#4

     For my fourth blog post, I will be analyzing two news articles and how the information might be bent or stretched to fit what message they want to send out to the public. Both of these articles are about guns, but one is about a recent event in a Texas church.

     The first article is about mass shootings and gun laws. It is from NPR, which is a generally liberal news source. This article explains that there is a linkage between mass shootings and a decrease in gun laws. This article goes off on tangents about children killing other children because of guns in the household. It never gives a specific example that directly links with mass shootings. It gives one example, however, about how one state ONLY CONSIDERED adding a gun law that let someone use deadly force to stop automobile theft. Totally unrelated to mass shootings. This source is relevant to gun control because the title talks about mass shootings relating to looser gun laws. This article doesn’t talk about the link much at all, so it looses some credibility to me. It’s also not very convincing. This source is not very credible to me however because it does not mention a specific case where a gun law in a state that mass shooting has taken place has loosened gun laws after the fact. The title is misleading and the article goes off on a tangent. This article’s point of view doesn’t make sense. They state that mass shootings have led to an increase in permissive laws relating guns. They don’t give any examples of the kinds of things they talk about such as “...making it easier, for example, for former felons to reclaim gun rights.”  This article leaves out specific examples of those “reclaimed gun rights”. This article uses lies to label the NRA as corrupt when the NRA are suing states, following the democratic way things get done in this country, instead of using money to persuade congressional officials to pass bills. This article is not convincing at all. It makes statements that aren’t backed up by any facts and it trails off talking about toddlers killing toddlers, a problem I have never even heard of. This makes this article unreliable and messy.

     The second article is from a news source called The Blaze. This one is more of a report on what happened rather than an argument for gun control. It does show how guns can be helpful for saving lives, intended or not. This article is about the Texas Church shooting and what happened with the people who fought against the attacker. There was a good guy with a gun that saved many lives that could have easily been lost if he didn’t have a gun to fight back. The shooter, after being shot by the good guy, fled the scene in his car and was found dead later in his car. This article is very brief and was written the day after the situation went down. This source was written on what information they had at the time, which were reporters on scene and stories from the victims and the guy that fought back. This source leaves out information that was later found out, but since this article was never updated, it is not that credible. The point of view was just to report on a story/event. The effects of this story, intended or not, helped the movement for retaining our gun rights. This was an example of a situation where having a rifle is useful for defence, not acts of insanity. This article if very brief and contains little information about the actual event because it was written the day after the event happened. This source was not made to convince people of anything, but to inform people about the mass shooting and how a gun in the right hands can stop people from getting hurt.

#3

     For my third blog post, I will be analyzing two polar opposites: the Constitution Party and the Green Party. More specifically, I will be analyzing the different opinions they have on gun control and the people’s right to owning firearms. I will not be comparing, but explaining their arguments and where their logic comes from. This will be biased because I do like shooting guns and would like my constitutional rights. I will also be analyzing one of California’s congressional representative Jackie Speier, from the 14th district of California, and her views on gun control.

     The first Political Party that I analyzed is the Constitution Party. Their mission statement is as follows: The mission of the Constitution Party is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity through the election, at all levels of government, of Constitution Party candidates who will uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions. This loyalty to the Constitution appears in all of the issues they cover, including gun rights. The main pillar of their argument is the Second Amendment, which states that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The Constitution makes their argument very simple, we all have the right to own a gun because it makes this country more secure. The Constitution Party wants the public to be safe and able to fight against tyranny and crime by banning laws that restrict our rights to owning a gun. The Constitution Party’s political point of view is simple: following the rules and laws set fourth by the founding fathers, using them as guidelines for future laws should be the way of governance. The argument that the Constitution Party is making exclusively involves the 2nd amendment. Their evidence is irrefutable because it is part of the Constitution, but there are current events that have happened that raise the question of whether or not allowing a whole variety of dangerous weapons to be released to the public will benefit the public instead of having more mass shootings. This party has not ignored these shootings because they talk about how a law-abiding citizen would be able to defend himself and others against criminals.

     The Second Party that I am analyzing is the Green Party, which has completely different views of guns than the Constitution Party. Being a liberal party, the Green Party does not like how many mass shootings there have been recently. Their mission statement is as follows: The Green Party of the United States (GPUS), is an independent political party that is connected to American social movements, and is part of a global Green movement that shares key values, including our Four Pillars: Peace and Non-Violence, Ecological Wisdom, Grassroots Democracy, and Social Justice, and our Ten Key Values. Since I couldn’t find any section related to gun rights/control on the Green Party’s website, I went to one of their representatives: Jill Stein. She talks about enacting laws that ban the manufacturing of guns and the loopholes that avoid the Second amendment. The Green Party is Liberal, so I would assume that they are totally against guns and want to get them out of everyone’s hands. Jill Stein brought up that background checks must be in place, which I agree with and thought was already a thing: ”It was mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Law) of 1993 and launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1998.” Jill also mentioned that gun show loopholes needed to be stopped. These are poorly fabricated, misleading statements that need some context. The severity of the problem that the Green Party is bringing up is severe. As Jill Stein states, there are about 260 deaths a day due to guns, but this isn’t as bad compared to the 1,300 smoking deaths. Their argument is that guns should be highly restricted and regulated. The Green Party’s solution would make it harder for one to acquire a firearm legally, but over 80 percent of mass shootings are done with illegally purchased/acquired firearms. The way that you sell/buy guns at a gun show is the same way you sell/buy a gun in a store: you have to have a Federal Firearms License and the seller HAS TO do an instant background check, which can take days to complete. If you walk away from a gun show with a gun, without having done a background check AND without a proper permit for that gun, you or the seller have broken the law, you have NOT created a loophole.

