Preview

Gun Control Rhetorical Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
966 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Gun Control Rhetorical Analysis
I’m Taking a Stance on Gun Control
Guns need to be controlled. From the mass shooting in Newton, Connecticut that killed twenty-seven people, twenty of whom were faultless children at Sandy Hook Elementary, to nine people gunned down during Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, guns have proven to be an extreme political problem. In 2011, former Arizona congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords became a victim of gun violence, along with eighteen other guiltless people. She was shot (at point blank range) blankly in the head while campaigning outside of a Safeway franchise in suburban Tucson, Arizona. Lucky enough to have a second chance at life, Giffords found the motivation to tackle the law of
…show more content…
“A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip” was published in the New York Times as a powerful rhetorical analysis that persuades the audience that gun control does not mean …show more content…
Giffords convinces the audience that because she has represented southern Arizona she has the basic knowledge about passing hopeful bills and what goes on “behind closed doors”. She informs her audience, “They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you”. Because Giffords understands how politics operate, she knows the skills and methods that Senators use. She clearly knows how they will try to manipulate others and divert the truth of their decisions. Giffords also introduces her pedigree through stating, “I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the state Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote”. Because Giffords is engaged in politics and an appointed government official, the audience tightly clings to her argument and finds the proper respect. She gains the trust to be able to talk about. Not only is Giffords fully qualified of persuading the readers through her expertise but she is unbiased and fair in her

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    In the essay we read, entitled “Why Our Campuses Are Safer Without Concealed Handguns”, we see the author use five main points, as well as using appeals to Ethos Logos and Pathos to help reinforce his view on the topic. The five main reasons that the author feels that college campuses are safer without concealed handguns are introduced to us in the opening of the article, listed as bullet points. The author then goes on to break the article into these separate sections to allow him to go more in depth and explain his position. In this way, he appeals to the reader’s sense of Ethos throughout the entire article by convincing us that he knows what he is taking about. However, the author does not stop here.…

    • 1278 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Okafor persuades the audience on why carrying a concealed gun on campus is a positive thing in this article. She starts with ethos by telling her own personal story of being assaulted as a child. This stimulates emotion and helps the audience learn about her credibility. Pathos is then used when she explains how a gun makes her feel “empowered”. This word has a positive connotation to it to evoke emotion in the audience. Additionally, logos is used when bringing up the facts about gun laws and assaults. She notes, “... one in five women are assaulted during college”. This statistic is easy to understand and gives shock appeal.…

    • 200 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the article, “After Scalise Shooting, a Twist: Lawmakers Want to Loosen Gun Laws” by Emily Cochrane demonstrates the politics of gun control. After the recent Scalise shooting at a baseball field, gun control laws have been put into the spotlight. A debate between lawmakers who want to loosen gun control laws and lawmakers who want to make them stricter. After the Conservative lawmakers were almost victims, they decided that they should be able to have a concealed weapon on them. Being shot at gave them a different perspective on gun control and felt that it should be less intense. They felt that no matter what, “the bad guys are always going to get guns” (Cochrane). Even today, there is still debate on how strict gun control laws should…

    • 235 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This existing policy of course is the second amendment. She explains how she highly agrees with the amendment but that people are seeing the amendment in the wrong way. The second amendment states “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” The author also has no facts to be proven, her argument is mostly surrounded by opinion and belief. The only facts she really has are the most obvious to everyone: like a person who drives a car is licensed or the second amendment has the word militia in it.…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gun Control laws have been discussed more and more now due to more recent tragedies because of gun violence. James Q. Wilson, previous a professor of Pepperdine University, UCLA, and an author of many public policy books, wrote and editorial letter trying to convince his intended audience that if the government passes more gun control laws it will not decrease the gun violence in America as much as society wants to believe it will. The LA Times published this editorial in 2007 and it is still a good resource.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Guns, like many other issues of the day, have two distinct opposing views with many people in the gray area. Even when looking at a tragic situation, people will have two opposite spins on it. For example, a suicidal madman on top of the Empire State Building kills six people including himself with a gun. Gun-control advocates think that outlawing guns would have stopped the killing from ever happening. Pro-gun advocates think that it would have been stopped by innocent people being armed and fighting back. In order for an issue to even be at hand, both sides must agree that there is a problem with guns and gun control. Both gun-control and pro-gun advocates do agree there is a problem, pro-gunners say it is too hard to own a gun and the gun-controllers say it is too easy to get a gun. While using a point-counterpoint style to argue against gun control I will show guns are best controlled by good aim. The government must keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals and the mentally ill, and they must not limit the rest of the society from owning them.…

