#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.