“The Guns and Soul of America,”
David Brooks, Oct. 6, 2017
The piece “The Guns and Soul of America” by David Brooks, questions the seemingly obvious belief: that as there is an increase in violent deaths and mass shootings involving privately owned firearms, there should also be an increase in stricter gun laws, and a downturn in popular opinion regarding gun ownership. Instead, in his column, Brooks writes to prove that the opposite is the case - that as the instances of mass shootings occur, there is then a correlating pattern of states loosening gun control laws. He then presents a larger issue that may be at hand: that gun ownership, or the opinion against it, represents an American’s “values and identity,” that the argument for or against…