the former’s. Tragically, Finland has over 14 times more gun owner‐ ship than neighboring Estonia, and a great deal more gun‐ related suicide. Estonia, however,
turns out to have a much higher suicide rate than Finland overall. There is simply no relationship evident between the extent of suicide and the extent of gun ownershi p.
People do not commit suicide because they have guns available. In the absence of firearms, people who are inclined to
commit suicide kill themselves some other way.143 Two examples seem as pertinent as they are poignant. The first concerns the 1980s increase in
suicide among young American males, an increase that, although relatively modest, inspired perfervid denunciations of gun ownership.144 What these denunciations failed to
mention was that suicide of teenagers and young adults was increasing throughout the entire industrialized world, regardless of gun availability, and often much more rapidly
than in the United States. The only unusual aspect of suicide in the United States was that it involved guns. The irrelevancy of guns to the increase in American suicide is
evident because suicide among English youth actually increased 10 times more sharply, with “car exhaust poisoning [being] the method of suicide used most often.”145 By
omitting such facts, the articles blaming guns for increasing American suicide evaded the inconvenience of having to explain exactly what social benefit nations with few guns
received from having their youth suicides occur in other ways. Even more poignant are the suicides of many young Indian women born and raised on the island of Fiji. In
general, women are much less likely to commit suicide than are men.146 This statistic is true of Fijian women overall as well, but not of women in the large part of Fiji’s
population that is of Indian ancestry. As children, these Indian women are raised in more-or-less loving and supportive homes. But upon marriage they are dispersed across the
island to remote areas where they live with their husbands’ families, an often overtly hostile situation the husbands do little to mitigate. Indian women on Fiji have a suicide rate
nearly as high as that of Indian men, a rate many times greater than that of non‐ Indian Fijian women.147 It also bears emphasis that the overall Fijian suicide rate far exceeds
that of the United States. The method of suicide is particularly significant. Fijian women of Indian ancestry commit suicide without using guns, perhaps because guns are
unavailable. About three-quarters of these women hang themselves, while virtually all the rest die from consuming the agricultural pesticide paraquat. The recommendation of
the author whose article chronicles all these suicides is so myopic as to almost caricature the more guns equal more death mindset: to reduce suicide by Indian women, she
recommends that the Fijian state stringently control paraquat.148 Apparently she believes decreased access to a means of death will reconcile these women to a life situation
they regard as unendurable. At the risk of belaboring what should be all too obvious, restricting paraquat will not improve the lives of these poor women. It will only reorient them
towards hanging, drowning, or some other means of suicide. Guns are just one among numerous available deadly instruments. Thus, banning guns cannot
reduce the amount of suicides. Such measures only reduce the number of suicides by firearms. Suicides committed in
other ways increase to make up the difference. People do not commit suicide because they have guns available. They kill themselves for reasons they
deem sufficient, and in the absence of firearms they just kill themselves in some other way.

7. Most people who commit suicide with a gun already have one
Kerry Shaw, 2016
Studies that focus specifically on the presence of guns in a home also show a correlation with higher suicide rates. One explanation:
Suicide is often an impulsive act, with the person in distress opting for what seems like the easiest obtainable means. Guns are
more lethal than any other instrument; if kept close at hand a firearm is the method most likely to be used.

Two studies of youth access by the National Institutes for Health are instructive. One
found that at least 82 percent of teens who committed suicide with a gun had
used a weapon belonging to someone in their home. Another, using data from a 22-year period,
determined that a 10 percent drop in the percentage of households owning guns was associated with an 8.3 percent decline in
overall suicide rates for young people.

Most Evidence of Gun vs. Non-Gun areas are more influenced by outside factors rather than guns
http://home.uchicago.edu/ludwigj/papers/Brookings_Pragmatic_Gun_Chapter1.pdf

