Democrats and Republicans square off on gun control and death penalty

The atmosphere was heated last night between campus Democrats and Republicans, and that's not counting yesterday's soaring temperatures.

During the quarterly debate between the Young Democrats and the College Republicans held last night in Gowen Hall, the two groups passionately debated the issues of gun control and the death penalty.

For the first debate, the Democrats argued that all handguns should be banned for use by private civilians.

Senior Cullen White, outgoing ASUW president, and sophomore Max Wagner, Young Democrats president, debating for the Democrats, argued that handguns claim far more innocent lives than they save.

"Thirty-thousand Americans are killed each year by gun violence. ... Less than one-half of 1 percent of those are cases of self defense," White said.

Quick to counter these points were graduate student Matt Leung and freshman Justin Bryant, who spoke for the Republicans.

"Fifty-thousand Americans are killed in car accidents every year, which is more people than are killed by guns, but nobody is trying to take cars away," Leung said.

The debate escalated quickly; the monitor's yells of "Time!" were often ignored. At one point, Leung attempted to drown out White by continuously quoting an excerpt from the Second Amendment.

"Shall not be infringed!" Leung shouted repeatedly.

The atmosphere became increasingly exciting as members of the crowd [HTML_REMOVED] with the Democrats sitting on the left and the Republicans on the right [HTML_REMOVED] joined in, asking questions of the debaters during the designated time as well as yelling their own opinions whenever they pleased.

The second debate, which tackled the issue of the death penalty, opened with junior Chris Kaasa, a Democrat, who argued that the death penalty is "applied unfairly, ... not an effective deterrent, ... deeply and inherently unethical ... [and] laced with racism."

He sees the United States as having one correct answer.

"America has only one right choice, and that is to abolish the death penalty and abolish it now," Kaasa said.

Senior Andrew Everett and freshman John Fay debated for the Republican side.

"Sixty-two percent of Americans favor the death penalty," Fay said.

Everett argued that the death penalty significantly reduces state costs.

"Just because it's an imperfect system doesn't mean it's a system worth abolishing," he added.

Democrat and senior Nicolle Blackwell disagreed.

"This is a moral issue, and cost shouldn't be a factor," she said.

Reach reporter Kevin Grimes at news@thedaily.washington.edu.