Corrections appended.

The Justice asked the president of Brandeis Democrats, Jacob Edelman ’18, and the president of Brandeis Conservatives, Mark Gimelstein ’17, about a variety of polarizing issues. Their back-and-forth dialogue about gun control is included below.

Jacob Edelman: Right now, it is far too easy … for people with certain types of mental illness to receive weapons, for people who have had certain types of criminal charges brought against them in the past who should not be in possession of guns and weapons, for people who are on the terror watchlist to own a weapon. … Among other things, there needs to be a tightening of ownership of assault weapons in this country, because, far too often, there have been mass killings with these weapons. … I don’t believe that one needs to own a gun which can put out more than several rounds per second.

Mark Gimelstein: I come at this with the perspective that gun laws, federally, in specific states, in many cases, are even too restrictive. I think a large problem is that there isn’t more of a fidelity to the 2nd Amendment, and that’s basically bred by the fact that people are not allowed to do concealed carry in many states, and concealed carry is responsible for the saving of thousands upon thousands of lives. ... If you look at mass shootings in the country year by year, … they have occurred in gun-free zones. … The way I would approach this is to put more guns in the hands of good people, because I come from the perspective that you cannot stop lawbreakers from breaking laws. … In terms of [your] specific points: ... number one, the terrorist watchlist — there’s no due process whatsoever to be put on the list, … and since the 2nd Amendment is a right, just as the 1st Amendment is, no one should be deprived of their basic, fundamental, God-given rights … without due process, … [and] we have to look at [mental health] from a case-by-case perspective. …

JE: Just going back to [your] first point about criminals not paying attention to the law — ... I believe that, through something called the “bad man” theory of the law, that what the law is meant to do is to inform evildoers in society what the punishment will be if they break the laws. ... If you have an effective law, it will be followed. … Federal standards exist so that these laws exist across the country — fewer guns, fewer gun deaths. That’s how it works in almost every single other first-world country in the world. There are fewer gun deaths because there are stronger gun laws, plain and simple.

MG: I would actually push back on that statistic. John Lott, who’s a renowned economist on guns — he did a study on England, for instance. … If you were to look prior to the gun laws being implemented, violent crime, murders and all these bad things we both agree are bad were actually even lower prior to the implementation of gun laws. And I would just ask [you] a question: … Why have gun-free zones been the target in Aurora, the target in Louisiana, the target in Columbine, the target in Virginia Tech, the target in Sandy Hook? …

JE: You name these very high-profile public shootings, … and these are the sorts of shootings that stand out over the ones which cause the vast majority of casualties in our country, and the vast majority of casualties in our country could be prevented by stronger laws that apply to the weapons that are owned by domestic abusers or the weapons that are being trafficked illegally between the states, or the weapons that have certain features that make them more tactical for use, so I would argue that you can’t harden every single target, but that by loosening gun laws ... in an attempt to harden civilian targets as much as possible, to create some sort of civil defense society where everybody is a police person or everybody is an enforcer of the law — I just think that’s an irresponsible premise.

MG: You talk about the vast majority of gun deaths — we should be looking at those, not the high-profile ones. We can look at that. The vast majority of gun deaths in this country happen at the hands of pistols, and … the big cluster of pistol gun deaths, they occur in big inner cities like Chicago, Detroit and inner-city New York City, even. You can look at any place you want. Those are all gun-free zones, as well. … I’m not saying that every single person should be a vigilante; that’s not my premise. I’m saying that if you are somebody that passes the license, you are a responsible gun owner, you don’t have a criminal record and you pass all the different legal boundaries to owning a concealed-carry permit, I think you should be allowed to use your gun. It’s impossible for a person to have a CCL in New York City. … That’s a problem we should be addressing. I think that we should have responsible people be able to self-defend themselves against people who are bad in this world and who will break laws no matter what the situation is.

JE: The strengthening of gun laws comes down to a fairly simple premise: that if you reduce the number of guns in our country, if you strengthen the penalties for people who would break laws that are meant to protect responsible gun owners and if you create a more responsible society that’s more responsible both in the guns that it uses and in the mentality that it assumes when they approach the idea of gun ownership, that will create a safe society, rather than loosening laws to increase the number of guns and increase the number of very bad potential situations which could arise.

MG: To summarize in my perspective: Since the 1990s, gun ownership has proliferated — has doubled, in the United States. … In that same period in time, violent crime, murders, all the things that we find bad, have decreased by half. So, my main premise is that … responsible gun ownership … is the best solution to limit crime. … We [cannot] allow criminals to basically have an open season on sheep, on helpless sheep who have no opportunity to defend themselves against people that are out there in a society of wolves.

—Editor’s Note: Mark Gimelstein '17 is a columnist for the Justice.

—Editor’s Note: Chicago, Detroit and New York City are not gun-free zones, and it is not “impossible” to have a concealed carry permit in New York City, as Gimelstein claimed.

A previous version of this piece included an editor's note that incorrectly stated that Gimelstein's claim about gun ownership doubling was false. The Justice defined gun ownership as the number of households that own guns and the number of adults that own guns, both of which have declined, according to NORC at the University of Chicago. Gimelstein, however, defined gun ownership as the number of guns in circulation, and that figure has doubled, according to the Congressional Research Service and the National Institute of Justice. The editor's note also stated that Gimelstein's claim about due process and the terror watchlist was false, but the Justice and Gimelstein differed in interpretation of due process.