December 14, 2012. As millions of American children and teachers returned home to their families, 26 bodies laid dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 6-year-olds, slaughtered, in a place where they should have been safe. Following this tragedy, President Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech addressing the nation about the events that occurred and expressed his sorrow. Obama, as the President of the United States, had the responsibility to respond to this event in a timely and appropriate manner, yet he emphasized his role as a parent over his authority to connect with audiences. He utilized ethos by reacting as a parent of two young girls to better relate to the parents and families who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Obama’s speech is full of pathos as he uses powerful connotations with the words “overwhelming grief” and “hearts are broken”. In expressing these emotions genuinely and deeply, the American audience is able to better connect to Obama’s words and relate to his feelings toward this tragedy. President Obama also references various commonplaces, acknowledging community, love, innocence, education, and various life experiences that the fallen children will never get to experience. Utilizing these commonplaces allows for the American people as a whole to understand the implications of this loss in regard to the families, victims, and communities torn apart as a result. This event, however, is not isolated. As the years have passed, many similar school shooting tragedies have occurred, taking the lives of more young children. As stories of these horrors are released, stories of elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas having baseball-sized holes in their bodies or smearing their friends’ blood on themselves to play dead, more people have become angry. Protests fighting for gun control have swept the nation, spreading to the new generations with leaders like X Gonzales, a Parkland shooting survivor. At what point do we make change? How many people have to protest and fight for change to happen? How many people have to die?

Thank you.