Shootings Gun control and the Virginia Tech massacre By Adam Gopnik The cell pho

Question

Shootings

Gun control and the Virginia Tech massacre

By Adam Gopnik

The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told that it was wrong to ask why. As the police cleared the bodies from the Virginia Tech engineering building, the cell phones rang, in the eccentric varieties of ring tones, as parents kept trying to see if their children were O.K. To imagine the feelings of the police as they carried the bodies and heard the ringing is heartrending; to imagine the feelings of the parents who were calling—dread, desperate hope for a sudden answer and the bliss of reassurance, dawning grief—is unbearable. But the parents, and the rest of us, were told that it was not the right moment to ask how the shooting had happened—specifically, why an obviously disturbed student, with a history of mental illness, was able to buy guns whose essential purpose is to kill people—and why it happens over and over again in America. At a press conference, Virginia’s governor, Tim Kaine, said, “People who want to . . . make it their political hobby horse to ride, I’ve got nothing but loathing for them. . . . At this point, what it’s about is comforting family members . . . and helping this community heal. And so to those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say take that elsewhere.”

If the facts weren’t so horrible, there might be something touching in the Governor’s deeply American belief that “healing” can take place magically, without the intervening practice called “treating.” The logic is unusual but striking: the aftermath of a terrorist attack is the wrong time to talk about security, the aftermath of a death from lung cancer is the wrong time to talk about smoking and the tobacco industry, and the aftermath of a car crash is the wrong time to talk about seat belts. People talked about the shooting, of course, but much of the conversation was devoted to musings on the treatment of mental illness in universities, the problem of “narcissism,” violence in the media and in popular culture, copycat killings, the alienation of immigrant students, and the question of Evil.

Some people, however—especially people outside America—were eager to talk about it in another way, and even to embark on a little crusade. The whole world saw that the United States has more gun violence than other countries because we have more guns and are willing to sell them to madmen who want to kill people. Every nation has violent loners, and they tend to have remarkably similar profiles from one country and culture to the next. And every country has known the horror of having a lunatic get his hands on a gun and kill innocent people. But on a recent list of the fourteen worst mass shootings in Western democracies since the nineteen-sixties the United States claimed seven, and, just as important, no other country on the list has had a repeat performance as severe as the first.

In Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, a gunman killed sixteen children and a teacher at their school. Afterward, the British gun laws, already restrictive, were tightened—it’s now against the law for any private citizen in the United Kingdom to own the kinds of guns that Cho Seung-Hui used at Virginia Tech—and nothing like Dunblane has occurred there since. In Quebec, after a school shooting took the lives of fourteen women in 1989, the survivors helped begin a gun-control movement that resulted in legislation bringing stronger, though far from sufficient, gun laws to Canada. (There have been a couple of subsequent shooting sprees, but on a smaller scale, and with far fewer dead.) In the Paris suburb of Nanterre, in 2002, a man killed eight people at a municipal meeting. Gun control became a key issue in the Presidential election that year, and there has been no repeat incident.

So there is no American particularity about loners, disenfranchised immigrants, narcissism, alienated youth, complex moral agency, or Evil. There is an American particularity about guns. The arc is apparent. Forty years ago, a man killed fourteen people on a college campus in Austin, Texas; this year, a man killed thirty-two in Blacksburg, Virginia. Not enough was done between those two massacres to make weapons of mass killing harder to obtain. In fact, while campus killings continued—Columbine being the most notorious, the shooting in the one-room Amish schoolhouse among the most recent—weapons have got more lethal, and, in states like Virginia, where the N.R.A. is powerful, no harder to buy.

Reducing the number of guns available to crazy people will neither relieve them of their insanity nor stop them from killing. Making it more difficult to buy guns that kill people is, however, a rational way to reduce the number of people killed by guns. Nations with tight gun laws have, on the whole, less gun violence; countries with somewhat restrictive gun laws have some gun violence; countries with essentially no gun laws have a lot of gun violence. (If you work hard, you can find a statistical exception hiding in a corner, but exceptions are just that. Some people who smoke their whole lives don’t get lung cancer, while some people who never smoke do; still, the best way not to get lung cancer is not to smoke.)

It’s true that in renewing the expired ban on assault weapons we can’t guarantee that someone won’t shoot people with a semi-automatic pistol, and that by controlling semi-automatic pistols we can’t reduce the chances of someone killing people with a rifle. But the point of lawmaking is not to act as precisely as possible, in order to punish the latest crime; it is to act as comprehensively as possible, in order to prevent the next one. Semi-automatic Glocks and Walthers, Cho’s weapons, are for killing people. They are not made for hunting, and it’s not easy to protect yourself with them. (If having a loaded semi-automatic on hand kept you safe, cops would not be shot as often as they are.)

