Ben Sorensen

English 1A

Fleishcer

MWF 9-9:50

9 March 2014

Do Guns Kill or do People Kill

            Within the past few years, there have been an ample amount of debates dealing with gun control. It’s usually someone of a conservative mindset that advocates for minimal gun control, whereas those who have a more liberal frame of mind usually want to get guns out of Americans’ possession and terminate the 2^nd amendment which protects the right for individuals to keep and bear arms. Me being a to-the-bone conservative, I feel very passionate about this topic and wanted to learn more. I chose 3 texts; one being a very pro gun control academic journal, the second is and ad from the The Looking Spoon defending the NRA, and the third is a song against gun control. I will be comparing and contrasting these texts as well as giving a personal analysis of all 3.

            The first text that I chose was an academic article, and a difficult one to read to say the least. It was written by a man named Simon Chapman and is called Guns Don’t Die. People Do. I would like to start off by saying that this man is not even an American. He is from Australia where gun control is heavily in effect. He also has extremely liberal views on gun laws. Nonetheless, he wrote a very infotmative article. Unlike my other two genres of text, his article is very formal. It is formatted into columns and looks like it was taken from a newspaper. Where in fact, it was an article from the British Medical Journal.

            As I said before the writer displays a very liberal tone in this article. Chapman states facts explaining that Australia and Japan have the most heavily regulated gun control laws and also have the least number of gun related deaths. The tone in his article is very different from the tone of my other 2 texts. The other two aren’t as formal and take a completely opposite view of the topic.

            The language and writing style that he uses is very formal and informative. The article’s purpose is to inform people about gun control and the effects of people having access to guns, however there is a very liberal undertone to it. For instance, chapman states “…the astonishing things about the gun control debate in the US is the way that the gun lobby here is succeeding in arguing that possessing guns actually ‘reduces’

 Violent crime and death.” This statement has implications that Americans are wrong when stating that we believe crime is reduced when law-abiding citizens posses guns.

            My second genre of text that I chose to analyze was a picture from The Looking Spoon, in defense of the National Rifle Association, or NRA.

Unlike the first text, this one is a picture and has a completely different layout. As you can see it’s an ad explaining that hammers killed more people than guns did in 2011. It is very informal and kind of plays a condescending joke on the liberals who think that guns are the root to all evil.

           

Like I said the tone is a very condescending one, however effective because of it. The first genre of text that I chose had a very formal and informative tone. The text is still informative, only in a different manner. Its purpose is to explain that its not guns that do the killing, its the people pulling the trigger. The ad’s intended viewer is the people who advocate for gun control as it shows them that guns aren’t the bad things. The joke is that we should ban hammers because they evidently kill more people than guns do.

            The third and final genre that I chose was a song called Guns by Justin Moore. This is in the format of a song, and the tone is very personal. Moore sings about how it is his right to bear arms and it is necessary to do so. One of the lines in the songs goes “If we don’t have em’ what will we do tell me where we gonna go somebody break into my house I'm gonna need my colt 44.”

            Again, I feel like the target audience for this song is the people who try and promote gun control. The purpose is to explain to these people that it’s a right for us Americans to bear arms and you can’t take that away. Moore also sings about how people should focus more on drug dealers selling crack on the streets instead of harping on good Americans for doing something well within their constitutional rights.

            I think that in order for a particular text to be effective, it must be clear and concise. It can’t be something that is hard to understand for its target audience otherwise that would render it completely ineffective. It also must convey a meaningful message. Someone isn’t going to care if they see and ad that says smoking is bad. Now if they see an ad that displays the number of deaths caused by smoking then it might have a little bit of a stronger effect on its target audience.

           

Out of the three texts that I chose, I feel like the most effective one is the ad defending the NRA. It’s especially effective in 3 ways; first being that it is true. The second reason is that it is funny because it stresses the fact that guns get such a bad reputation and are a terrible, terrible thing in the eyes of some, whereas hammers, a common household tool have caused more deaths. The 3^rd reason why it’s effective is because it catches your eye. The poster has a nice display of an assault rifle right next to a hammer with the number of deaths caused by each object under it.

            The text that I found to be the least effective was the academic article. This was also very ineffective for three good reasons; first being that the author doesn’t give the other side of his argument. He makes claims about how Australia has the least amount of deaths from guns because they have the most gun control. Now this may be true, however, according to freerepublic.com, Australia also happens to have the most burglaries/breaking and entering’s among every other nation in the world. We gun-supporting Americans just like to protect what’s ours at all costs. The second reason why this article is ineffective is because the author isn’t even American. The article is about American gun control and is written by an Australian man so it’s obviously going to have bias. Hell, he opens up the damn article with a quote saying; “‘We must stop walking down the American path of gun culture.’” this quote implies that Americans are doing something wrong when it comes to gun culture. The third reason why this article is ineffective is because the British Medical Journal publishes it. I have personally never heard of the BMJ and I'm sure most Americans haven’t. This article has no concern with the British so I don’t understand why it would be in their medical journal.

           

In general, I do believe that most of the texts we read do have an impact on our society and us as individuals. These very 3 texts that I chose have impacted my outlook on gun control. The academic journal gave me insight of someone with an opposing view. I learned about the different statistics and opinions of the opposition. Not only did this ensure my belief in the right to bear arms, however it has strengthened it and motivated me to take action upon this issue. The song and advertisement made me realize that there are concrete reasons as to why I support the second amendment.