In “shootings”, Adam Gopnik speaks about a shooting that took place in Virginia Tech Engineering building, and how the parents of the victims were told that it was not the right moment to ask questions. Gopnik also gives his points of view on how the shooting could have been avoided. Gopnik suggests that the main reason why these types of incidents keep happening in the United States is because there is a lack of security and requirements on who should not be able to buy a gun. The government should do what others countries are doing, and Gopnik’s example, is the massacre that happened in Paris Suborn of Nanterre in 2002, when a man killed eight people at a municipal meeting. Gun control became a key issue in the presidential…
Diamond makes various arguments about diseases. The argument he makes that I will mention is that deadly disease came from Europe and spread to other places killing people that were unfamiliar with the disease. This is a good point that he makes, and the example he uses helps support his argument. His example is that smallpox came to the Aztecs from Europe. This disease killed a lot of Aztecs because they were unfamiliar with the disease, and because of that they couldn’t cure themselves or others. When I read this I knew there were way more diseases that could of killed the Aztecs. With this argument and example I did some research. For this topic I will argue against Diamond’s argument using valid information.…
On the morning of December 18, 1992, two brothers were shot and killed in their Houston home. Police were called by a neighbor who heard the gunshots, and then seen a “dark colored” car fleeing from the house. It was later found out that defendant, Genovevo Salinas, was at the residence where the murders took place the night before December 18th. When officers went to Salinas’ house, they arrived to a dark blue vehicle that matched the witness’s account of the car. Police asked Salinas a few questions, he let the officers have his shotgun, and then the police asked him to come down to the station to answer a few questions so they could “clear him as a suspect.”…
Another article I would like to discuss is from People magazine written by Jeff Truesdell, Neighbors of Making a Murderer's Steven Avery Speak Out About His Guilt or Innocence: 'Those of Us Who Live Here Know He's Guilty.’ In this article, Jeff Truesdell interviewed locals of Manitowoc County; Steven Avery’s neighbors. The neighbors paint an incredibly different picture than what is provided in Making a Murderer. The neighbors discuss how much safer they felt now that Steven Avery was back in jail, and how when he was released the first time they believed something strange happened. The general consensus of his neighbors was that he was guilty for the assault he was in jail for originally, and for the crimes he is in jail for now. One neighbor…
In October 1997, I heard on the radio that Luke Woodham, a sixteenyear-old, had killed two classmates and wounded seven others in a school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi. In a note, Luke declared: “I am not insane. I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day.”1 He explained that he was tired of being called a “faggot”; he was additionally enraged that his girlfriend—whom he killed in the shooting—had broken up with him. At the start of the Woodham case, I began examining school shootings. Two months after the massacre in Mississippi came a shooting in Kentucky, then one in Arkansas that same month, and then another in Arkansas three months later in March 1998. There was a shooting in Pennsylvania that April, in Tennessee…
On February 14, 2008, at 3:06 p.m., a tall thin man named Steven Kazmierczak kicked open a door to a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University where he shot dead 5 people. When he found his was in the lecture hall he walked on to the stage and bore several guns. The 150 students that were sitting in the lecture hall assumed it was all a joke until he shot dead the professor. Several student hurled themselves to the floor between the chairs while others just shrieked. Kazmierczak took aim at those very urged students. He was just stepping up the aisles shooting with no hesitation at the people who he noticed to be in an urge to leave. Then, two bands of police officers arrived announcing the school students to stay in a safe area away from…
Responsibly, she hid some in both the bathroom and closet, but told the gunman that they were in the gym. Her cousin Jim Wiltsie told ABC News: "She was trying to shield, get her children into a closet and protect them from harm. And by doing that, put herself between the gunman and the children."…
In “Just Take Away Their Guns,” by James Q. Wilson, Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at the University of California at Los Angeles, the author shows what is wrong with each side of the argument. In the first paragraph, he says, “The president wants still tougher gun control legislation and thinks it will work” (Barnet and Bedau 124). But, he continues on to say how this will not affect the illegal use of guns. About 200 million privately own a gun and one-third of that 200 million own a handgun (Barnet and Bedau 124). Only two percent of the citizens are using them in unlawful acts (Barnet and Bedau 124). The number of people who defend themselves outnumbers the amount of arrests for crimes committed. There are many issues with gun control, such as, whether a citizen should be able to own a gun or not, law enforcement confiscations, and punishment for criminals who use guns.…
