Christen
Roper
English
102
Mrs.
Thomas
February
20th 2015
Deadly Weapons of Choice
The Gun Control Ban That Has Affected Millions.
April 16th, 2007,
Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 people in the Virginia Teach massacre. December 14th,
2012, Adam Lanza opens fire in Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut,
killing 20 kids and six adults. July 20th, 2012 James E. Holmes
opens fire in a midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, killing
twelve and wounding even more. These few
shootings pulled from the CNN article "25 Deadliest Mass Shootings in U.S.
History," are just a few shootings that have rocked history. All of these
massacres and many more were caused by people with emotional problems, allowing
themselves to kill and wound so many, before taking their own lives, or were
just inherently evil, thinking this was what they had to do. All of these
violent acts against humanity were committed by using weapons like AR-15s and
the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, all known as automatic and semi-automatic guns.
Since then, Congress has been arguing if they should ban guns all together,
just ban certain guns that American citizens don’t need, give background
checks, or never let any criminal or
mentally challenged person own a gun,. Laws against guns and gun control have
been issued before, but with all of these new massacres popping up all over the
world, they are putting the regulations back on the table and trying to see
what would be more effective. All of these questions have been around the bend
a few times and yet we have not come up with a plan. Most of the laws we try
just don’t work anymore. So what should we do?
Tom Gresham’s own take on gun control states that it’s
not really working in the way we think it would. In his article, “Gun control
has a clear record of failure,” he explains that every ban that Congress has
tried to propose to be made into a law just doesn’t work, and that something
else should be done to help stop the countless crimes in the world. He explains
that many of the bans that we have tried just don’t work anymore, and that we
need to try something else or these laws are just going to keep failing. However, Susan Milligan, says that we do need
the ban on weapons. In her article, “We Need Gun Control to Stop More than
Criminals” She states that whether it’s a ban on certain weapons, or a ban on
all weapons, we need them to stop all of the deaths caused by gun violence. She
also states that not all deaths with guns happen from criminals that managed to
get his hand on a gun. It can happen from anyone, including accidents from an
adolescent getting a hold of one, a toddler seeing one on a bed and thinking
it’s a toy, and many others. Both articles are strong at certain points, trying
to get their points across from different ways. Gresham states his point across
clearly, while Milligan mulls around in her examples before starting in on her
own point. However, Tom Gresham’s article is stronger because he states certain
facts in the article.
Gresham starts off his article explaining the tragedy
of Sandy Hook, and what we are trying to do now after this tragedy rose up. He
states, “In the wake of the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook school in
Connecticut, America has been deluged with calls for ever-more-restrictive
gun-control laws, and that's understandable. It's natural to think that's the
solution if you don't know these measures have been tried and have always
failed.” He explains that this does happen, when it may not really happen in
fact. If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, then you may just think the
solution is easy or even that there is a solution. But if you know it doesn’t
work, then we don’t have a solution.
Milligan uses
examples as well to pull her reader in. She uses accidental shootings like a
kid bringing a shotgun in a musical instrument case to school or the man in
Florida that shot a man in a theater for texting. Using these examples is
enough to pull the readers in and start to explain their take on the issues, telling
us her own proposal of the solution that she is offering. Her examples are well
thought out since they are very recent, however, she doesn’t prove her point
until the very end, therefore just giving us a thought without giving us her
notion. Gresham goes in for the kill with one example, hooking us at the very
beginning, while Milligan puts hers in the middle to get more of an appeal with
the readers. Each of the authors have a strong appeal by beginning with these
examples, but Gresham makes more sense because he already jumps to his point
instead of milling around in the article like Milligan does.
The two authors also use a variety of different
fallacies in their articles to try and pull the readers in. Gresham starts off
with the popular ad baculum fallacy when he starts to explain the rule of
banning semi-automatic weapons. “Semiautomatics have been around for more than
100 years. President Teddy Roosevelt hunted with a semiautomatic rifle, as do
millions of hunters today.” He tells us that Teddy Roosevelt hunted with a
semiautomatic rifle, and since Teddy Roosevelt was indeed a president,
semiautomatic weapons should be okay to use, which is an illogical point. Just
because he used them doesn’t mean that they are okay to use in any way.
