9 June 2014
Response: Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of Guns
Molly Ivins, a liberal columnist who was made famous by picking fun at her home state of Texas and mocking politicians, battled breast cancer before she died in 2007. Although her essay, Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Ride of Guns is over a decade old, her words are still a hot topic today. Molly Ivin’s essay takes on the gun control debate, engaging the audience with a sarcastic perspective that leaves them asking themselves if they just read an entertaining satire or a convincing and thoughtful piece. Even though good points were made as to the reason why guns are bad, not everything was easy to agree with.
Molly Ivins supports her reasoning to get rid of guns with entertaining exaggerations, some confusing back and forth views, but also her humor and momentum. She begins by emphasizing she is not “anti-gun”( Paragraph 2). Immediately after that she makes sure to announce she is “pro-knife”, this was the first ripple in the water that confused me as a reader. Was she attacking the gun owners making fun of the expression bringing a knife to a gun fight? At first I thought she would have a similar view with the Mexican Restaurant, Chipotle. Boring yet safe Chipotle expressed their unbiased view by asking the gun owners to politely not bring assault rifles around them. In doing so they do not completely lose their gun owners sales. I think she was using a similar tactic to secure some readers from not just throwing the book away at first glance. Unless she was using this as a slap in the face to the gun owner’s stupidity and a quick chance to get a laugh from the “knife advocates”. Ivins continues with a view against guns and in favor of knives, which would “promote physical fitness” as she says a person would have to chase down their victim and catch up to them to stab them. She compares this to the obesity issue in the US by making fun at the relationship between lazy obese people
Cited: Vernick, Jon S. "Changing the Constitutional Landscape for Firearms: The US Supreme Court 's Recent Second Amendment Decisions." Changing the Constitutional Landscape for Firearms: The US Supreme Court 's Recent Second Amendment Decisions. (n.d.): n. pag. PCC Library. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Web. "The uninfringed; Guns and the Supreme Court." The Economist 3 July 2010: 29(US). Biography in Context. Web. 9 June 2014. "High Court to Rule on Washington Gun Ban." EBSCO HOST. Geelong Advertiser, 27 Nov. 2007. Web.