"Violent Media Is Good For Kids" Homework

Identifying Elements of Argument
1. Violent Media has a positive impact on children's development.

2.

•  He explains the impact that the Incredible Hulk comics had on him and his strengths and career path.
•  He explains the impact Tarzan had on his son who was afraid to be like his peers.
•  The little girl who used her violent stories to become self-controlled, socially competent, and a leader        among her peers

3. 

• Touches upon school shootings
• States that violent entertainment has inspired people to real-life violence
• He refutes them by inferring that violent media has helped more than it has harmed. It helps if people learn to use it well.

4. Sheltering children from violence hurts them more than it helps. They'll never learn self-control or how be powerful and demonstrate leadership.

Exercise 2.4: Annotating

• Writer is focusing on the impact that violent media has on children's development
• The writer is clearly arguing the benefits violent media has on children's development
• Violent media has a positive impact on children's development
• The writer could relate to this topic and used personal experiences to support his argument
• The writer is probably addressing parents, schools, anyone leery about violence
• The writer assumes that some will not agree with the essay's position, so he refutes the counter argument and demonstrates what's right and wrong about it
• The writer uses personal information to support the thesis and provides a sufficient amount of evidence. He could have included more, but he conveys his point well enough with what he has
• The writer refutes the opposing arguments in a way that convinces you that they are wrong
• Writer uses easy to understand vocabulary
• Good use of references
• Valid points/premises

Exercise 2.8: Writing A Critical Response

According to Gerald Jones, violent media can actually have positive effects on young people because it teaches them important lessons on life, such as how to be a strong-minded person, how to lead, how to overcome fear, and how to be more vocal and social. Jones also believes that violent media are a positive influence on children because it trains them to be open-minded, so that they aren't sheltered from the world. Jones makes some good points. For example, he says that "the dual-identity concept at the heart of many superhero stories helps kids negotiate the conflicts between the inner self and the public self as they work through the early stages of socialization" (Jones). What he means by this is, the split personalities, or facades, teaches kids about common conflicts about the person they are inside and the person they reflect to the world and helps them overcome the struggles of early socialization. However, he refutes for the opposing argument, expressing that violent media can actually inspire people to be violent in real life, but he refutes this counter argument by inferring that violent media benefits more than it hurts. All in all, violent media is beneficial to a child's early development.

Reading And Writing About The Issue

In Praise Of Tap Water

1. Tap water saves money and doesn't harm the environment.

2. You could spend $1400 annually on bottled water
    The 1.5 million barrels of oil used to make plastic water bottles could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead
    If the demand for bottled water continues, there could be less maintenance to the water supply

3. Consumers can save money and the planet by drinking tap water as opposed to bottled water.

4. I think the writer uses valid premises in the argument, and I'm not sure they could have included more. Perhaps the writer could have used more facts about how bottled water is a waste of money, but the supporting details in article and sufficient enough to back up the thesis statement. The writer states how much money is being lost by purchasing bottled water, which is enough to convince people to change if they wish to save money. The premise about the oil used to make plastic bottles being able to fuel 100,000 of cars a year was a strong argument, because with the country's dependency on oil, people are more willing to listen to that fact. The argument stating that if the demand for bottled water increases, less will be invested to maintain the water supply definitely reaches out to the readers, especially those who still use tap water on a daily basis.

5. The purpose of paragraph 5 is to provide the reader with evidence that places are becoming less dependent on bottled water and are encouraging the use of tap water. Providing examples of cities enforcing tap water is more likely to convince the reader to do so if the premises haven't already done so.

Defying the Nalgene

1. The arguments against the use of bottled water are unconvincing.

2. Plastic is cheap, so wasting plastic does not cause problems to the economy. The price of bottled water is very inexpensive and tap water is not "free" and in some cases can be more expensive. While Moore does refute both his arguments effectively, he could have used more arguments to solidify his point.

3. Bottled water is much more convenient than carrying around a water container. Most people do not have running water, and the demand to supply bottled water creates the opportunity for people to be able to afford running water. Perhaps Moore could have mentioned that bottled water is more sanitary. Not only can tap water be unsanitary, but so can reusable water bottles.

4. There's not enough convincing reasons to refrain from buying bottled water.

5. Moore didn't have to define Nalgene because there was enough context clues to allow the reader to figure out the meaning and the significance of it.

Poland Spring Water

• Plastic bottles are not recyclable
• Not convenient
• Not energy efficient

   

Gun Control: Can It Actually Stop Gun Violence?

Angela Forte

ENGL 102-048

Causal Argumentative Essay

29 January 2013

Gun Control: Can It Actually Stop Gun Violence?

                Columbine, Virginia Tech, University of Texas, and Sandy Hook Elementary School are some of most deadly and widely known school shootings to this date. Every time an attack like this happens, most recently Sandy Hook, the second amendment becomes jeopardized.  Gun critics demand for stronger gun laws and assault weapon bans to be enforced nationwide. In the past few months, it has become a widely debated topic among American citizens, those who are in favor of stricter gun laws and those who wish to keep the rights that the Constitution gives them. Gun control in the United States will do little to enforce the safety of the Nation, instead it takes away from the safety of others. 

            "Connecticut has become the third state, following California and New Jersey, to pass a comprehensive ban on assault weapons" (State Legislatures 19.10). Connecticut banned the sale of assault firearms on October 1, 1993 and believed that this ban ultimately would result in a lesser crime rate (State Legislatures 19.10). On December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty six people, twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (CNN). Joining the list of other famous school shootings, it further proved that enabling gun laws do not lessen the crime rate. Connecticut had this ban in effect for quite some time and the shooting still happened because nothing, not even a strict gun law, can really stop people from getting their hands on guns. People will find ways to obtain illegal things, like they do with drugs. If said people are not able to get their hands on guns, they will use a different weapon.

