AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin

I affirm the resolution resolved: It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence.

Before I begin I would like to start by defining the following definitions:

Deadly Force Deadly force as defined by the United States is person uses, causingor that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily harm. Deliberate Response - If a victim reacts to being attacked and kills the attacker without actually intending to do so, then the situation falls outside the resolution. The victim must intend to kill the attacker. Therefore, the deliberate response is intentional and controlled. Repeated Domestic Violence - A person in a relationship, family, or intimate partner relationship where they are continually beaten and abused, this may apply to sexual abuse, i.e. rape, or emotional abuse from Merriam-webster Morally Permissible This is the main definition in the resolution that cannot be defined by a single source, rather is must come from the value structure to show how we determine whether or not something is morally permissible.

The value that I use to support this debate round is morality, defined as the system of ethics and morals, which keeps our society a just one.

The criterion that best supports my value is retributive justice, which is a theory of justice that considers that punishment, if proportionate, is a morally acceptable response to crime, with an eye to the satisfaction and psychological benefits it can bestow to the aggrieved party, its intimates and society. In ethics and law, "Let the punishment fit the crime" is the principle that the severity of penalty for a misdeed or wrongdoing should be reasonable and proportionate to the severity of the infraction. Note: the use of retributive justice is not simply a eye for eye ideology, rather it employs similar punishments, i.e. jail time in place of murder or rape. Observation One:

I agree with the words of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He regarded

punishment as a matter of justice. He states that if the guilty are not punished, justice is not done, further agreeing with my criterion of retributive justice. In order for morality to exist, due punishment should exist.

AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin

Observation Two: Morality is the most important value in todays debate round and should be preferred over any other value as the resolution is di7rectly dealing with morality when it states morally permissible.

Contention One: Self Defense:

Subpoint A: Our morals come from the rights claims we agree upon when we form the social contract. According to Thomas Hobbes, the only right that we cannot sacrifice completely is the right to self-defense. If ones life is threatened, he/she has the absolute right to defend, and the aggressor effectively sacrifices their right to life by threatening that of another. Repeated domestic violence can be said to actually threaten the victims life. It traps them in such a cycle of physical and psychological damage, that it effectively robs them of their life. Therefore, their deliberate use of deadly force to escape the situation is morally permissible.
For example, if a dangerous criminal has captured a person, and rapes and beats them continually for years, would we not admit that it would be morally permissible to use deadly force to escape the situation? This is an entirely plausible example, as there have been over 80,000 reports of rape in 2010 alone.

Source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Victims suffer from the abuse that is inflicted upon them. Whether its a punch or a slap, repeated domestic abuse is both physically and mentally harmful in exponential ways. My opponent may state that the victims can simply get out of the situation, by calling the police instead of using deadly force as an adequate response. In truth, in most cases of domestic violence, it is not that simple. The reason that a person can be continually abused is because they may be too weak or powerless to stop it, otherwise they wouldnt be in that situation! According to National Child Abuse Statistics, 2009, approximately 3.3 million child abuse reports and allegations were made involving an estimated 6 million children. Approximately five children die each day as a result, and a report of child abuse is made every ten seconds. Take for example a child being abused by one of his parents while the other sits back and does nothing. He/she doesn't have the means or money to leave the situation, nor can he or she run away because his/her abusive parents could file missing persons and the child would be sent strait back to the abusive home. Furthermore, not every person has the option to get out, therefore when the victims life is

AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin

being threatened or the lives of the victims family is at stake, its morally permissible to allow them to fight back.

Card: THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN WHO SUFFER FROM OR ARE KILLED BY ABUSE IS SHOCKINGLY HIGH

Nancy Wright [Associate Prof. of Law, Santa Clara Law], Voice for the Voiceless: The Case for
Adopting the "Domestic Abuse Syndrome "for Self Defense Purposes for All Victims of Domestic Violence Who Kill Their Abusers, 4 Crim. L. Brief 76 (2009), p. 76

Every year, millions of American women and children suffer domestic abuse at the hands of their partners, spouses, parents or guardians.' Every day, nearly 2,500 children are abused or neglected. 2 As many as 8.8 million children under the age of seventeen sustain severe physical abuse inflicted by their parents or guardians. 3 Many of these battered children also suffer from sexual and psychological abuse.4 Some experts estimate that a child will be abused in some manner in America every ten seconds.5 Indeed, "an additional 3.3 million children are traumatized as indirect victims of domestic abuse, by witnessing the physical violence perpetrated against their siblings or between their parents."6 Unfortunately, there has been a steady increase in the number of children who die from domestic abuse at the hands of their parents. In 1989, approximately 600 children were killed by their parents.7 By 1995, almost twice as many children (or 1,000 youngsters annually) died of domestic abuse.8 By 2004, there were almost 1,500 deaths annually from child abuse, an average of more than four children each day.9 Unfortunately, many experts believe that these shocking figures are conservative since death from parental abuse may be incorrectly diagnosed as accidental or as the result of sudden infant death syndrome. 10 (2) Strauss, Murray A, Gelles, Richard J., and Smith, Christine. 1990. Physical Violence in American Families; Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers (3) The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman's Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women's Health, 1999 (4) http://www.musc.edu...

