Article Review Change Your Gun Laws, America - 1130 Words

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 â€Å"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†¦show more content†¦He does not attribute either of these issues to America’s elevated gun homicide rate because these illnesses and graphic images are not unique to the American people. The difference in gun homicide rates between the United States and other countries is a result of America’s looser restrictions on who may own and carry guns (Zakaria). Zakaria closes his opinion piece by saying, â€Å"It is not an act of fate that has caused 150,000 Americans to die over the past 14 years. It is a product of laws, court decisions, lobbying and pandering politicians. We can change it† (Zakaria). He utilizes his many strengths as a journalist to influence the reader towards a viewpoint similar to his own. These strengths include the use of concrete facts and statistics, addressing multiple theories that could falsify his stance, and personal touches throughout the article. Seeing the numbers and stats around an issue made it easier to quantify the vastness of this issue. Zakaria also ensured that he touched on many different models that could be used to disagree with him, such as the connection between mental illness and violence, and utilized them in his favor. Ending the article with â⠂¬Å"we can change it† creates an atmosphere in which the reader feels like they can now make a difference using the new information they just acquired. He does fail, however, to outline specifically how the issue can be addressed and changed. Leaving the article open ended to change may have also left the