Over the last couple of years the issue of gun control has become more prevalent.
This is in part due to the fact that there has been an increasing amount of homicides as
well as the more prevalent threat of terrorism. Many people argue that to make gun laws
stricter would infringe on their 2nd amendment. However, people who advocate for
stricter gun control policies argue that if it where stricter it would result in less deaths by
gun.
In the paper, Limited Government and Gun Control, Howard Ponzer is attempting
to persuade people not in favor of gun control as to why there needs to be more stricter
federally mandated gun control regulations. He appeals through ethos by first explaining
the view of non-supporters, and why they have that view. He appeals to ethos by
remaining unbiased when discussing both sides point of view and discussing their main
point of how “the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” By
talking about the Second Amendment the non-supporters are arguing that the government
does not have the constitutional authority “to place legal constraints on the ownership as
well as the sale and distribution of guns”(Ponzer 205). He then uses logos to go on and
talk about how the Declaration of Independence “states that the primary role of the
government is to protect the rights of individuals.” Expanding on that he goes on to talk
about how the people’s “right to live in safety and security” is currently at stake due to all
of the mass shootings across the country. He appeals to pathos as well when talking
about specific mass shooting by referring to them as tragic events. The author ties it all
together by discussing how a fair solution to uphold the rights of both liberty and life is
required. He constantly emphasizes throughout the paper that neither sides are wrong,
and that the government should emphasize its power in creating stricter gun control laws
but only for the protection of the people.
The next paper also tackles its argument in the same way Ponzer argues his. In
Lance K. Stell’s, The Production of Criminal Violence in America: Is Strict Gun Control
the Solution? he presents an argument that “pursuing any gun control measure designed
to impose handgun scarcity on the general population is both needless and useless” (Stell
38). Stell’s argument is similar in format to Ponzer’s, because they both have an opposing
argument that they explain and then go on to refute. Stell picks five points from Professor
Zimring’s pro gun control argument to explain and then refute. The main ways in which
he refutes each argument is through the use of ethos through word choice as well as logos
by providing statistics to help back up his refutations. Stell states that, “of the 16,024