Subpoint B: SELF-DEFENSE PROTECTS THE VALUES OF LIFE AND AUTONOMY AND MAKES IT

POSSIBLE TO LIVE IN A SOCIETY Shlomit Wallerstein [Lecturer, St. Peters College, Oxford University], JUSTIFYING THE RIGHT TO SELFDEFENSE: A THEORY OF FORCED CONSEQUENCES, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 91 (2005), p. 1027-1028

Starting from the premise of an absolute unqualified right not to be killed, it follows that self- defense, as a derivative right, must be an absolute natural right as well. This is so because without an absolute right to self-defense the right not to be killed can hardly be

AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin regarded as a right, as it provides its owner no effective tools to protect it. Self-defense plays a major role in resisting the direct imminent unjust threat posed by an aggressor. It also has an additional role in the defense against an indirect threat to autonomy, a threat that is generated by the fear and instability that the lack of such a right would bring about. It constitutes one of the basic conditions that allow people to live together in society. One of the reasons we value life is because it is a necessary precondition to the possibility of autonomy, of pursuing various personal and communal goals. Thus, the right to self-defense can be partly explained by reason of its implications for autonomy. No matter how comprehensive the rules of a given society are, there will always be situations where one is unable to turn to the community for help. Unless the possibility to defend oneself is recognized in these situations, the risks associated with living in a society would increase. Many people would devote their lives to creating conditions that would ensure their survival instead of promoting their autonomy in other ways. Given that life is a precondition of (or at any rate, closely connected to) autonomy, the protection of these two inter-ests is inseparable; even if we justify the right of selfdefense in terms of defending ones life from an imminent unjust threat, the defense of life is, inter alia, a defense of autonomy. That is to say, defending ones life is defending ones autonomy.

Contention Two: Victims are being dehumanized, and they should get their due.

When a victim is dehumanized they are essentially having their life removed from them. While a physical body may still remain, their emotional state is twisted and warped.
To understand dehumanization, we must understand how humans are contrasted with nonhumans.

According to Nick Haslam and Stephen Loughnan with another group of other researchers,
representing a study University of Melbourne, Peking University, and University of Padova.

http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2008.26.2.248

AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin

There are two forms of dehumanization: in which people are denied uniquely human attributes and likened to animals, or denied human nature attributes and likened to robots. In the light of this model, they examined the mental capacities that are believed to differentiate humans from animals, robots, and supernatural beings in three cultures (Australia, China, Italy). Crossculturally consistent patterns emerged, with humans differing from nonhumans on two dimensions that closely resembled our two proposed forms of humanness. Robots chiefly lacked emotion and desirerelated capacities. Supernatural beings had superior cognitive and perceptual capacities. Implications for dehumanization are discussed.
As you can see, victims are stripped of their individuality and dehumanized according to Haslam, which in turn can turn them into the mental capacity of a robot in which they are denied human attributes. When this occurs a victim has the right to fight for their rights according to the resolution.

Lay Dont Read: Also according to Plato, he defined justice, as doing good to ones friend if he is good and harming ones enemy if he is evil. This is essentially agrees with retributive justice. Domestic violence is certainly evil to both the victim(s) and outsiders; we have to uphold this criterion because retributive justice is based upon morals. When we look towards morality, we also look towards justice.

Contention Three: Constitutional Rights

The law justifies deadly force in the event lives are in danger, such as in the case of an escalated domestic violence incident. "In the United States, a civilian may legally use deadly force when it is considered justifiable homicide, that is to say when the civilian feels their own life, or the lives of their family or those around them are in legitimate and imminent danger." Threatened life through violence is an evil, so it demands justice through the due punishment, which is deadly force. Not only is morally justified that the victims use deadly force to prevent more abuse; it is also justified because, quite often, victims are hunted down. Abusers commonly hunt their victims after they leave. Leaving your abuser sends them into a rage because it means they have lost temporary control over you so, when they do find you the attack will be much more severe than what normally occurs, that is also when most domestic violence deaths occur. The victims, ultimately, are in a lose-lose situation. Using deadly force against their attacker is sometimes the

AFFIRMATIVE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Richard Shin

only way to save themselves, the ones they love, and get justice in return.

For the above reasons I urge an affirmative ballot.