Reasoning About An Ethical Issue Speech Analysis

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The debate surrounding gun control has been a become recent and significant conversation in American politics as a result of several gun related incidents, such as mass shootings. In his "Reasoning About An Ethical Issue" speech, Sami decided to focus on this ongoing issue through discussing the history and current state of gun control, explaining the opposing sides related to the issue, and approaching the ethical significance of the issue by referring to the works of John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer. He makes the claim that there needs to be smarter gun laws in order to save lives, such as standardized and mandatory background checks before purchasing a gun. Sami also states that these new laws are especially important in a world with more …show more content…
This ethical assumption is based in the struggle between the forces of authority and liberty (Mill 41). Sami states that the main controversy in enacting gun laws is the struggle between gun laws, representing authority, and gun rights, representing liberty, or if the federal government should create gun laws to protect to public or if they should allow for more states ' rights and individual liberties, such as the right to bear arms without federal intervention. Sami supports the view that there should be more federal laws in order to prevent the tragedies related to gun violence. Therefore, he supports the idea stated in On Liberty that government can be in a "necessarily antagonistic position" in order to protect the people and provide order to society (Mill 42). This implies that governments such as the United States should have the power to encroach on liberty with their authority so that they can provide security, such as through gun laws that could prevent shootings. This ethical reasoning is what Sami uses to support his claim of the creation of smarter gun laws and his reference to Mill supports this idea. Through this ethical reasoning and examples given by Sami, such as how there are 300 million guns in the United States, but only less than one million belong to law enforcement, the audience is able to

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