The Pella High School debate team has had an interesting topic to research this year. Gun control. Why we should keep it or how should we regulate it versus don’t keep it and give guns to everyone who applies. A wide variety of how to debate this topic got many interested and numbers of members in the team shot up.

Freshman Cassandra Volpe joined the team this year and debated on the JV team.
“I joined debate team because I thought it would be a good thing to learn public speaking,” said Volpe, “I wanted to meet more people outside of my grade and work on my teamwork skills.”

In debate, you are given a topic and you can look at it from a federal point of view or state. Many practices are dedicated to research than a plan is proposed for affirmative and negative plans. In this season the team decided to look at the federal point of view and took in consideration on how suicides affect the economy.

The affirmative plan consisted of adding 5 additional days to the background check before getting a gun legally. This plan costs nothing, just time. Later on in the season, the team decided to create another affirmative plan. Give everyone a gun and repeal the 2nd Amendment. Take into consideration that these plans do not resemble the team’s individual views.

As for the negative plan, they took a basic look at how gun ownership doesn’t correlate with homicides, getting rid of guns is getting rid of jobs, and it’s unconstitutional. This plan doesn’t agree with all the members views towards gun control, but all teams must have two plans.
This year, the team did not make it to the CIDL season championship round. The team was 8 and 8 this season, making them tied for third. In JV individuals Lily Pumphrey, Luke Roose, and Zion Miller won individual plaques. In Varsity, Jason Seo won an individual plaque.

•Tiffany Van Gilst, [email protected]