Rhetorical Analysis Of Our Blind Spot About Guns, By Nicholas Kristof

In his article “Our Blind Spot about Guns,” Nicholas Kristof argues for making guns safer for the people who use them by bringing up the comparison of guns to cars; “Cars don’t kill people. People kill people,” (261). Kristof’s purpose is to address the fact that guns are not as safe as they should be and are the cause of thousands of deaths each year. Although his ideas for increasing gun safety are interesting, there is a shortcoming in the comparisons he used. In order to make a stronger argument, one must use literary devices. In this case, Kristof used ethos, pathos, logos, and additional rhetorical devices.

Kristof uses Antanaclasis or the repetition of words or phrases using a play on words: “This saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year and is a model of

what we should do with guns in America.” (162). “A century ago, we reacted to deaths and injuries from unregulated vehicles by imposing sensible safety measures that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives a year.” (164). This makes the reader blind to the fact that his whole article is based on one idea and comparison. At one point, he stops emphasizing the fact that guns are dangerous and need more regulation. He does state that vehicle fatalities were decreased by regulating cars and not confiscating them altogether. He uses this to compare vehicle regulations to gun control, but isn’t there enough enforcement on guns already? Kristof argues that guns simply need to be regulated with better methods. With these methods, Kristof appeals to logic. It is obvious that one would be safer by adding a trigger lock to a gun, thumbprint recognition
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software, or even a type of smart feature, but the problem with this is that there are millions of people who already own guns without this technology. Take a look at history; humans don’t like to adapt well to new ideas or enforcements. Not only that but the guns in existence have the ability to shoot eight hundred rounds per minute and more. With that being said, neither the government nor gun experts can expect to throw out these new technologies and expect everyone who owns a firearm to utilize them. That just won’t happen. Is it really logical to think that a terrorist will put a “smart” feature on their firearm? Yes; In a perfect world, but the horrible acts of humankind have shown us that we are not, nor will be, in that “perfect” world.
Kristof uses analogy by stating “Cars don’t kill people. People kill people.” but one can’t exactly compare cars to guns other than the materials used on both are similar (261). Imagine Joe is plotting to kill Tom from the office for whatever reason. A car will most definitely not be his first choice weapon, as it can be stopped in just a few seconds. But everyone knows that a man with a gun is a man with power, therefore, Joe will use a gun because he cannot be easily stopped. Once the bullet from his gun leaves the barrel nothing can stop it. Why use the comparison of guns and cars if guns were actually made to kill people in war, while cars were only invented to transport? To obliterate his analogy, a gun is much more powerful and sensitive than a car in the way that any individual can pull the trigger and cause an enormous amount of damage to a victim. While a car is just as powerful, it is not as fast as a gun; A car can cause a large amount of damage, but more effort is required. To emphasize, it takes more time to get a car “ready” to kill than it takes for a gun to be shot.
In any terms, Kristof’s weaknesses outweighed the strengths in that he repeated himself indirectly to make it seem as if he were writing new topics for his argument.

One of his strengths was the use of rhetorical devices to address his arguments, but the weakness of this was that he had flawed

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comparisons. He brought up very interesting ways to regulate guns and make them safer, but they would not be as effective as one might think. Just that now is too late for these gun regulations to function properly. He said that the steps he gave won’t eliminate gun deaths but certainly will decrease the amount of deaths as much as a seat belt does to people on cars (164).

In conclusion, Kristof’s arguments had flawed ideas about regulating guns because as we have seen before, a background check will not stop a man from shooting his entire family, and a gun lock will not stop a terrorist from shooting innocent people. As was said in this writing, his comparison of a gun to a car was flawed in the way that a gun has much more power over man than a car does. Vehicles were invented for transportation over long distances, while a gun was made for killing. This doesn’t compare to a vehicle in any

way.