Athabasca University
Assignment 4b
“Shootings” by Adam Gopnik
Critical review.
Basics in Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing - PHIL
... [Show More] 152
Instructor Chris Lepock
December 30, 2017
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Ezhova 2
Critical Review.
Adam Gopnik, known as a staff writer for The New Yorker, has been addressing gun
violence in many of his articles (“Contributors: Adam Gopnik”). In one of them, the essay
“Shootings” written in 2007, the author argues that mass shooting is an ongoing issue which
occurs due of the lack of gun control and failure to ban the possession of guns by citizens.
The writer begins his essay with a picture of the aftermath of mass shootings at Virginia
Tech – police cleared dead bodies of children while their cell-phones keep ringing as parents
desperately tried to reach them. He invites readers to “imagine the feelings of the police and
parents” (Gopnik 457). Gopnik states that “the parents, and the rest of us, were told” that it is not
the time to ask questions (458). The author describes politicians as people who propose that
“healing” can take place magically, without the intervening practice called “treating” and do
nothing to prevent future tragedies (458). The writer points at the absurdity that “the aftermath of
a terrorist attack is the wrong time to talk about security” and that attention had been redirected
toward different issues (458).
The author states, “the United States has more gun violence than other countries because
we have more guns and are willing to sell them to madmen who want to kill people” (458). He
points that “on a recent list of the fourteen worst mass shootings in Western democracies since
the nineteen-sixties the United States claimed seven” (458). The writer provides three examples
how the mass killings were addressed in different countries to show that stricter laws were
effective to prevent a repetition of the similar tragedies. In Scotland- guns law were tightened
and “nothing like Dunblane has occurred there since”; In Quebec – “legislation bringing stronger
gun laws to Canada”; Paris –“gun control became a key issue in the Presidential election that
year, and there has been no repeat incident” (459). Gopnik stresses that there are nothing specific [Show Less]