Rural America is hunting country, and hunters need rifles and shotguns—with proper licensing, we’ll live with the risk. There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun. At some point, that simple truth will register. Until it does, phones will ring for dead children, and parents will be told not to ask why.

Answer following questions explaining how you reach at your answer

Question 1: how does the author achieve his purpose in the above essay?

Question 2: What assumptions underline the author’s reasoning?

Question 3: what is interpretive understanding of the essay? How are the ideas related to each other? What conclusion can be drawn from the essay?

Question 4: Write an accurate summary of author’s arguments.

Question 5: Identify the parts of the argument, assumptions, and the specific kind of argument that is presented in this essay?

Questions 6: Write a critical evaluation of the arguments in the essay by applying the standards of evaluation.

Question 7: critical evaluation based on whatever applicable from the list

facts, onions, assumptions, hidden assumptions, deductive arguments, inductive arguments, evaluating relationship between premises, conclusion {necessity, sufficiency and relevance}, evaluate language, source: {bias/Prejudice}, fallacies).

Explanation / Answer

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily.

(Answer) (1) The author’s underlying purpose is to make the reader understand that gun-control will not create a utopian society. However, he states through his research that, the lives lost prematurely due to gun-massacres will reduce drastically.

He proves his purpose by saying that, “Nations with tight gun laws have, on the whole, less gun violence; countries with somewhat restrictive gun laws have some gun violence; countries with essentially no gun laws have a lot of gun violence.”

(2) The author assumes that the best way to stop gun violence is to make it difficult or even impossible for people to get a gun. He supports his reasoning by saying that, “If you work hard, you can find a statistical exception hiding in a corner, but exceptions are just that. Some people who smoke their whole lives don’t get lung cancer, while some people who never smoke do; still, the best way not to get lung cancer is not to smoke.”

(3) The interpretative understanding of this essay is that one cannot expect the symptom of a problem to go away by simply offering condolence to the problem. It is good to be kind and emotional at a time like this, but tackling the issue is just as pivotal as grieving about it.

The ideas that the author tries to relate is that guns are not enough for protection. Otherwise, no policeman would ever die. He implies that a formidable democracy is required for the protection of the people. In a democracy, people should not be able to easily own killing machines. The only way a democracy can protect people is to make sure that people cannot easily kill each other.

Based on statistics, the conclusion can be drawn that, America’s problem with guns needs to be addressed immediately. Furthermore, it is not wise to shun the matter of treating the issue. In fact, it would be insensitive to be sensitive alone and not logical.

(4) The author talks about how authorities did not like talking about how to solve the issue of gun-violence right after the incident at Virginia Tech. He talks about how authorities shun the issue by saying that discussion of a solution is insensitive. However, the author describes that history and other countries have proved that a solution does not occur magically.

He talks about how laws of gun violence may not create a utopia, but will probably make parents end their children to school with a much lighter heart. In building this argument, the author outlines history and statistics of gun-violence around the world and the role of democracy in solving the issue.

(5) “If having a loaded semi-automatic on hand kept you safe, cops would not be shot as often as they are.”

“There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun.”

The author makes these statements to address the crux of the issue. This is the specific argument of this essay. We do not live in a society where “might is right.” We do not have to prove that we are able to kill each other in order to get our rights, achieve superiority or even protect ourselves. The human race lives in a safe society and we are not being chased by lions. Furthermore, America is a democracy. It is the kind of government where an autocratic leader cannot subjugate, enslave or even torture the people. So if the American lives in a protected environment under a government of the people, for the people and by the people, there is no reason for a common individual to own a gun.

(6) “Reducing the number of guns available to crazy people will neither relieve them of their insanity nor stop them from killing. Making it more difficult to buy guns that kill people is, however, a rational way to reduce the number of people killed by guns.”

The author makes this evaluation in the line above. Rightfully so, a crazy person will somehow manage to do a crazy thing. Perhaps, counseling individuals with mental illnesses should also be addressed equally and they too are a danger to society. However, if the perpetrator was pelting stones instead of shooting people that day, presumably fewer people would have died. There is no denying that the problem would not completely go away. Lung cancer would still exist in the society if cigarettes were banned. However, the number of lung cancer victims would be considerably less.

(7) “weapons have got more lethal, and, in states like Virginia, where the N.R.A. is powerful, no harder to buy.”

The author implies how it is easier to hold a shooting in Virginia. However, with lack of gun-control in every US state, and fewer border checks in between US states, this is a logical fallacy. Just like an individual with mental illness will find some way to be a menace (perhaps less lethal than shooting), a person from any other state too can easily get a gun. When it comes to gun-control, the US should not act separately like the legalisation of marijuana. This is not a state issue but rather an issue of the nation itself. No matter where the NRA is powerful, guns should be banned equally everywhere.

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