In Gresham’s article, he states that we want to do
something, but we just don’t know how. He tells the readers, “We all want to do
something, but it is foolish and wasteful to return to a policy with a clear
record of failure.” All of these bans and rules we have for guns just aren’t
working and there’s no way that they will. His article has a very strong point
of view, and with his examples and his tone, he strengthens his own opinion by pointing
out what he believes. With his tone, you believe that he knows what he is
talking about and that we should listen to him. He has clear examples and a
clear choice of words, making his argument stronger. However, Gresham uses his own fallacy no true
Scotsman because he believes that what he is saying is the truth. He states, “Semiautomatics
have been around for more than 100 years. President Teddy Roosevelt hunted with
a semiautomatic rifle, as do millions of hunters today.” So does this mean that
semi-automatics are okay? Does it mean that we should have them around? He doesn’t
explain his reason for this very well. His main point in his article is not to
ban semi-automatics or just ban guns all together, but better educate people
about gun safety and gun control. In the article, “Assaulting Gun Owners And
Freedoms,” written by William P. Hoar, he states that no one really understands
what assault weapons really are. “The would-be
banners of weapons can’t even properly define the firearms they want to outlaw,
often falling back on terms such as “assault weapons,” which evoke(misleadingly
and purposefully) images of military machine-guns capable of full automatic
fire,” (Hoar). Semi-automatic guns are military based guns without the ability
of rapid fire. In example, with a twelve gauge shotgun you can shoot, but you have
to chamber a shell, which takes a good five seconds, therefore it cannot count
as an assault weapon. Assault weapons have the ability to just pull the trigger
and the gun will shoot out as many bullets as it can in one magazine. You don’t
have to keep reloading it and cocking it. We hear the word semi-automatic and
immediately think it’s an assault weapon when it isn’t. We shouldn’t take them
out of our hands for good, but we should teach others what to do and what not
to do to keep the violence and death toll from guns down.
Milligan’s main point into her article is, “Ban guns
and only criminals will have guns, we are told. Put restrictions on gun
ownership, or require people to undergo background checks first, and we will
only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns for protection, gun
rights advocates say. They are right on
both counts. But it would still prevent a great many murders.” This is true,
but will it prevent a great many murders? She uses the fallacy begging the
question stating that all of this will prevent a great many murders. But will
it? Rhonda McMillan wrote about how banning certain guns would be able to help
control the problems that we have today. In her article “Banning Assault
Weapons”, she states, “regulation of military type assault weapons is clearly
constitutionally permissive,” while also stating that it “does not raise any
serious constitutional questions than legislation by state and federal
government to regulate sawed-off shotguns, ‘Saturday night specials,’ machine
guns and as enacted in the 100th Congress, undetectable plastic
firearms.” This helps Milligan’s article
by stating the certain types of weapons that need to be banned. While her
article is strong by using examples and by stating her thesis, she still has
some trouble. Her tone sounds like it should be strong, but at the same time
it’s not and we don’t really know what she is talking about at the moment. If
she had a bit more information and her tone evoking the confidence she has,
then maybe the article would be strong enough that more people will read and
understand what she is stating.
Both Gresham and Milligan use examples in their
articles to help out their appeal. Unfortunately, while they both have
examples, Milligan has almost too many that don’t really help her claim, and Gresham
only has one, but it helps him state it very clearly. Gresham immediately
starts off with Sandy Hook as his example. Sandy Hook is still very popular
today because of the tragedy of losing twenty kids and six adults that didn’t
deserve a thing but to have fun and teach. We still talk about it today and
it’s still in our hearts. Gresham takes this one example to start and pull us
in to his claim, wanting us to think that he has a good point when he’s talking
about this. Milligan uses the same concept with her examples, and she uses many
more, but her examples are vaguer. We don’t know when they happened or what
actually happened and any of the other details that we need. Granted, she
explains her examples and what they would think of it, but she still doesn’t
give us enough to look into the article, and see her point. She doesn’t even
explain her claim until the very end of the article, which doesn’t help her.
With everything going on, now including the USC:
Columbia murder-suicide that locked the campus down, gun control is now
pressing into our main arguments. We don’t know whether to ban guns completely
or not, ban certain weapons or not, and many other questions. Gresham and
Milligan both reason with the thought of gun control, one being for and the
other against. Each author has viable examples and points to their articles,
bringing the audience in and trying to get us to side with them. Gun control is
very serious, and I think that certain guns should be banned, but we shouldn’t
take the right to bear arms away from us. I come from a gun bearing family, I
know how to shoot a gun and my family, and soon I, own concealed weapons
permits. We only have these to protect ourselves from people out there, so our
rights shouldn’t be taken away. Gresham’s article is strong and pulls you in
immediately, while Milligan’s mills around but has a strong point. I agree with
both of them but I am more toward Gresham’s because what he states is true. Gun
control has been an on and off topic for a while and it still seems to fail.
Gun control will be one of those serious topics for a while, but what we do
with it may or may not work. We just have to try and see where it all goes.
Works Cited
Gresham, Tom. "Gun Control Has a Clear Record of
Failure." The Columbus Dispatch. N.p., 6 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2015
Hoar, William P. "Assaulting Gun Owners And
Freedoms." New American (08856540) 29.7 (2013): 41-43. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
McMillion, Rhonda. "Banning Assault
Weapons." ABA Journal 76.8 (1990): 110. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16
Feb. 2015.
Milligan, Susan. "We Need Gun Control to Stop
More Than Criminals." US News. U.S.News & World Report, 16 Jan. 2014.
Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
Opfer, Chris. "What's the Difference between a
Semi-automatic Weapon and a Machine Gun?" HowStuffWorks.
HowStuffWorks.com, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
"25 Deadliest Mass Shootings in U.S.
History." CNN. Cable News Network, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.
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