In the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, Adam Lanza, the shooter, murdered 20 children and 6 teachers. Some people look at this event as a terrible tragedy because it struck them emotionally that 20 children had died. While others look at this event as a tragedy because it is rare, one of kind and a freak accident that definitely do not happen every day, or even years. According to nces.ed.gov, the chance of a random shooting to occur at any elementary school in the U.S is 1 in 88,962, and the chance of any elementary child to get killed is roughly around 1 in 23 million, this is less than the chance of hitting a jackpot for an average lottery which is at 1 in 15 million. Wayne LaPierre, who is the National Rifle Association’s vice president, addressed the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in his speech “Transcript of speech on Newtown Shooting.” In his speech, he uses excessive amount of pathos to arouse his audience emotionally, and uses strong language with aggressive demeanor to convince the audience to agree with what he has to say. On the other hand, Sam Harris, an author of bestselling books and had his work discussed in major journals such as New York Times and Scientific American. In his article “The Riddle of the Gun”, he provides many statistical values and facts to neutralize people’s feelings towards the shooting. In this paper, I will compare each writer’s strategies and explain its effectiveness. In both articles respectively, the strategies LaPierre and Harris uses are effective towards their own audience but would not have worked the other way around. In LaPierre’s speech, one of the main strategies he uses is pathos while Harris uses logos, although they both worked well to their specific audie...
... middle of paper ...
...ss shooting or homicide, a human life or lives are lost. Although both of LaPierre’s and Harris’ compare and contrast strategy have worked well to their respective audiences, Harris’ comparison is more effective towards a wide audience than LaPierre’s because he provides a logic that is unanimously accepted by people.
One of the other main strategy LaPierre use in his speech is rhetorical questions, while Harris use it far less. A rhetorical question is a question designed to have one correct answer. LaPierre uses it to force his audience to think alike and agree with him and Harris uses it to establish his views and opinions to show the audience where he stands on the issue.
Last but not least, Harris did a better job in prolepsis than LaPierre since he had none. Prolepsis is when the author anticipates the opposition’s best argument and addressing it in advance.
Over the past years media has been overwhelmed with news about mass shootings happening around America and if mental illness is the primary cause of the violent act. On February 2014, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish published their article “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms” in the American Journal of Public Health that addresses the issue that mental illness has very little to do mass shootings which is commonly used on the aftermath of the shooting
Michael Moore’s documentary, “Bowling for Columbine,” attempts to expose the truth of gun violence in the United States of America. While his argument is persuasive, its impact is lessened with his use of logical fallacies, such as hasty generalization, post hoc, and appeal to doubtful authority. Moore’s film is thrillingly entertaining, but it is hard to look past the gaping holes in some of his logic.
To begin with the unemotional Cooke apathetically uses Kathleen Parker's quote that, “Nothing proposed in the gun-control debates would have prevented the mass killings of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School” (Cooke 1). While Gopnik on the other hand beautifully captures his audience in an emotional storm just thinking about dead students cellphones ringing while their terrified parents on the other end, “...desperate hope for a sudden answer and the bliss of reassurance, dawning grief - is unbearable” (Gopnik 1). But back comes debbie downer Cooke who surprisingly thinks that, “To wish to prevent Sandy Hook is an admirable and human instinct” (Cooke 5). However he then goes on to explain that chasing a solution will not fix anything. Leaving his audience will a sense of hopelessness that it could ever get
•Rhetorical question: Used in this particular rant to raise an inquiry up in the audience’s mind. The question is not expected to be answered, yet is a persuasion that enables the audience to comprehend what the rant is about. For instance, when Rick says, “did the Liberals get elected or were the Tories thrown out?” is a rhetorical question.
The tragedy that happened in Newton, Connecticut swept the world with a variety of emotions. Many individuals became angry or saddened by the tragedy. I think more of the individuals were angry of what happened to those 20 innocent children. Parents send their children to school thinking that they are safe but in this case ended in tragedy. I am going to discuss similarities and differences between two articles. I am also going to discuss how this shooting is a symbolic crime, how likely policy changes will be enacted and how unlikely they are to be enacted.
James Q. Wilson does an outstanding job at persuading his reader in his essay, “Just Take Away Their Guns.” Wilson cleverly instills fear into the reader while still establishing common ground and remaining unbiased throughout the entire essay. Aside from the lack of sources for his statistical evidence, he applies an exceptional amount of logic to the entire argument, which made the essay a very persuasive
In the cases of school shootings that took place at Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary, Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University, the media highly publicized the fact that the perpetrators were avid video gamers, but why is this important? The media want’s your attention and they are more than willing to say almost anything to get it. They reported that the perpetrators were avid gamers with the implication that there is a well establish connection between the two when there is not. They exploit the fear of parents and concerned citizens by not including relevant corresponding information in order to leave you more interested lea...
