By: Joe Nocera
The problem with guns in the United States has been
snowballing ever since the school shootings began, and it continues to grow
larger as the some people of the U.S.A believe that it should be their right to
hold a gun while other’s believe that the idea of guns being sold freely is
ludicrous. Lately, all the opinions I’ve heard led to the latter conclusion,
and all the arguments make perfect sense. The most eloquent of all these
arguments against guns was buried in the opinion area of The New York Times
ever since yesterday. Joe Nocera’s “Gun Report” centers itself on pathos to
convince people that the free sale of guns in the United States is more
dangerous than it is beneficial to each person’s personal protection.
Nocera starts off the article by explaining his own
relationship to the free sale of guns. He emphasizes on how impersonal it was
for him until not to long ago when a gunshot ended the life of a friend of his.
That was when the possession of firearms became a personal subject.
The majority of the article however is not centered around
his own experience, but merely quotes reports from various sources, all of them
on the same date (November 13, 2013) which show the harm guns can do. These
articles span from robberies gone wrong, and attempted murder to suicide and
successful murder. In all of them the victims were wounded/killed by a gunshot.
This part of the article is important because it focuses on sympathizing with
all the other victims of guns in the United States
In the first part of the article Nocera shares his story,
making the audience sympathize with him. In the second part he shares other
people’s stories, to sympathize with the audience. As if sympathizing weren’t
enough, the sheer amount of reports where gunshot wound feature in just one day
is enough to amaze anyone, and push them towards his same conclusion: guns
shouldn’t be so easy to find and carry.
Nocera doesn’t say much about the reports when he is done
listing them, he just gives one statistic to make the amount of damage guns do
even more substantial in the reader’s eyes: “an estimated 10,455 people have died as a
result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14,
2012.” (Let’s not ignore the number in bold type here).
If you’re even beginning to doubt that an argument just
by pathos works…you should read the comments in the article.
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