Presentation Rationale
Purpose: This speech is written to convince my audience that an increase in gun control legislation will not provide an increase in safety of the populace. I would like my audience to become better informed and active in defending our constitutionally protected rights. The central theme is that further restriction on the availability of fire-arms will not improve our safety, and in fact will have a detriment to that safety.
Intended Audience: The ideal audience for this speech is a group of voting-age individuals who are concerned about the apparent increase of shootings nation-wide, and would like to help deter that seeming trend. This would also be appropriate for any person who is concerned that the government seems to be encroaching on individual rights in this country.
Significance: As the public debate continues on whether guns are too readily available, we see those who are pushing not only for the limitation of fire-arms but for the out-right ban and confiscation of all non-shooting sport weapons. This becomes extremely significant, because history teaches that the loss of personal protection weaponry is always followed by the loss of other human rights.
Presentation Plan
I. Introduction
a. Audience hook: From Columbine to Sandy Hook and the Aurora, Colorado theater shootings we have seen mass shootings in the last fifteen years that have many calling for increased gun-control legislation, but what is the truth?

b. Thesis statement: Research suggests that an increase in gun-control legislation will not result in increased safety for the populace because those who have decided to take violent action in contravention to current law, will not likely be dissuaded by the imposition of yet another law, and because the law-abiding citizen who will obey the new law will only lose their ability to defend themselves from the violent individual.

c. Preview of Main points:

i. Increasing gun-control legislation has no impact on the criminal behavior of violent individuals.

ii. Further restrictions on fire-arms would serve to disarm the law-abiding citizen, while having little to no effect on violent offenders.

II. Main Point 1: Increasing gun-control legislation has no impact on the criminal behavior of violent individuals.

a. While the popular thought is that the United States’ relatively high level of personal gun ownership results in a high murder rate, this is only true if you care about the weapon more than the life, taking into account all violent crimes, the difference between the US and other industrialized countries is actually negligible. (Kates, 2007)

b. The United States experienced a dramatic drop in the violent crime rate in the 1990s; meanwhile the United Kingdom had an equally dramatic raise during the same time. England responded to the increase in violent crime by continuing its increase of gun control, eventually banning and confiscating all hand guns and many rifles. Despite these (or I would argue because of them) by 2000 England had surpassed the United States to become one of the industrialized world’s most violent nations. (Kates, 2007)
Show visual aid (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010)
III. Main Point 2: Further restrictions on fire-arms would serve to disarm the law-abiding citizen, while having little to no effect on violent offenders.

a. States that have more restrictive gun legislation, in particular concealed Carry laws, have murder rates that are 10% higher than the national average. (Gius, 2014)

b. The federal assault weapons ban that expired in 1994 demonstrates that gun bans are not effective as the murder rates were 19.3% higher when the ban was in place than before or after it. (Gius, 2014)

c. On average, state concealed handgun laws have had the effect of lowering murders by 8.5%, with rapes and aggravated assaults falling by 5 and 7 percent respectively. (Lott, 1997)

i. Clearly with these facts in mind, the effect of concealed carry is to save lives. (Lott, 1997)

ii. The negative side of this is that property crime rates did in-fact rise after the concealed carry laws took effect. There was a 2.7 percent increase when these laws took effect. This is the substitution effect, as criminals responded to the increased risk of meeting an armed victim by going after property instead of individuals. (Lott, 1997)

IV. Conclusion

a. Restatement of thesis: The safety of the population can never be enhanced by removing from it the very means by which it can best defend itself.

b. Summary of main points:

i. The criminal cannot be deterred from committing a crime because of another law or laws.

ii. The average law-abiding citizen will lose the ability to defend themselves if we continue to increase gun-control legislation.

c. Closing comments:

i. Our constitutional rights will continue to exist only so long as we are willing to stand and fight for them. As Ronald Regan said ‘Liberty is never more than one generation from extinction”

ii. I encourage each of you to work for the protection of your rights, and if you choose to exercise them then understand that you are responsible to use them properly, by being trained and efficient. Visual Aid

(FBI 2010) Scripted Audience Questions
Question #1: Won’t reducing the availability of guns necessarily reduce the suicide rate?
Answer: The Kates study I have earlier cited shows that in the absence of a gun by which to commit suicide a person will simply seek out other means. For example in Russia, where it is illegal to own a handgun, the suicide rate is about four times higher than in the US. (Kates, 2007)
Question #2: Aren’t households that have guns more likely to be murdered with a gun than those who do not.
Answer: That statement is true, as far as it goes. But it does not tell the whole story; the household with guns are less likely to be murdered at all. The focus is again placed on the weapon rather than on the death, as if being shot is somehow worse that being stabbed or strangled. (Lott, 1997)
Question #3: Isn’t it gun-control worth it if it can save even one child’s life from an accidental shooting?
Answer: I agree that the accidental shooting of any person especially a child is very tragic, but let’s consider for a moment: those events are very rare in fact traffic accidents, and even medical mistakes kill more each year than accidental shootings. With this in mind the thought that if it saved just one becomes irrelevant because the net would not be a positive, but an increase in the loss of life.

References
Gius, M. (2014). An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates. Applied Economics Letters, 21(4), 265-267. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/13504851.2013.854294#aHR0cDovL3d3dy50YW5kZm9ubGluZS5jb20vZG9pL3BkZi8xMC4xMDgwLzEzNTA0ODUxLjIwMTMuODU0Mjk0QEBAMA==
Kates, D. B. (2007). Would banning firearms Rreduce murder and suicide? Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 30(2), 650-694. http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Lott, J. R. (1997). Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns. Journal of Legal Studies, 26(1), 1-68. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/41.lott_.final_.pdf
Federal Bureau of Investigation (2010) Violent crime rates and number of background check request for the purchase of a firearm. Retrieved from http://pjmedia.com/blog/fbi-crime-stats-show-an-armed-public-is-a-safer-public/