Do guns also increase the lethality or frequency of suicide attempts? There is surprisingly little reliable evidence on this point. Case-control studies have typically either
compared gun ownership rates of suicide victims with other people in the community or compared suicide rates between those who do and do not own guns. 46 These
comparisons, however, suffer the same general problem found with similar studies of homicide: people who choose to obtain guns are likely to be systematically different from
those who do not and in fact may purchase guns with suicide in mind. Similarly, simple cross-sectional comparisons of suicide rates in high- versus
low-gun ownership areas at a point in time are likely to confound the effects of gun prevalence with those of hard-to-
measure attributes of the local population that are related to the propensity to both acquire guns and contemplate suicide.
Mark Duggan’s analysis in chapter 2 presents important new evidence on the relationship between guns and suicide. He argues that if access to guns causes
some people to attempt suicide who otherwise would have used other means, or perhaps would not have attempted
suicide at all, one would expect local gun prevalence to be positively related with gun suicide rates and have a negative (or
at least null) relationship with non gun suicides. However, Duggan finds that, at least for young and middle-aged people,
gun prevalence is positively related to both gun and non gun suicides . At least part of the relationship between guns and
suicide that has been identified in earlier research may occur because of something other than the causal effect of guns.
 A2 Cartels/Smuggling
1. It strengthens cartels through creating a large illicit market.
Tuccille 12
Such connections can be found elsewhere in the world, too. Flush with money made satisfying Americans’ appetite for intoxicants out of favor with U.S. government officials,
Mexico’s drug gangs have eagerly armed themselves, the better to squabble with one another—and to battle the police and even the army. While
popular mythology blames the flow of guns to Mexico on purchases in America’s legal weapons markets (Mexico has tight restrictions on private firearms ownership, including
outright bans on guns in calibers used by the military), the gangs have increasingly fielded grenades, rockets and machine guns—firepower
unavailable in the average Texas gun shop. But such weaponry is available from underground dealers. Says the Los Angeles
Times: These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black [illicit] market and porous borders, especially between
Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said. "There is an arms race
between the cartels," said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government. "One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them."
That the black market in guns flows freely into the black market for drugs—or other illicit goods and services—should come as no surprise. Csaszar emphasizes that this
convergence between illegal markets is to be expected. [I]nterconnections between the black market in arms and other, more general black markets should be taken very
seriously. Viewed from the side of the illegal arms buyers this integration of markets will happen only with a very tiny fraction, namely those individuals already involved in other
criminal business. For the great majority it will remain an isolated breach of a gun law only. However, viewed at a general level from the provider side there can be no doubt of
the worldwide integration of drugs and arms markets. So, by imposing restrictions on one type of product, governments have driven people
to the black market where all forbidden products and services are available, and likely increased the wealth and power of
active sellers in that market.

2. It pushes people to the illicit market where guns are cheaper and more available-
increases gun use.
Kopel 93
Dixon expects the "fact that such guns are inaccurate and dangerous to the user will also act as a restraint to illegal gun production." [129] How much of a restraint may be open
to doubt. While homemade guns will not win target- shooting contests, target shooters will have their own guns (kept at shooting ranges under the Dixon proposal), and
homemade guns may
suffice for robbery purposes. And most homicides, like most robberies, are perpetrated at very close range
where accuracy is not an issue. The risk that a homemade gun could explode in a shooter's hand may deter some otherwise law-abiding citizens who would want
to own an illegal handgun for protection. On the other hand, if the person believes that the threats to his or her life and family are serious enough to commit the serious crime of
buying an illegal handgun, the additional risk posed by potentially defective handgun may seem small. In addition, newfound popularity for bootleg guns might
result in handguns becoming cheaper than they are now, just as in alcohol prohibition days, bootleg gin often cost less than legal alcohol had. If
handguns were cheaper, they might become more available to small-time teenage criminals and other low-end miscreants; criminals might end
up more widely armed than ever before. The inevitable [illicit] black market in homemade and imported illegal handguns would provide a
major new revenue source to organized crime. As the black market in alcohol helped create and enrich organized crime in the United States, the new black
market in handguns would fund and strengthen organized crime all the more. Dixon also acknowledges that illegal handguns would also flow in across American borders. [130]
Indeed, if small handguns were imported in the same physical volume as marijuana, 20 million would enter the country annually. (Current legal demand for new handguns is
about 2.5 million a year). [131]

3. Increase illicit manufacturers

Jacobs 04

Closing down legitimate manufacturers would be a boon to black market (p.161) producers. Clandestine handgun manufacturers
would spring up, just as thousands of illegal stills operated during alcohol prohibition, and hundreds or thousands of clandestine labs
now produce unlawful mood and mind-altering drugs like amphetamine and ecstasy. Even today, “zip guns” are produced or assembled in small
workshops within the United States.* These black market manufacturers, already illegal, operate outside any regulatory
scheme for recordkeeping, serial numbers, safety locks, or taxation.
4. the cartels don’t use handguns and they ship gun parts to be assembled in Mexico,
not whole guns.
Schatz 16
Bryan Schatz, How a Loophole in US Law Helps Drug Cartels Sneak Guns Into Mexico, Jan. 12, 2016

