When I started competing in debate in 1966 I learned that there was only one way to make a prima facie case for a significant change in policy. Every affirmative case began by portraying a compelling need that inhered in the present system. Inherency in this instance meant that the problem could not be addressed by tinkering with the system. The solution required a structural change. The second step was to provide a plan that solved the problem. This approach was based on a concept of burden of proof widely attributed to Richard Whately, an early nineteenth century Archbishop of Dublin in the Church of Ireland.

This line of reasoning has commonly been heard since the massacre of the children at Sandy Hook school. No one publicly denies that the need is compelling; after all, everyone cringes at the sight of blood-spattered youngsters. Those arguing in favor of gun control have asserted that the widespread availability of certain types of weapons systems make this kind of crime possible, and they should therefore be banned. The other side has argued that the only way to prevent these assaults is to increase security in all schools by hiring guards who, presumably, will be able to match the assailant in accuracy and firepower. “It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.”

In the fifteen years in which I was involved in debate I heard many cases concerning gun control, but I never heard anyone propose either of the above plans. In the first place, of course, frustrated young (wait — the latest guy holed up in a survivalist bunker in Alabama is older than I am!) men in those days were not in the habit of taking semi-automatic weapons into public gatherings for the purpose of blowing people away. So, the compelling need was not at all evident.

The gun control plan that several debate teams did propose was the banning of handguns, which were generally defined as firearms with barrels of a limited length, less than a foot or so. These weapons were then and are now used in the vast majority of murders. No one would claim that eliminating them (if that were possible) would prevent all of those murders; some murderers would doubtless choose a different weapon. On the other hand the murder rates in countries that are otherwise comparable to the U.S. are so much lower that it is difficult to argue that there would not be a significant reduction in the total number of homicides. The psychology behind firing a gun, which is a rather obvious phallic symbol, is quite different from the psychology of stabbing or poisoning.

In all of those debates I only heard two cogent argument against the banning of handguns. The first was the claim that widespread gun ownership deters crime. The studies that support this notion are controversial, to say the least. Furthermore, even if the concept is plausible, the guns evidently do a very poor job of deterring murders, which have a permanence not associated with property crimes.

The second argument, which is much more prevalent now than it was at that time, was that we need an armed populace as an assurance against the government getting out of control. This argument is easier to ridicule than it is to refute. It clearly is the reason that the second amendment is in the constitution in the first place, and even if a fascistic or “Mad Max” scenario seems outlandish now, neither is inconceivable. Those supporting a ban on handguns, however, had little difficulty with this argument since a person armed only with a handgun would not pose much of a threat to heavily armed storm troopers or to Mel Gibson.

In a majority of the cases there is a common goal to which everyone is accountable and that policies, practices, and resources are aligned with the goal. Archbishop Whately’s approach began to lose favor in the world of competitive debate in the seventies. Instead, the concepts of systems theory began to be applied to policy considerations. The reasoning was this: “If one system were clearly superior to another, why not adopt it even if the new system does not solve a compelling and inherent problem?”

A ban on handguns (once again assuming that such a notion were practicable) would almost certainly lead to the advantage of fewer murders and suicides, and it is very difficult to imagine disadvantages that would come close to outweighing this benefit. Therefore, an attractive debate case can easily be made.

The same cannot be said of either of the current proposals. The assault weapons ban might prevent an incident like Sandy Hook, but the number of people killed by these weapons in the U.S. is still quite low by any standard. Some of those murderers might well be able to obtain an equally lethal way to accomplish their nefarious purpose. It could also be argued that assault weapons might be useful if the government runs amok. The difficulty of proving the likelihood of such an event could be offset by the importance of maintaining a free and civil society.

The best argument against the placing of armed guards in the schools is the cost. There are over 140,000 schools in the United States, and many of those have more than one building that would need guarding. Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of evidence that deployment of these guards would reduce the number of dead children. Introducing so many guns in schools would inevitably lead to their accidental or purposeful firing. Even if they did deter an assailant from shooting up a school, there are many other places where children congregate. Are we going to station armed guards at every soccer field, movie theater, and amusement park ride? Uh oh, I may have just given Wayne LaPierre an idea.

This last proposal reminds me of the government’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks. A handful of jihadists figured out that airport security was incredibly lax in the U.S. and that onboard security was essentially nonexistent. They had no difficulty hijacking four planes and used them to kill 3,000 people. The federal government responded by creating the gigantic Transportation Security Administration, which was apparently mandated to serve as such a visible annoyance that people would not be worried about another hijacking. Surely no one could argue that all of these labor-intensive airport security procedures are worth the money and effort. The agency’s budget is over $8 billion per year! If each passenger wastes fifteen minutes being screened, and their time is valued at $10 per hour, that is another $2 billion lost. If you think that this much spending might be necessary to prevent another terrorist event, then why have there been no attacks on the poorly screened methods of transportation — trains, subways, and ships? No sensible debate team would have ever proposed such a stupid approach to an easily soluble (by locking the cockpit doors on airlines) problem.

In my opinion we would be a lot better off if political decision-makers and pundits thought like debaters, but I am not naive enough to think that it will ever happen.