Argumentative Essay On Gun Related Violence

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It seems that frequently after a gun related tragedy gains national attention, there is an attempt to discuss what, if anything, we can do to address gun related violence in the United States. It’s a hard question to answer and one I have not fully formed an opinion about. Guns fundamentally change certain dynamics of violence. For example, they allow the weaker individual to fight the stronger, they allow violence to be committed from a distance, and they allow it to be instant. It is these changing dynamics that too often go unanswered in the discussion of a tragedy. Either we mistakenly presume the gun is fully responsible for the violence, or more often, fully innocent. We can see the problem a bit better by looking at a recent gun…show more content…
But guns change how people kill people, and they change how people view killing. When someone has a gun the question of how they respond to a situation changes, for better or worse, because they have an option that they didn’t have before. These changes are what we need to be discussing if we want to be able to advocate effectively for or against gun control. We need to ask ourselves questions like whether guns make individuals more or less inclined towards confrontation. The Sandy Hook shooting has led to more discussion about gun policy on social media than previous rampages. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report saying that gun policy accounted for almost 30 percent of discussions examined on blogs and Twitter in the three days the shooting. The report also states users advocating for gun control were more numerous than those defending current gun laws. I don’t know or believe that gun control could prevent tragedies like the Sandy Hook or Belcher shootings, but I do believe that a fear of gun control will prevent us from understanding them. Gun ownership is a cultural thing, and discussing whether gun control is right or wrong requires us to acknowledge this. We have to first be able to admit that gun ownership changes a person. Once we are able to do this we will be able to discuss how it changes a person, and whether this change is bad or

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