The cartels' weapons of choice are high-caliber rifles*, as well as AR-15 and AK-
47-type semiautomatic rifles, which can be easily converted into fully automatic machine guns. The cartel's gunrunners often buy
firearms legally in the United States, either at gun shops, gun shows, or in private sales. The firearms are then illegally shipped across the border. But

increasingly, the cartels are shipping weapons parts into Mexico to be assembled
into finished firearms. It's a discreet process that is especially difficult to detect. Firearm manufacturers or
importers in the United States are not required to stamp serial numbers on gun
parts. Retailers do not have to report when they buy and sell parts kits with
everything needed to complete a gun except a receiver. Receivers, which house the mechanical components of a firearm, like
trigger groups and magazine feeds, can be purchased separately. To avoid detection, gunrunners will often use unfinished, or "80-percent" receivers—receivers
that are mostly complete but require some further machining to be functional.

5. Mexico doesn't get guns from the US and gun regulation alone won’t help since the
military is weak.
Mauro 11
Ryan Mauro, WHERE DRUG CARTELS REALLY GET THEIR ARMS, April 18, 2011

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the
vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released
by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy
weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of
the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies
than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics. According to the published documents, U.S. diplomats in Mexico believe that these weapons,
such as grenades and rocket launchers, are being stolen from the armed forces of Central American countries. They arrive in Mexico via the 577-mile Guatemalan border that
only 125 Mexican immigration officials guard. Hezbollah and the Colombian FARC terrorist groups also deserve blame, as there are increasing indications that they are in bed
with the drug cartels and are providing them with training, financing and possibly arms. Other cables show that U.S. diplomats are frustrated with Mexico’s handling of the drug

war.The army is said to be so risk-averse that it declines to act on intelligence provided by

the U.S. One document dated November 9, 2009 written by U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual says, “Mexico’s use of strategic and tactical intelligence is often fractured, ad hoc,

and heavily reliant on the United States for leads and operations.” The responsibility for the failure to tame the
escalating drug war lies with Mexico, as no U.S. gun restriction can disarm the
drug lords when the Mexican army is unwilling or unable to fight. These documents are unlikely to
stop the blaming of the U.S. for the war in Mexico. Secretary of State Clinton said on March 25, 2009, “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade.” The

media constantly cites the dubious claim 90 percent of the guns used by the drug
lords come from the United States. This statistic comes from a report by the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It is based on the fact that,
of the 29,000 guns seized in 2007 and 2008, 6,000 were sent to the U.S. for tracing .
Of these, 90 percent were indeed found to have come from the U.S. But there is much more behind this fuzzy statistic.

6. The USFG is the one supplying all the guns they talk about, not private owners.
Farago 15
Robert Farago, 28k U.S. Assault Rifles Headed for Mexican Drug Cartels?, June 9, 2015
Mexico has purchased more than $1.15 billion in military equipment from the
United States over the past 12 months. As the following article [via borderlandbeat.com] reports, “These sales do not include guns
and ammunition. In 2014, the U.S. legally transferred more than 28,000 firearms to Mexico, most

of them military rifles, at a value of $21.6 million. The year saw the most firearms sales in dollars of the 15 years that the U.S. Census Bureau has kept
data.” Accountability? You must be joking. In fact, over the last ten years . . . thousands of U.S.-made rifles

have “seeped” from the Mexican military to the drug cartels. More than 55k military-trained personnel
defected to the cartels. Thousands more fully-automatic firearms simply went walkies from military and police arsenals. Not to mention the fact that the Mexican drug cartels
have billions of dollars to spend on the tens of thousands of guns that the U.S. has sold or “donated” to South American countries over the last few decades. Or guns imported
from China, Europe and elsewhere. When confiscated by the Mexican military, none of these official U.S. sales rifles are submitted to the ATF for trace. Why would they?
They’re stamped with the original owner’s ID. Anyway, if just 10 percent of last year’s official U.S. rifle sales end up in cartels hands, a low-ball estimate, that’s 2800 box fresh

The feds would

guns. Remember: the U.S. is hardly the only country selling guns to the Mexican government, which quickly find their way into cartel hands.

have you believe that Bob’s Gun Store is supplying the Mexican drug cartels with
weaponry. The article tries to back that up with a University of San Diego study claiming 250k guns flow from the U.S. to Mexico illegally per year, I call bull. Our
criminal neighbors to the South – which includes Mexican police and military – are awash in guns. Anyone who

thinks that Uncle Sam isn’t the primary provider, one way or another, is failing to
see the forest from the trees. Intentionally.

