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Persuasive Articles on Gun Control Essays

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Persuasive Articles on Gun Control

Persuading an audience can be done in several different fashions, one of which is Hugh Rank’s Model of Persuasion. Rank’s model states that two major strategies are used to achieve the particular goal of persuasion. These strategies are nicely set into two main schemas; the first method is to exaggerate an aspect of something, known as “intensify.” While the second is to discredit it, which is referred to as “downplay.” Al Franken, Jeffrey Snyder, Harlan Ellison, and George Will, have all written persuasive articles about gun control. In reading all of the various articles on gun control by authors, I found George F. Will’s The Last Word to be the most persuasive. Will wrote his …show more content…

Franken was also able to downplay the usefulness of a firearm by including a series of sarcastic tips for tragedy in a home. For example, “1. Keep the gun loaded… 2. Put the gun in an unlocked drawer... 3. Rest assured.”1 Where Franken’s article comes up short is the use of hypothetical numbers to exaggerate and intensify the deadliness of guns. His sarcasm adds diversity to his piece, but should be used sparingly. Franken’s conclusion causes his argument to lose its effectiveness, after building his case it just seems ridiculous and out of place.
The least persuasive essay out of the four was Harlan Ellison’s An Edge in My Voice. Ellison presents his argument in a style that seems to me is more of a disgruntled rambling about both famous and infamous people that die from gun shot, than an article about gun control. Ellison spends the first few pages asking the reader if they cried when a certain person died; he begins with famous people such as Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon, and then moves on to more obscure examples. Instead of trying to build an argument, Ellison seemed to be more caught up with anger and the notion of conspiracies. He does however try to use the “intensify” technique of Rank’s model, to persuade the reader of the horror of deaths caused by guns and their importance. Although Ellison did try to persuade his audience in a different manor, I felt it was ineffective at best,

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