Natalie Green October 22, 2013 WRD 103 Rhetorical Analysis Final Revision Gun control has been

a divisive issue in the United States, especially in light of the most recent events in the Washington Navy Yard. Charles M. Blow is the author of A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself, posted in the New York Times on September 18, 2013. Although his article is posted in the New York Times this gives him no credibility to be talking about congress and gun control. Even though he uses facts and examples Blow does not have anything to show that he is credible. He highlights common knowledge that anyone could go online and look up and adds none of his own research, nor does he provide any information as to what in his background qualifies him to write on the matter. Blow does not use Ethos at all, however he attempts to use Pathos and Logos but either way his argument is still cowardly and hes trying to use congress as a scapegoat for why gun control is an issue. Ethos is credibility and it is clear that Blow does not use Ethos to his advantage at all. Based on this article he has no credibility. Blow does not provide any background information, he states his opinions, but does not provide any insight into what makes him qualified to write this article. To make himself more credible he could have answered questions such as; what does he do for a living, has he ever worked in congress, has he ever been personally affected by gun violence? All of these would have helped make his article more convincing. It is clear that he does not prove to be credible however he makes an attempt at proving his credibility by saying he does not generalize. However he

seems to be quite generalizing by stating things like that would require courage and commitment, qualities that sadly run a deficit in Washington. Here he makes the argument that people in congress do not want to stand up to gun control but he doesnt know that for sure. He gives no evidence for this though and he is just expecting his readers to take his word for it. The way he states it shows that this is more or less his opinion and theres no evidence to support the claim. Therefore the reader cannot take this as a true statement, congress might want to stand up to gun control however they may not have the support of the people they represent. Also there are other things to focus on in this world and issues are taken one at a time and the time for gun control will come when it does but until then people need to view it as one small fish in the sea of issues and understand that not everything gets changed instantly everything happens overtime. Blow brings in statistics to validate his point and he shows the rhetoric of the other side but while doing so he shoots it down as being a poor tactic. He also claims the facts dont neatly line up with that line of reasoning. Following this he lists a few examples from reports but never completely ties them together with his own thoughts. Trusting the author one hundred percent is difficult as he has not established a background that would make him believable however he does make a valid statement and has valid statistics to support his assertion. Blow does use some Pathos by stating that, from 1973 to 2012 there were more than four million firearm injuries in America. Hes trying to make the reader feel sorry and sad about the fact that in those years four million people were injured by firearms. However this is not a strong use of Pathos, he does not tell specific stories of whom any victims were and just hearing numbers does not appeal to your emotions. Also it says

injured not killed which makes the statistic less appealing to your emotions because people get injured everyday. It would be a fine line between using the examples to get a point across and manipulating emotions. In this case with the one statement he did not manipulate emotions, although this statistic is sad and surprising it does not really get to you emotionally. Blow does not allow emotions to get in the way in this article he uses evidence and facts to show that his point is logical and he does not allow emotions to change your opinion he solely relies on the facts and because of that your emotions cannot change your opinion because there really isnt much in the article that would appeal to your emotions. Blow uses Logos by bringing in statistics but the statistics are weak and can easily be found on Google. Blow uses lots of bits and pieces from different reports as his statistics. However these reports are not hidden anyone can read them and see the full argument of the report not just what Blow wants them to know. Blow then goes on to abruptly ends the article saying but that would require courage and commitment, qualities that sadly run a deficit in Washington. Ending the article this way leaves it incomplete there is no support for why he feels as though they run a deficit and hes assuming that the reader will just agree with him regardless. He mentions how protection has replaced hunting as the No. 1 reason that people own guns. He uses this as his counter argument as to why people do not agree with gun control however he does expand on this point and states more facts to support this side of the argument. However he shoots down this side of the argument by saying that the facts dont neatly line up with that line of reasoning. For example he talks about how in 2008 there were 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms and only 108,000 defensive uses of firearms. He only

shows the negative side of this argument and leaves out the positive. Which is cowardly because he knows bringing in the positive of this argument will weaken his overall argument. However he does do a good job of including both arguments and explaining them with statistics to the extent that he wanted too. Based on what is stated in the article Blow is not credible to be discussing this issue. He clearly outlines both sides of an argument which helps to show that he somewhat knows what he is talking about however all his facts and statistics can be found online and he does not have anything to make him more credible than the average person. He just uses these facts to demonstrate both sides and then states that one of them is right and the other one is not because the facts dont line up. Blow made a weak attempt at using Pathos to foster opinions but he mostly just used facts and sometimes facts can be conflicting and not necessarily appeal to one side and it just makes you start thinking more. After reading this article I see that Blow is blaming congress for all the issues when maybe there are others to blame but he does not even think of that he just jumps to conclusions and starts using Congress as a scapegoat. Throughout his whole article he was being cowardly and hiding behind weak statistics. It feels as though the article has had no affect on me other than to make me think more about the argument on gun control and want to look further into the subject. This very well could have been Blows intention. He may have written this to just raise awareness of the subject and if that was his intent then he did a good job of doing so.