A2 Domestic Violence/IPV
1. Abusers can still get guns when the restraining order expires
Center for Public Integrity, June 23, 2011

Drug abusers and addicts are also prohibited from buying guns under the law – but the law has been interpreted to bar only those
who have been convicted of drug crimes or charged on multiple occasions. And that no doubt leaves a lot of addicts and abusers
People have been blocked from buying guns because they are
out. More and more
subject to restraining orders designed to protect family members. But the
prohibition ends when the restraining orders lapse, which advocates argue still leaves potential
victims vulnerable.

2. Weapons are transferred to domestic abusers

General Accounting Office, July 2016
For fiscal years 2006 to 2015, FBI data show that most NICS checks involving domestic violence records that resulted in denials
were completed before firearm transfers took place (see table). However, about 6,700 firearms were transferred to individuals
with prohibiting domestic violence records, which resulted in the FBI referring these cases to DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives for firearm retrieval. Under federal law, firearm dealers may (but are not required to) transfer a firearm to
an individual if the dealer has not received a response (proceed or denial) from the FBI after 3 business days.. FBI data also show
that during fiscal year 2015, the FBI completed 90 percent of denials that involved MCDV convictions within 7 business days, which
was longer than for any other prohibiting category (e.g., felony convictions). The FBI completed 90 percent of denials that involved
domestic violence protection orders in fewer than 3 business days. [In addition] According to federal and selected state officials
GAO contacted, the information needed to determine whether domestic violence records—and in particular MCDV
convictions—meet the criteria to prohibit a firearm transfer is not always readily available in NICS databases and can require
additional outreach to state agencies to obtain information. DOJ has taken steps to help states make prohibiting information more
readily available to NICS—such as through training and grant programs—but does not monitor the timeliness of checks that result in
denials by prohibiting category. Ongoing monitoring could help the FBI determine if specific prohibiting categories present greater
challenges in making determinations than other categories and, in turn, the FBI could provide the results to other DOJ entities to
help them establish priorities, such as for grants, state outreach, or training.

3. People don’t have to surrender guns they already own

Joel Gunter (BBC), April 13, 2017
“A domestic violence conviction or restraining order will turn up on a federal background check and prevent a gun sale, but There
are no federal laws requiring convicts to surrender guns they already own. Only 30 states authorise or require confiscation in
the event of a protection order, according to a recent report by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, and application of the
law varies wildly. An Everytown study of cases in Rhode Island between 2012 and 2014 showed that only 5% of people issued with
a protection order were ordered to surrender their guns. In cases where there was a written record of a firearm threat, that figure
rose to just 13%.”

4. Domestic violence often unreported, not in database

DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence Fact Sheet
Only about half of domestic violence incidents are reported to police. African American
women are more likely than others to report their victimization to police. The most common reasons for not reporting domestic
violence to police are that victims view the incident as a personal or private matter, they fear retaliation from their abuser, and they
do not believe that police will do anything about the incident. Even with this dramatic under-reporting, domestic violence calls
constitute approximately half of all violent crime calls to police departments. For example, 49% of the violent crime calls received by
the DC Metropolitan Police Department in 2000 were for domestic violence incidents

Overview
Make them win the links to their arguments and not just the numbers otherwise
1. Correlation =/=causation, they have to win the warrants otherwise other factors could be
causing the decrease in crime
2. That means their studies use flawed methodologies or they are cherry picking outlier
studies
3. They don’t account for the fact that high crime rates increase gun ownership, which skews their
studies.

4. Thats why

Kleck, Gary. "Gun Control after Heller and McDonald: What Cannot Be Done and What Ought to Be
Done." Fordham Urban Law Journal 39.5 (2012): 1383-1420.
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/frdurb39&div=55&start_page=1383&collection
=journals&set_as_cursor=4&men_tab=srchresults
Most studies of the impact of gun ownership levels on rates of crime and violence are fatally flawed.16 Nearly all of them make at least one, but usually all of the
three critical errors: (1) they use invalid measures of gun ownership levels; (2) they fail to make any serious effort to control for the effects on crime of other factors
correlated with gun ownership ("confounding factors"); or (3) they fail to distinguish the effect of gun levels on crime rates from the effect of crime rates on gun
ownership."
Only three studies have avoided these three problems, and all found there was no net crime-
increasing effect on gun ownership levels."