The most frequent policy lesson drawn following the Columbine school shootings was the need for more gun controls. Review of the details of both Columbine and other contemporary school shootings indicates, however, that the specific gun control measures proposed in their aftermath were largely irrelevant and almost certainly could not have prevented the incidents or reduced their death tolls (Kleck).

After the tragic shooting at the Columbine High School in 1999, the people of Colorado strongly advocated stricter gun laws in hopes that an attack like the Columbine would never happen again (Kleck). After the details were reviewed, it was proved that gun control was irrelevant and nothing could have prevented the shooting. In the summer of 2012, James E. Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado (Kleck). If Colorado were to have had an assault weapon ban, would this shooting still have happened? Most certainly, it would have. It does not make sense that one law could stop violence completely. "Shortly after the massacre, John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, suggested that stricter gun laws would not have stopped the shooter" (Goldberg). The governor of Colorado even addressed that stricter gun laws would not have stopped the movie theater shooter. Hickenlooper went on to suggest that the killer would have found another weapon, most likely a bomb.

            "46 percent of Americans think gun laws should be stricter, 38 percent want them to stay the same, and 13 percent want them less strict" (State Legislatures 37.3). While it seems like the majority of the people in the country want stricter gun laws, 51 percent either want them the same or less strict, juxtaposed to the 46 percent that want harsher laws (State Legislatures 37.3). Stricter gun laws is unconstitutional, as it contradicts the rights that citizens are believed to have under the second amendment of the United States Constitution. What good does an amendment do if people are limited to those rights? Amendments are not meant to be disregarded or overridden over time.

                Guns, including assault weapons, save lives. People need to have a way of defending themselves when they are in danger. The police could take anywhere up to ten minutes, and in some cases beyond, to arrive. That is too long of a time for a person in danger. That is where the privilege of having a firearm for self–defense comes into play.  Guns do not kill people, people kill people. It depends on who is operating the firearm and if they are capable of owning a gun.

A balanced approach to gun control in the United States would require the warring sides to agree on several contentious issues. Conservative gun–rights advocates should acknowledge that if more states had stringent universal background checks—or if a federal law put these in place—more guns would be kept out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally unstable. They should also acknowledge that requiring background checks on buyers at gun shows would not represent a threat to the Constitution (Goldberg)

Background checks on people who wish to buy guns is a far more reasonable way of ensuring firearm safety than taking them away all together. Neither approach will do away with gun violence all together, but at least background checks are far more reasonable.

            "Violent gun–related deaths have been declining for the past 20 years" (Stengel). If violent gun–related deaths have been declining over the years, does that not mean that stricter gun laws would serve no purpose? It does not make any sense to pass a law that will anger more people than it will please. The entirety of gun laws do not make any sense. How can a gun law minimize violence? Are there not already gun laws that prohibit violence and killing? Do people actually follow them? In my opinion, gun laws hurt more than they help because it only seeks to anger people who already own guns and use them for the right purpose.

Figure 1 argues for anti-gun control, explaining that the gun itself has nothing to do with the crime, more so the operator (Anti–gun control).

              If harsher gun laws or assault weapon bans are enabled, does not necessarily mean that people will follow them. First off, if the said person is a criminal, and is seeking to murder, they are most certainly not going to abide by a gun law. People are going to get their hands on a gun, one way or another, and if all else fails, they would use another weapon to commit their crime. Some killers are not even of certain age to buy a firearm and manage to acquire them anyway, so what is to stop people from finding and using firearms under an assault weapon ban? The motive that drives a killer is most often a psychological disorder, guns themselves have nothing to do with the killer's motive. No law could have prevented any of the school shootings, instead it

could have been something worse like school bombings, which would be far more deadly and destructive.

            "There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America – many legally owned, many not. Each year, more than 4 million new guns enter the market" (Goldberg). Harsher gun laws do not even make sense because there is so many guns already out there and in the hands of American citizens. It is very unlikely that all the guns can be confiscated. People would most likely hide their guns before they would ever give them up. It all traces back to the freedoms that are granted in the Constitution. People believe that is their right to own a firearm and will not stand to have their rights taken away from them. There is just no possible way that every firearm could be taken away, people would find them elsewhere or probably even secretly manufacture them.

            Though most tragic accidents occur because of the misuse of a firearm, there is no way to prevent it. Stricter gun laws or assault weapon bans will not stop homicides from happening. There is just too many guns out there in the hands of citizens that there is no way to make them inaccessible. Death is inevitable and so are tragic attacks on innocent people, no matter what laws are out there. If the killer is planning the homicide in the first place, then they are going to break the gun laws or find a stronger, deadlier weapon to use. Guns can be a great privilege when in the right hands and used correctly.

Works Cited

"Anti-gun Control." Tumblr. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.

"Connecticut bans assault weapons." State Legislatures 19.10 (1993): 6. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

Goldberg, Jeffrey. "The Case For More Guns (And More Gun Control)." Atlantic Monthly (10727825) 310.5 (2012): 68-78. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Jan. 2013

"Gun laws reconsidered." State Legislatures 37.3 (2011): 11. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

Kleck, Gary. "Mass shootings in schools: the worst possible case for gun control." American Behavioral  Scientist 52.10 (2009): 1447.Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Jan. 2013

"Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: What Happened?" CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 05

Stengel, Richard. "Talking Common Sense About Guns." Time 180.6 (2012):4. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Jan. 2013