In Twenty Years I've Never Wished I Had a Gun
When I return to work on January 7, students and I will debate the viability of gun control. It is always my goal to apply the study of argument to issues of the highest stakes and the gunning down of first grade students and their teachers and other staff in Newtown, Connecticut has put that issue at the forefront. As it happens, just prior to those awful elementary shootings, my students were researching and writing about the influence of 9/11 on how our country negotiates the tension between liberty and security. Now they are witnessing a similar -- though probably less influential -- negotiation firsthand.
There is some interesting rhetoric on both sides of the gun control issue. Logical fallacies to go along with appeals of all kinds, rhetorical strategies, lots of claims and counter-claims, some well-documented, others without evidence.
The day of the shooting, just as we were getting the awful news from back east, a man crashed through a locked door of our building, screaming incoherently.
He was unarmed and some unarmed students were able to subdue him.
There are several murders each week in the immediate vicinity of our school -- most of them by bullet -- and so students are acutely aware of the destructive power of guns. But many students have also seen fathers and uncles and brothers brandish a firearm in order to protect them from local gang members and other bullies and criminals. One of my students lost his father to a five-year prison term because of one such incident.
more . . . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/teachers-guns_b_2397148.html