Navy Yard Shooting Summary

Former President Barack Obama performed a speech in response to a mass shooting that happened in a community college in Oregon. This speech included other gun related incidents which occurred during his time in office in 2015 regarding Umpqua Community College and Roseburg. After giving his condolences and love to those who felt loss in their hearts, Obama gave a powerful argument regarding gun control and how we, as Americans, should fight and strive for better gun laws. While Obama gave a moving speech, I could not help but feel it fell short in its argument while conducting a thorough critique. Obama appealed to his audience utilizing pathos and ethos with ease but fell short for those in the audience looking for logos or specific facts within his performance. I will be taking this opportunity to delve further into an analysis of this speech and both its heights and pitfalls.

Another article looks at the Tucson shooting where six individuals were killed as an example (Kaveny, 2016). While the author agrees that the constitution protects the rights of gun owners, she makes the argument that semiautomatic weapons were not what the founding fathers had in mind though and that these type of weapons should not be allowed to be owned by the public (Kaveny, 2016). The author also believes that it would be beneficial to have to obtain a license to own firearms and to purchase insurance for possible damages along with further funding for mental health patients to help keep these mass shootings from happening again (Kaveny, 2016).

The debate over gun control is not a new argument, neither is the existence of mental illness. There have been those who support and those who oppose gun control for many years. What has recently re-ignited the debate is an increase in mass shootings over the past few decades; one in particular is the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre. Incidents, such as this, fuel anger and fear, driving many to question the need for firearms in modern society, while others cite these incidents as a reason for remaining armed. The purpose of gun control is to limit the amount of violence in today’s

In “After Tucson: Why are the mentally ill still bearing arms?,” author Nathan Thornburgh (2011) discusses the January 8, 2011 shooting of 19 people at a political event in Tucson, Arizona which left six dead and congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded. Thornburgh is quick to dismiss gun control and gun rights advocates’ reactions to the event but instead focuses solely on gunman, Jared Loughner’s, mental illness. Specifically, Thornburgh blames college officials, and other organizations for not reporting their contacts with Loughner, and blames the lack of compliance by states with laws regarding the reporting of mental illness to a federal database. Thornburgh fails to provide proof that Loughner was mentally ill, and does

In this lengthy article “Guns Don’t Kill People, the Mentally Ill Do,” that was published in the Townhall Daily, the author, Ann Coulter, argues about a major prevailing issue today, gun control. She believes the problem isn’t the guns themselves, but the mentally disturbed people. Coulter credits the declining mental health system as the main setback. She supports her argument by providing tragic examples from mass shootings that took place in the past. One example was the 2011 shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona where the shopping mall shooter, Jared Loughner was so obviously disturbed that he stated “If I stay long enough to make the

Metzl, Jonathan M., and Kenneth T. MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of

The article was originally published in 2013, a year after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which was a mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults. This tragedy leads to high concerns about what can possibly be done to prevent this from happening again. Although gun control debates have been occurring for centuries, in recent debates they have become even more heated due to the many incidents of gun violence. In Simon’s article, she brought more tension and views to help delegate what needs to be done to stop the violence in the country rather than leave it

In “Talking About Mental Health After a Mass Shootings is a Cop-out” (2017), Fareed Zakaria justifies the idea that the main issue causing mass shootings is a “cop-out”. Zakaria elucidates this assertion by explaining that mass shootings are unjustly blamed on mental health rather than guns or the intentions of the person, as well as providing data that supports the idea that “gun violence across the United States find a similarly tight correlation” (6). He uses facts derived from reliable data, that observe the relation of gun violence to gun laws, in order to convince the audience of the real issue, leading people to start blaming the real problem rather than mental health. Zakaria addresses those who unreasonably blame mental health because

In the article “ shooting our way out of a gun epidemic” (2017), Renee Graham claims that gun violence in America has reached another level. Graham supports her claim by making various references the the many mass shootings, comments made by our president and previous president. Renee explains that legislators should now regret voting to expand the right to carry concealed weapons. Graham goes on to say that after this vote by the house of representatives, the worst mass shooting in modern history in Las vegas and soon after a churchgoer in texas took place. The author’s purpose is to argue that america has become very trigger happy due to the stress of the right to carry an concealed weapon. She also mentions that congress has done nothing

Guns are one of the most controversial and debated-upon topics in America today. In the Constitution, Americans are given “the right to bear arms,” and many Americans are proud of and believe strongly in that right. Though, that right has been constantly misused. Homicides by gun are at a higher rate in the United States than any other country in the world, mass shootings are at an all time high (many of which have occurred in the past two years alone), and terrorism has been at an all-time high. So, naturally, it is a topic that needs to be discussed. In the articles Change Your Gun Laws, America (1), author Fareed Zakaria provides the readers with some harrowing statistics on guns and insight over how the U.S. laws on guns need to be managed.

In the United States, the media tends to only highlight violence that is occurring overseas when in reality gun violence has escalated to new heights in our own country. During recent years, gun-related homicides have plagued the United States, and many innocent citizens have been killed due to this accumulation of gun violence. Because gun control is a very controversial topic, writers who choose to address this emotional topic must use the appropriate tone when forming their arguments in order to better persuade their audience. Recently, Nicholas Kristof and President Obama

Charles W. Collier’s article, “Gun Control in America: An Autopsy Report”, dives into the controversial topic of gun ownership and gun control in the United States. He uses recent shootings, including the George Zimmerman case and the Connecticut elementary

Slowly and steadily stealing into our lives like a shadowy hoard from the burning bowels of the earth, the fiery debate on gun control threatens to rend our country in two. Both sides often point deadly fingers at motives and character instead of arguments. Beliefs, founded and unfounded, range widely across the board. On one side of this treacherous issue, Mark Follman penned an article for Mother Jones titled “More Guns, More Mass Shootings – Coincidence?” in an attempt to destroy the pro-gun position. However, because he based upon a flawed worldview and some faulty logic, Follman comes to incorrect conclusions.

When I spent two weeks in Spain with a host family, the first interaction my little Spanish brother had with me was with his hands in the universal sign for a gun, chanting “U.S.A.” as he fired his fake guns into the air. Gun rights, gun regulations, and the importance of the Second Amendment are all topics that are pertinent to the safety of the citizens of the United States. Fareed Zakaria, a renowned journalist and author for CNN and the Washington Post, lays out his concerns for the way Americans view our Second Amendment right in an opinion post. Contrastingly, UCLA and Harvard professor and political scientist James Q. Wilson describes why gun control is not and will not be able to impede any shootings, such as the Virginia Tech

It is interesting to see and reveal the misconceptions of President Obama’s motive to the speech for more gun control and how politicians and individuals are stressing an emotional and safety concern.  Within this political environment, and with a charismatic and persuasive use of the pentads, the rhetor’s motive was to implement legislation regarding gun control.