Most Persuasive Piece On Gun Control example essay topic

Persuasive articles about 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 schemes; 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 piece about gun control in response to Mr. Snyder's piece which both suggested and condoned gun use. The reason Will's response and stance on gun control was so powerful was because he was able to incorporate quotations from Snyder's article and rebut them with factual and logical information. Will used Rank's model of persuasion to downplay Snyder's arguments, and refuted them with his own facts which he intensified to an extent. Will did however take five pages to build his argument for the regulation of guns, and quoted Snyder too frequently, a more succinct and economical approach would have made this article that much more persuasive. Second place for the most persuasive piece on gun control is Al Franken's Phil Gramm, Gun Lover, who was in favor of limiting the use of guns. His piece is very precise at two pages and uses Rank's model to intensify a number of worldwide fatalities caused by guns.

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, due to his repetition and exaggeration.

From these four articles written by Franken, Snyder, Ellison, and Will I personally found Will's piece to be the most persuasive with Franken's not far behind. Will's approach was more formal while Franken's style was more satirical, but I felt both authors were able to incorporate Rank's model and persuade the reader more subtlety than the other authors Sources 1. Al Franken, Phil Gramm, Gun Lover 2. Jeffery R. Snyder, A Nation of Cowards 3. Harlan Ellison, An Edge in My Voice 4. George F. Will, The Last Word.