I'm kind of embarrassed you are setting up your cousin for such humiliation.
My seventeen year old cousin asked me for advice. His AP history class is going to have a series of debates and speeches in class concerning the right to bear arms. I helped him write the following speech:
Another such example, are the executives of private companies, using armed force, against unarmed members of Unions were striking. Many also question if the United States government would have detained and imprisoned the Japanese people in concentration camps had the Japanese been a gun possessing people.
No, nobody questions that at all. If a Japanese American shot a white person trying to execute a lawful order to evacuate them, all hell would have broken loose. Jesus Christ, man, look at some of the propaganda against the Japanese at that time, they were portrayed as sub-human.
Unfortunately, the worst examples, are found in global history, when entire minorities have been genocided by their government. The best known example, are the Jewish people of Germany. Hitler had moved immediately to disarm the Jewish people, and other undesirables in Germany. What followed shortly after, was the Holocaust. Everyone can agree, that had Jews been armed during the reign Hitler, that they would have been able to avert such a tragedy, or at the very least, been able to escape Germany before so many millions were killed.
This is another misinterpretation. Under the Nazi Regime, gun laws for most Germans were LOOSENED. The Weimar Government attempted to control the fueding political factions by disarming them. When the Nazis got into power, it made it easier for your average German to get a gun.
And again, a few armed men fighting tanks and planes of people who already were intent on killing them eventually? Yeah, that would have worked out well.
It is also well known, that Stalin of the Soviet Union, and Mao of Communist China, and brutal dictators all throughout the 20th century, had disarmed their politically opposed minorities, and genocided over 350 million people total in the 20th Century.
Besides your numbers being sort of laughable- the reality was that all sides in Russia and China were very well armed. The end result of Civil Wars following World Wars. In fact, the goal of the Truman Administration in the post-war China was to try to get all sides to disarm because there were so many damned weapons in play, either through what all sides had been armed with by the allies or all the weapons the Japanese were kind enough to leave behind. Post War China was a powder keg waiting for a match.
However, there is one stellar example of the Second Amendment actually being used to overthrow tyrannical government. In 1946, in the city of Athens, Tennessee, the State government machine would send the police to the voting places, seize the ballot boxes, and bring them to the jailhouses, in order rig the election in favor of Democrats. The people of Tennessee had been petitioning the federal government for a decade, but FDR, a Democrat, wanted the State government to continue rigging the elections, in order to ensure that the State of Tennessee produced Democratic Senators and Congressman.
Oh, that again. Did you leave out the part where after the drunks shot up the jail and got the ballots counted in their favor, they utterly failed to produce a lasting political movement and the regular politicians were back in power within a year.
Now, let us turn our attention away from government tyranny, and discuss the effect of the Second Amendment in relation to everyday crime. It can be easily seen, with a simple internet search, that every State that has little or no restrictions on firearms, such as Vermont and Utah, have the lowest crime and murder rates in the United States. Whereas, the states and cities that have the strictest gun control laws, are the opposite, such as Chicago, Detroit and Rochester.
This, of course, is cherry picking. Of course cities have a higher homicide numbers because they have higher concentrations of people.
As, previously mentioned, countries like the UK, are UNITARY governments. The variance in local laws are microscopic in those places. Moderate differences in law are only seen between rural and urban regions in a unitary government.
The UK had 47 gun murders last year compared to our 11,000.
Guy, you are just rehashing your own tired arguments and you are all over the map. Arguments that were not only trashed by liberals but by some conservatives. You aren't really doing this kid any favors by sending him out with a rambling speech.
Most important thing about writing a paper like this is
1) Get your facts and figures right.
2) Focus on one or two things.
3) Produce a coherent narrative.