The article that seemed to have the most appealing claim was “Government Should Create Stricter Gun Laws” written by Megan Weintraut for the Itahacan at Ithaca College. To get her point across, Weintraut uses plenty of logos, along with some ethos, to try to persuade her audience. Overall, I feel as though Weintraut went for tactics that were more on the safe side rather than risky, providing points that were difficult to argue with but left the audience clueless about what to do about the situation.
Solely upon reading the headline of the article, it is obvious that Weintraut is not content with the current status of the United States’ gun/violence situation. That being said, it can be assumed that her intended audience is not only anyone in the Ithaca area but any American being that we are all affected by these laws. In general, I believe that Weintraut did a good job at bringing evidence to the surface, causing her audience to begin questioning the situation, but not enough to make them want to do anything about it.
In the first paragraph, Weintraut does not hesitate to jump into her first reason: the laws are outdated and therefore, irrelevant to today’s society. Her inclusion of the 2nd Amendment, “A well regulated militia, being necessary of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” was a good tactic to gain her audience’s instant attention. People tend to forget the reasons why most of our laws today were first created and just accept them rather than question their existence. By including a small history lesson, Weintraut forces her audience to become conscious of the time period when it was created, instantly dating it, and causing them to doubt its relevancy. (Par. 1)
She does, however, acknowledge the reasons why people would want to own a gun, most claiming self defense, but counters it by bringing up our “diverse and organized military services” and “law enforcement agencies”. Her argument is that we have people to do it for us so why bother but she lacks ideas of what to do about the people who currently own guns. We can’t just take the guns away from them so what should we do about it? I feel like if she were to give us examples of ways our guns laws should be improved, her argument would be more solid. (Par. 2)
As the reader gets further into the article, the use of logos becomes most noticeable. Weintraut hits her audience with statistics and more logical reasons why owning a gun is not as necessary as it used to be. By using statements such as, “…in 2006, firearms were involved in 68 percent of murders, and more than 90 percent of today’s gang-related homicides involve guns, Weintraut easily captures the attention of the American people. (Par. 3)
Towards the end of the article, she leans away from logos and focuses more on ethos. She tries to inject her audience with fear by saying that federal laws do not restrict the types and number of guns one can own after they turn 21. In her favor, it helps that she wrote this article soon after the recent Arizona shooting and includes that in her article. By mentioning this shooting along with Virginia Tech, and Columbine High School, Weintraut tries to get her audience to become aware of how easily situations such as these can happen again because of how broad our laws are. (Par. 5, Par. 6)
Throughout the article, Weintraut was pretty consistent in her argument. However, a line I had the most trouble with in her article that I felt invalidated the entire purpose of her claim was the following:
“Instead of minimizing the number of arms available to the public, the “sensible” argument would be to eliminate gun violence by providing more guns to the public.” (Par. 3)
I found no purpose in that statement at all. In fact, it continues to throw me off every time I reread it. As a whole, the article seems to be against the general body owning guns but this one line has me questioning its purpose. Does she really believe that anyone should be able to own a gun, even though she had just given the audience the statistics I provided earlier just one sentence earlier? Was she being sarcastic? Maybe it’s just me not understanding it correctly but I feel like this one line holds so much importance because it counters everything she claims to be going for. The fact that she does not elaborate on this statement makes me suspect whether she even meant to have it in the article.
Taken as a whole, this “Government Should Create Stricter Gun Laws” was not as strong as it could have been. Weintraut made very valid points and provided good evidence to back up her opinions but her examples were not strong enough to motivate her audience to do act upon the issue. She also did not state what type of gun laws the government should consider creating. If Weintraut were to give alternative gun laws she believed would be more effective and was able to back them up, her argument would be taken a lot more seriously.