The speculations made regarding the massacre taken place at a movie theatre in Aurora Colorado in 2012, are yet to be in the clear. In a night where the town people were out to enjoy the new release of “The Dark Knight Rises”, a person or a couple, decided to turn it into a deadly and unforgettable night for the moviegoers. The case of James Holmes, the suspect captured within minutes of the horrific event, left the nation with many questions unanswered and relatives of the victims devastated. An undeniable fact is that people believe that the government and the media were not completely transparent about the investigation and the shooting itself. As we can see in the documentary “The James Holmes Conspiracy”, the testimonies of those who witnessed the bloody crime were not supported by the town’s police department. There…
The lives of many were to change on the day of April 20th, 1999, at Columbine High School. With the death of twelve students and one teacher, it was to be the deadliest mass murder committed on an American high school campus. The massacre, committed by senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, sparked debate over gun control laws; whether the availability of guns across the United States, especially to young people such as these, was socially acceptable. This event is what sparked Moore to create his documentary, ‘Bowling for Columbine’.…
New York Times best selling author, radio host, and Fox News contributor, Tammy Bruce, wrote an article called “Why Gun Control Won’t End Mass Murders.” Bruce’s purpose is to inform readers that gun control laws are not going to stop murders from occurring. She adopts a grim tone in order to get her readers to think about why the gun laws are the way they are. For years the government has been trying to enforce gun laws and yet murders rates are not decreasing. Some points Bruce addresses include mass shootings, liberals, and the Mayo Clinc’s statistics towards drugs. Tammy Bruce was not successful in getting her point across.…
She also took in consideration 22 year old Jared Loughner who in 2011, shooting of Congress woman Gabriel Gliffords, which took place in Arizona and killing 6 people as well as injuring 13 individuals. Even though there might be a correlation between these shootings I find that school shootings differ from the last two examples that involved individuals carrying out acts against individuals they did not know. Where as in the school shootings the shooters knew most of their victims and did not seem to suffer from a mental disorder. The article states that most involving individuals are not intimately known to the shooter , I disagree. In the shooting at Columbine High school, Virginia Tech and Columbine shooters Harris and Klebold whom meticulously planned their shooting of their high school a year in advance and definitely knew their 12 victims they killed May 1, 2001 at their high school. The article also brings up the importance of understanding the rampage killings in order to create preventive measures that are taking in the consideration of different situations, this I…
Nocera, J. (2014, Feb 05). The gun report, one year later. International New York Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1494070151?accountid=36299…
In a study carried on 1,034 adults by Dr Donna Leinwand after the Tucson rampage shootings. Most of the respondents of the study blamed the shooting rampage on the easy access the perpetrators had to guns and ammunition while some blamed it on the American mental health system. When the respondents were what they thought the solution to the problem was, most of them responded that “stricter gun control laws were indeed the safest solution (4).” According to Rick Jervis in his article “critics target high round gun magazines,” the perpetrator of the Colorado theatre rampage shooting James Holmes had purchased a large arsenal of high-round gun magazines which he had used in his assault in the theatre. Jervis emphasizes the need to reduce the amount of ammunition that can be bought off the market; he claims that the shooting would have being avoided if James Holmes had not had access to the weapon and ammunition…
Gun violence can occur at any time and be committed by anyone, which makes it a very random, albeit common, occurrence. While gun violence can target single persons, mass shootings have become a recent phenomenon and one that strikes fear in to the hearts of millions. According to James Alan Fox and Monica J. DeLateur, there are five main causes of gun violence, and specifically mass shootings, including: revenge, power, loyalty, terror, and profit (127). Typically, it is a combination of two or more of the above reasons that lead to gun violence. However, according to Fox and DeLateur, “Among these types, revenge motivation is, by far, the most commonplace. Mass murderers often see themselves as victims – victims of injustice. They seek payback for what they perceive to be unfair treatment by targeting those they hold responsible for their misfortunes. Most often, the ones to be punished are family members or coworkers” (127). This adds a lot of context to why gun violence is so commonplace in America. Revenge is a feeling felt by many people at one point or another, but in America, taking those feelings of revenge to the extreme is possible due to the availability of guns and ammunition. Now, instead of just one or two people being murdered by the hands of a firearm, Americans are dying in record numbers due to mass shootings. Part of this is due to the above five reasons for gun violence, but part of it is also due in part to the availability of firearms that are seemingly made for more than just personal defense. Semi-automatic assault rifles are stocked on shelves nationwide in a number of stores. The right to bear arms is quickly turning in to an opportunity to kill based on raw emotion and it has become a major problem for America. Now that some of the causes of gun violence…