Ted Talk On Gun Analysis

Do Emotions Change Your Personal Views: Gun Violence
Take a second to think about your personal political position on gun laws, now imagine you or someone close to you is harmed or involved in a form of gun violence. Would your views change on the subject or make you u believe in them even more? In Dan Gross’s Ted Talk, “Why Gun Violence Can’t Be our New Normal.” he speaks on this subject on a very emotional level. Gross informs the audience about the story of his brother’s close call with death caused by someone having a gun who shouldn’t have had one. This event made him leave his dream job in a big New York advertisement firm to create a movement called the “Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence”. Through this movement, Gross has helped
families recover from the same type of tragedy’s he suffered, which is more common than you might think. According to Gross “More than 90 Americans are killed by guns every day” so his mission is to lower the number of guns in the U.S which tops “300 million guns” (Gross).
Gross makes very good points that most Americans can agree on, for instance keeping guns away from people with severe mental illnesses or from convicted criminals. He also delivers his presentation in a very concise but informative way, his slides are made very elegantly and are easy on the eye. Gross’s career as an advertiser can be seen through his delivery of his argument. But it is in this that he sacrifices his credibility, Gross talks about how advertisements are meant to “Get inside your head” and this is exactly what he is doing throughout the presentation. He sets the stage in such a way it’s almost as if he planned to manipulate the audience’s feelings towards the subject so they become a little less critical of Gross’s points. For example, he brings up the Sandy Hook massacre in his argument about guns used in these shootings are usually someone else’s guns like a parents or friends. He references other shootings in his argument like the Virginia Tech shooting in Blacksburg but he opens with this one intentionally because it’s the most delicate one and that’s why he uses it first, to build up on that mood he set with his story. He manipulates his audience with the use of pathos and it worked for him, the audience showed compassion to him visibly when they clapped for his brother to show him respect.
Gross’s use of pathos in this way made him lose some of his creditability though because it showed he was to emotionally connected to the topic to view it from a different point of view.
This isn’t the only time you see him deliberately show the audience what he wants them to see, during his talk, he brought up that “90 Americans are Killed by Guns Every Day”. That is a fact that wowed the audience but like most of his charts and stats he doesn’t tell the audience where this information is coming from. So, to verify his information I did a quick google search, turns out his information was accurate but one thing he didn’t tell you was that over half those deaths are suicides. Gross did this on purpose because he would lose some of that wow factor if he showed the numbers how they are, where suicides are more common than homicide. This would have also hurt his argument when you think about how many people commit suicide any way without the use of
guns.
Gross’s does a lot of things during his presentation to keep it one sided which works out for him but another thing he does very well is that he acknowledges the opposition.
Or to be more exact the ex-opposition he states that throughout the year’s people have become more and more involved in preventing guns from getting into the wrong hands. He goes onto mention that “90% of Republicans” and “More than 70% of N.R.A Members” believe in more extensive background checks. Gross does this to show people this is no longer a controversial issue, people are working together more and more to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands. Gross made a good decision adding this into his presentation even though he had already stated that “Brady background checks are working” they have stopped more than 2.5 million gun sales to people who shouldn’t have one. This shows the people who still believe strongly in keeping their 2nd amendment right that there is common ground and terms both sides can agree on.
Gross’s use of logos to support his argument is very well done and works wonderfully along with pathos to set the stage and showing the audience what they want to see. But the lack of information from where he obtained the stats for his charts makes him lose some of his credibility as it shows he is hiding something. As I stated he shows his evidence the way he wants to show so it supports his argument rather than damaging it. And as a speaker Gross has the right to do so to persuade the
listener but it severely damages his credibility because it seems he is trying to manipulate his audience in some way.

Overall Gross’s presentation was solid and his experience as an advertiser shows in his deliverance of the supporting information. As an advertiser, he tries convincing his audience in ways advertisers do, showing them information that benefits you. Setting the mood from the beginning which could change the viewer’s perspective instead of from their own point of view to yours. And delivering them all through a presentation that is elegantly displayed and easy to comprehend to the masses. All while cracking a few jokes in-between to attempt to make a relation with the audience, making that connection makes them see that he is just a normal guy not someone trying to persuade them. His use of logos goes works well with the other forms of persuasion building on each other to get his point across.
Gross’s presentation has a good flow with a mix of emotion facts and jokes that persuade the audience in that ted talk visibly. But it is also the combination of these that knock his whole argument down for some people, Gross uses that mix to manipulate the audience directly in front of him and it works. On the other hand, to those elsewhere watching it online with the tools in at their disposal to verify his information they can see that some of that given information is altered to benefit his position and may causes them to lose trust in him. His ways as an advertiser helped him in some ways but also made him lose a lot of his credibility, and this was because of his relation to the topic. Emotions cloud judgement and it clearly clouded his when he planned his presentation his main goal should not have been to persuade the audience in front of him but to persuade his opposition the gun owners the N.R.A members. Overall Gross failed to send his message to his intended audience and instead received praise from those who already believe in this movement.