How long do we have to wait until we see another body laying down on the ground motionless in cause of gun control? The next one might be a brother or a sister, son or a daughter or any family member. This has to come to an end, Obama speaks his heart out in the speech saying “In the month since 20 precious children and six brave adults were violently taken from us at Sandy Hook Elementary, more than 900 of our fellow Americans have reportedly died at the end of a gun -- 900 in the past month. And every day we wait, that number will keep growing.” This quote presents a real life experience of the whole nation that touches the lives of millions of Americans. Obama effectively appeal to the audience emotions by mentioning the tremendous loss of the 20 precious children, the six brave adults, and the 900 of our fellow Americans. Obama also appeals to the audience’s emotions by using another real life example where he argues a serious situation about mass shooting happens in amusement places. Obama states in his speech “And that's what allowed the gunman in Aurora to shoot 70 people -- 70 people -- killing 12 in a matter of minutes. Weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater” This quote carries lots of emotions, how innocent citizens loss their lives in a matter of seconds. These machine guns
...ssibly help more than harm. Experience has taught me that when a child walks in fear of expressing their feelings they bottle up all of their emotions; simply because they’re afraid of the consequences. Teaching children to appropriately use and appreciate violent media will help them build confidence, “power, and selfhood.” (Jones 287) He successfully executes the use of rhetorical methods and offers solutions to the opposing viewpoint. Jones’ consistent use logical and emotional appeal entices the reader and effectively persuades; this clearly substantiates his deserving of the top persuasiveness prize.
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
In June of 2016, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States happens at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. In the aftermath of Sunday morning when covering the shooting, News 13 a local news channel from Orlando used pathos in their news to create fear about terrorism to the audience. On the other hand, The New York Times used eyewitness videos and expert interviews to appeal logic.
Family environment and the press are two major influences resulting in the recent tragic school shootings. As much as society continues to focus the killing rampages on factors such as television and music, what children are exposed to in reality contributes to the violence. The most recent school shooting in Michigan involved a six-year-old first grader who killed a classmate with a .22 caliber pistol. The news coverage had vanished after two or three days, and I was left wondering what had happened. Considering the fact that the media wore the Columbine incident out, I wanted to know why they did not pay more attention to this school shooting. As evidence did arrive, it was discovered that the child lived in a household where cocaine, heroin, and many other illegal drugs were commonplace. Also in this “home” guns were easily accessible to the child. Children growing up in this type of environment certainly are likely to be held accountable for future violence. Even though I am against the news media presenting too much school violence, Americans should have been deeply disturbed by this shooting because of the child’s young age. The Michigan shooting should have enlightened Americans to the dilemma we face in this country. Two weeks after the Columbine High School shooting, information on the mass murder was still being broadcast on television. The press was feeding young viewers ideas on how to kill their classmates. News was reported how the teenage murderers acquired information regarding building bombs, obtaining guns, smuggling guns into the school, and proceeding to kill their classmates. A mentally unstable teenager could simply watch these news reports and write a book entitled, “How to Slay Your Classmates”. This onslaught was ridiculous and the news coverage should not have been permitted to continue for countless weeks. Society has determined three reasons on which to blame the shootings. First, the nation blamed it on television’s violent programs. Following that, Americans gave the music recording companies the evil eye as well as attacking the gun manufacturers. All of these reasons involve material objects that are unable to think for themselves. Televisions and CD players do not control themselves, people control them. Finally, boundaries controlling the television programs children view should be set by the parents. The same explanation applies to firearms. How can it be a gun’s fault that a person killed another human being?
Consequently, “In recent years, tragedies involving mass killings in the US, such as The Aurora, CO movie theatre shooting in July 2012, and the Newton, CT has intensified social focus on trying to understand the dynamics and contributing factors that underlie such events”(Towers 2). Both of these shooting left the public shocked and concerned. As an article says one of the main concerns was “concern with the publics understanding of the shooting specifically who or what did the public blame” (Joslyn, and Do...
Authors use rhetorical strategies to express themes in their writing. Different rhetorical strategies help convey different themes with varying degrees of effectiveness. One way to measure the effectiveness is to rhetorical analyze two pieces of writing to each other and see which is best.
The television comes on everyone puts their hand to their mouth in shock. Another mass killing has happened. As a nation we feel this is happening more than it used to, but how much is it really happening? The images of Newtown, Aurora and Virginia Tech are burned into the minds of Americans. Since 2006, there has been more than 200 mass killings in America (Overburg). Newtown, Aurora and Virginia Tech capture the nations attention, but similar bloody scenes happen with alarming frequency and much less scrutiny (Overburg). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) qualify a mass killing as the death of four people or more. With gun control and mental illness becoming a large topic due to these mass killings USA Today set out to find out who commits these killings, the weapons they use and the forces that motivates them. USA Today examined FBI and local police data and found that mass killings in America happen far more often than the government reports. Also the circumstances surrounding the killings are far more particular than most people think.