     Next, I will analyze a politician, Jackie Speier of the 14th congressional district of California, and her views on gun control. But first, an overview of her values: Jackie’s main values are women’s rights, the well being of the people, and national security. She has been an advocate for many women’s rights movements including sexual harassment and assault in the military and on college campuses. She was also leading in the movements to close gender wage gaps. Being shot five times and almost dying because of it, Jackie recovered fully to defend the lives of the common people. She helped with organizing the U.S. military’s resources and investigating corrupt and fraudulous officials in power. Here is an article that I found on Jackie’s gun control opinions. This article explains the point of view that Jackie has on gun violence. She doesn’t directly say that assault rifles and other weapons should be banned, but instead says that we should ban laws that prevent research on gun violence. I think that there could be stuff to learn about mass shootings, but I disagree that there is anything we can do about it. You can’t stop people from going crazy and you can’t reason with them. There will always be messed up people that we have to watch out for. Gun shooting deaths are way lower than the other things mentioned like tobacco and alcohol deaths, which puts this problem into perspective. Just because shootings are “popular” nowadays makes it seem like a bigger problem than it actually is.

#2

     For this blog, I will be analyzing two articles, one from each side of politics, and will be pointing out details that make up their arguments. For my political issue, I am analyzing taxes and what opinions different political interest groups have on them. I am selecting two political interest groups on the opposite ends of the spectrum: The Americans for Tax Fairness (Liberal) and the Rate Coalition (Conservative). The Americans for Tax Fairness group are for taxing the rich and corporations, and the Rate Coalition are for reducing taxes on corporations. The mission of the liberal side of the topic is to increase taxes on the rich and corporations and closing any loopholes they have found to evade taxes, in turn helping the lower class and middle class. They want to raise the taxes of the richest 2% of Americans and to open up more jobs for the lower class. The Rate Coalition’s mission is to reform the tax code, lowering income tax for corporations so that they are competitive with the global market. This would incentivize investments in the US, allowing the economy to grow, benefiting consumers and small businesses. These Parties are polar opposites and will be evaluated in this blog. The first article (https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issues/tax-dodging-corporations-pay-what-you-owe/) is from the Americans for Tax Fairness group. This article is about how big corporations evade taxes by creating loopholes. What the Americans for Tax Fairness want to do is tax those big companies more and close those loopholes so that they finally pay their “fair share”. They think that doing this will give us money to invest in infrastructure, creating better schools and jobs, etc. This article leaves out how increasing taxes on big corporations will affect the middle and lower class as well of the corporations themselves. This article is biased because of this and also because it is very liberal, so it is on one end of the political spectrum. This hurts their overall argument because they lose a little bit of credibility in only spreading the good side of their plan. It only addresses the factors that their plan will benefit. The Rate Coalition article (http://ratecoalition.com/2017/10/25/new-docs-studies-show-painful-cost-high-tax-rates-economists-tout-tax-cut-benefits/) that I selected is quite different. This article is about a study that shows tax cuts being beneficial for the lower class, increasing their annual income moderately. The point of this article is to prove that their plan will have a positive impact on everyone in the deal. The studies concluded that “nearly all the burden of the corporate tax falls on labor,” so their idea of reducing taxes on corporations would make sense. This article isn’t biased because the studies done were conducted by multiple different organizations whom all came to the same/similar conclusions. The Conservative side is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the Liberal side, so this source could be biased towards their ideals.
The Liberal and Conservative sides of this argument are polarized. The Conservative side wants to lower taxes on big corporations and the Liberal side wants to raise taxes on big corporations. The Conservative side thinks that lowering taxes will increase the average income because studies have shown that the burden of taxes on corporations are borne by the lower class. But the Liberal side wants to increase taxes on corporations because big corporations have been evading their tax duties by stashing their money in offshore bank accounts. These plans are polar opposites, so similarities are seldom present. A similarity between these sources is that they both mention that their plans will benefit the economy and help lower income families. One difference is that the Conservative side has more official studies that show the benefits of their plan than the Liberal side. The Liberal side does include sources about the current problem, but not any that show any predictions on their plan’s success. They are basically asking people to trust that the outcome will be exactly what they say it will be. This is unrealistic because plans, especially big plans, don’t go exactly as expected in the real world (this is another discussion so I won’t go in depth).