Gun control is still a highly controversial issue, one that our American government has been unable to make significant progress in due to the unbending opinions of politicians, interest groups, and the general American population. This poster presents a logical question along the lines of: how are law-abiding citizens supposed to defend themselves from criminals if they are not allowed to arm themselves? In my opinion, this is an effective poster and appeal and it certainly has a compelling presentation. In the illustration, the criminal does not target the law-abiding citizen because he is armed–it raises fear in the viewer that, if we cannot own weapons to protect ourselves,we to will be targeted by gun-toting criminals. Although this is a conventional logical appeal that has been used by Anti-Gun Control advocates several times, I thought that this poster was at least a refreshing perspective. It is quite piquant as well, using a liberal slogan (“An Inconvenient Truth”) to argue its point and mock its opponents.
Personally, I am on the fence concerning this issue. It seems to be much more complex than short, logical statements like this one make it out to be. Although a poster like this is an interesting layer to add to argumentation, I think that this type of short-handed logic can be somewhat detrimental. There are so many different and complex aspects of this argument that have to be considered before real and effective action can be taken. What is required to make progress in this issue is collaboration and compromise; I don’t think that we can ban guns altogether, but we must take some type of measure to prevent gun tragedies from continuously occurring. This type of logical appeal doesn’t foster the collaborative spirit needed to invent suitable compromise–rather it tries to persuade its viewers to be even more single-minded and partisan in their views. We have to be careful of these types of appeals because they will try and make us ignore the gray areas of an issue. If the perfect solution existed in the first place, one based on only one line of logic, gun ownership (or gun control) would not be a controversial issue in the first place. If there was a perfect solution for any problem, we wouldn’t need the medium of rhetoric to solve them in the first place. But this is reality–and unfortunately there isn’t a perfect solution for anything and there is never only one line of logic to consider in any argument–at least one worth arguing about.
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