The Jonna Semeiks article “We the People Confront Sandy Hook” discuses many different factors that contribute towards explaining why school shootings and gun violence are inadequate to inspire stronger gun control laws. The deaths of children are not enough to offset the strong ties that American society has towards guns as a symbol of freedom, which causes people to respond with internal defense mechanisms that numb the pain of these tragic events instead of feeling a need to take corrective action. Semeiks presents a valid point that gun control reforms are needed; however, in order for that to happen anytime soon, the American people will need to largely shift their attitude on this topic. The author provides several examples successfully supporting that main idea. However, the article is written in a chaotic style, with a lot of fragments and some strange or out of context parallels, and it lacks the proper citing of sources and statistics used. Semeiks begins by mentioning the poem “Monastery for Sandy Hook Children and teacher” by Robert Synderman, which uses fragmented language to describe the horrors of the Sandy Hook shooting. These fragments do not create deeper meaning and instead suggest that the terrible, shocking display of violence is too painful to look at or describe with concrete language. Furthermore, it implies that the solution is just to look away without ever looking back. It seems that the way society responds to shootings has become increasingly numb and distanced from these incidents even though their occurrences have become more frequent. These events are no longer shocking. They have become unremarkable. The deaths of so many innocent children who sit unsuspecting in classrooms is not enough for the nation to agree that current gun control laws need to be stronger to prevent guns from ending up in the wrong hands. Semeiks explores the idea that gun ownership and gun use for hunting purposes seem to be very deeply rooted in the American culture (13). However, many gun owners are not hunters, and still place tremendous value in the freedom to own firearms even if they do not serve a practical, functional purpose. Since the country of America began as a bloody battle zone that fought its way into establishing its independent existence, guns have become linked to the idea of freedom and patriotism (11-17). The connection between guns and freedom somehow suggests that guns have a noble purpose instead of a treacherous one, ignoring the fact that these noble historical examples do not apply to the laws and moral values of the society in which we currently live. However, modern irrelevance does not stop organizations like the NRA, Gun Owners of America, or gun manufactures clinging to these traditional links between guns and freedom to advertise their justification for protecting their rights to own them. Shooting and killing another human being has nothing to do with freedom; it is a criminal, malicious act. While some people in the American population might feel strong connections to owning guns, this group is relatively small in comparison to the approximately ninety percent of Americans who believe that there should be more gun control laws. Even eighty percent of people who own guns believe that gun control laws need to be stronger (Semeiks 14). However, these requests for reforming gun control laws by the majority of the American population tend to fall apart in the hands of politicians, who use the link between guns and freedom to emphasize how having more gun control laws restricts freedom. The …show more content…
There are many other variables in addition to the idea of freedom that is discussed, which can profoundly affect how an individual perceives guns. The article also lacks an emphasis on how the current gun control laws have allowed for events like the Sandy Hook shootings to take place, or how changing the laws would threaten the freedom that gun owners fiercely protect. Additionally, his focus on freedom is not very convincing. Many points are highly speculative and do not reference any “concrete” data that would justify her reasons for discussing these