Analysis Of Lessons From The Virginia Shooting By Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof, a writer for the New York Times, and in his op-ed article titled “Lessons From the Virginia Shooting” (Aug. 26, 2015), proposes that the lesson learned from the shooting of two journalists in Virginia should be different gun laws that should somewhat reflect the already standing laws that Americans already have in place. While Kristof gives his attempt at fixing gun violence in the United States, he fails make his point on many different levels. Kristof begins by reminding readers of the Virginia shooting follows with statistics relating to gun violence in the United States, then starts to recommend that the gun control laws should be changed to match that of other things that have safety regulations. Kristof is trying to

He adds to this development by stating three intriguing and interesting facts that show that gun violence is clearly an issue in the United States in this day and age. Something that is only applicable to the website version of the article is that he even further establishes his credibility with these facts with clickable links that will bring one to the source of the fact or statistic that he used. At this point, he states the purpose of his article which is to essentially throw in his view on what should be done about gun violence in the United States. He uses a general gun proponent quote to show the opposing side of the argument, and uses it to strengthen his own argument. At this point he begins to state how gun safety should replicate toy, car, or swimming pool type safety. This simplifies the text down to the readers level because more likely than not, one has come in contact with these simple regulations on toys and cars. This common ground Kristof gains is important to completing his point by showing that Australia has been-there-done-that and has shown to be

What Kristof does not do is create more options for the on-the-fence reader to choose from as their view on how this issue should be taken care of. Kristof only shows his one proposed solution in trying to mimic safety and regulations put in place on other things. Kristof makes his proposal clear in his writing when he openly states, “We need universal background checks with more rigorous screening, limits on gun purchases to one a month to reduce trafficking, safe storage requirements, serial number markings that are more difficult to obliterate, waiting periods to buy a handgun — and more research on what steps would actually save lives” (Kristof par. 17). Nowhere else in the paper does he state any type of other proposals that are not his own. This bottle-necked writing pushes the theoretical on-the-fence reader to believe in Kristof’s only proposal. Kristof could have easily fixed this issue by expanding to ideas beyond his own. Jeffery Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic, has a similar article looking over the issues of gun violence and gun control. While he may have similar views to controlling guns in the American populous, he brings up different points of view such as specifically suicides and the mentally ill. As Goldberg proclaims, “Longer waiting periods might stop some suicides. Mental-health