    • 3918 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first of the mass shootings was the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin, on August 5, 2012 that left six people dead, many wounded, and traumatized a community. The second of the shootings took place only four months later on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children aged between 6 and 7 years old along with six school staff officials were shot and killed. Mallory takes the stance that there must be a common middle ground between the issuance of guns and the regulation and policy of who should be allowed to obtain them. He tries to support his position of policing policy of gun control by quoting expert opinions representing two different sides of the issue of gun control yet they both represent the need for a greater oversite of policy governing the need for background checks but also the broken systems and expense of such a resource was of great…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gun control, has recently become a topic of discussion. After the recent shootings in Florida, California and Connecticut, Gun control activists have been pushing to change the laws and control what type of weapon can be bought. But many people view guns as a tool that helps in times of crisis when help may be not willing to come, or not in range. Instead of placing more restrictions on guns and their owners, we should uphold the current laws, with the ability to protect ourselves and other Americans through the usage of firearms.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    More Gun Control or Less?

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages

    There have been a few gun control fights throughout history, none of which being very effective. The problems with firearms that we face today are in fact tragic, and this gun control fight is indeed the largest the country has ever had. But looking back, there have been multiple murders and crimes committed every day since the dawn of America. And this fight for gun control, is it really the answer we seek? Or are we heading in the opposite direction? The problems with gun violence and controlling it are indeed very thoughtful subjects, and we all wish to end these tragedies and the problems that create them. Here, I am about to present two articles with two opposite perspectives on this subject.…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gun Control Formal

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages

    II. Finals remarks: The time is at hand for Americans to stand and defend their Second Amendment rights, and make liberal, anti-gun politicians aware that gun control has no place in…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    ”Nearly three weeks after the latest mass shooting claimed the lives of nine people, 52% of Americans now oppose stricter gun control laws, 6 percentage points more than the 46% of Americans who support such laws.”(diamond,2015).In the past year, there has been many shootings. If the guns are taken away, some of these could have been solved but that’s only solving one problem. Taking them isn’t helping the helpless people that can’t defend themselves without them.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over the past three decades it has been found that 82 percent of weapons involved in mass shootings were purchases legally (Chuck). On December 2, 2015 a shooting in San Bernardino, California occurred which took the lives of fourteen people (Buchanam). The culprits were Syed Rizwan Farook, and Tashfeen Malik who had legally purchased the guns used in the shooting (Buchanam). On October 1, 2015 Christopher Harper-Mercer went into a community college in Oregon and killed nine people with guns he had purchased legally through a federally licensed firearm dealer (Buchanam). Dylan Roof stepped inside a historically black church in Charleston, South Caroline on June 17, 2015 and…

    • 2445 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Gun Control Debate

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The debate for gun control has been a part of the American way for many years. Only in recent months has the situation become heated again, with the Newtown, Connecticut shootings to name one. Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner wrote in her article titled NRA Leadership Is Promoting an Irresponsible Position on Guns, “This tragedy was a wake-up call to the fact that nearly 40 percent of all gun sales in our nation happen without background checks, that military-style assault weapons with high capacity magazines can be bought in places like Wal-Mart, and that federal gun trafficking laws are largely missing in action in the United States.” I don’t believe this tragedy was a wake up call. I believe that any tragedy gets one to thinking about ways to better a situation and how to cope. Anyone can turn a tragedy into something that pertains directly or indirectly to them. And the fact that President Obama is exploiting these children and the families for his own agenda is sickening. I do believe there needs to be stricter gun laws. But as many have stated before, it’s a slippery slope.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gun control has been a huge controversial topic in recent years, jumping in and out of the eye of the mainstream news media, depending on how often gun violence had come up. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 2012, gun control has been one of the most disputed topics. President Barack Obama recently passed a new gun laws, and on January 30th, 2013, the Vice President of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, testified before the U.S. Senate. Editorial cartoonist Adam Zyglis, whose cartoons are internationally syndicated, had created a cartoon with commentary on that specific testimony. The argument of the piece is that the NRA is a major part of the gun violence problem in the United States. Zyglis may have pleased his audience with similar views on the topic, but he may not be changing anybody’s mind if they do not hold a more liberal stance on the topic to begin with.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gun Control Argument

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The gun control debate in the US is often contentious and politically divisive. And with upcoming elections always looming in the near future, we will continue hearing a great deal from the media as well as politicians about what should or should not be done about “too many guns” in our society. Unfortunately, too many Americans do not take time to truly understand the issues and the reasoning behind both sides of the controversy. To help get a clearer perspective of the problem, there are two very short, but well written pro/con pieces, regarding the debate, by Mitch Albom and Thomas Sowell. Each presents his own rationale for what should be done about gun control.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays