Reflective Essay

When I was signing up for English this winter, I truly was worried about taking English 102. The main reason being was that the word “research” was in the title. The last time I took a class based off research was my junior year in high school, that year was spent writing paper after paper and spending lots of time in the library after school. I thought to myself if I spent that much time in high school working on papers, how much time am I going to spend in college writing papers? However, when I got to class the first day and heard it was about technology I was a little relieved. To me there is nothing worse than writing a lengthy paper on a topic that is uninteresting to you. I feel that English 101 prepared me for English 102, it taught me the importance of keeping the portfolio goals in mind when writing my essays.
I feel like writing blogs each week was the perfect outline for the papers we had assigned during class. Our blogs were something I could look back on when I got stuck writing or needed more ideas. In one of my blogs I wrote, “It’s easier to have already written about a topic instead of just reading a book and going straight into a formal essay.” I still feel this is true, it is much easier when you already have your ideas written down compared to just writing a essay off of the many ideas in your head. As the blogs continued I felt it was important to write how I felt but to also keep the goals fresh in my mind.
One goal that I thought I used a lot not only in my blogs but also in my essays was “go beyond summary to engage texts through analysis, interpretation, and critical inquiry.” To me this goal means that when you put a direct quote in your essay or even talk about a source, you put in your own meaning to what the author is saying. Also, you use that quote to strengthen a opinion you already mentioned in your paper. For example I wrote, “‘Science has now known sin,’ (Vonnegut 17). I feel like Vonnegut says this because after the atomic bomb is when questions starting raising about what technology can really do to our lives.” Before I quoted Vonnegut I talked about how I thought before the atomic bomb science and new technology was looked at as positives things. I used the quote to get support from my source but than I also interpreted it to my own meaning.
I kept in mind the importance of this goal when I started writing my research paper. When I looked for sources, I looked for ones that would strengthen my opinion and also sources that I could formulate my own opinion about. However, before I could start looking for sources I needed to figure out which topic I wanted to write about. I knew my paper would not be any good if it wasn’t on a topic that I am interested in, so therefore because of my own beliefs I chose gun control. It was easy to find sources dealing with this, however, it was hard to find books that didn’t all say the same thing.
I chose to write about gun control because I feel like America has become a more violent place. Whenever I hear stories on the news about domestic violence or even school shootings, I wonder is there even a point to guns? I wanted to research if taken guns out of civilian’s hands would have any affect on the violence level.
The first point I tried to show in my essay is the violence that guns do cause. I used statistics right away to show that guns are a problem. Next, I went onto talking just about suicide and gun accidents. I did this to show the readers what guns are capable of and how they are being used. I felt that if the readers could see the damage that guns cause they could understand my opinion better. However, I felt I did a good job in those paragraphs so that the reader could formulate their own opinion.
One concern that I had with my research paper was how to make it not should like a persuasive essay. I did not want my paper to try to convince someone that they should be for gun control just because I am. I want my paper to be on how guns make America a more violent place and if taken guns out of the picture would make it less violent, I feel at times my controlling purpose didn’t always shine through and that worried me. Therefore, I brought up the second point in my essay and that was the question if guns are what is violent or is it the criminal using the gun? I felt like this question brought my paper to a higher level of thinking. This question made me think more critically about the people who are using guns violently, having my own questions about gun control made researching the topic more interesting.
After I finished my first draft of my research paper I felt as though I had a solid paper to give to the students in my class that were editing it. However, after conferences I learned that my paper wasn’t bad it just wasn’t up to academic university standards. I learned from my conference that I made my point that guns are violent now I need to go more critically into the topic and look into why nothing is being done. With that in mind I went back through my sources and looked to see if they had any information. I feel like adding that into my paper did improve it because it allowed me to make an analysis about my own topic.
From my rough draft to my final draft I made the addition of comparing my sources. I did this for the main purpose of the goal “use key terms, distinctions, or concepts from sources to interpret, expand, and/or critique key terms, distinctions, or concepts from other sources.” I also did this because before I started editing my rough draft I looked back throughout the essays we wrote over the course of semester and realized every essay was comparing two or more authors. I thought that by mentioning one thing each author said that related to the other sources met this goal. It also helped to show the reasoning behind my opinion throughout my paper.
Overall, writing my research paper was not as bad as I expected it to be but it did take a lot of work. The steps that I made throughout writing my paper are steps that I can use when writing my next research paper because it they helped me be more efficient. I feel that if I didn’t have my blogs to look back on when writing my paper it would have been a lot more difficult because those papers set up the style in which I wanted my research paper to follow. Also, I realized the importance of having good reliable sources and how it can strengthen your paper. I thought that my opinion was more powerful when I had credible authors that agreed and direct quotes that showed they agreed.
Overall, I do feel like English 102 has made me a better writer. Throughout all the practice we had up until our research paper we were taught how to interpret and compare sources, strengthen and clarify our controlling purpose, acknowledge the stakeholders in our paper, and learn expand our ideas through direct quotes. I feel that all this work lead me to write my research paper in the way that I did and will help me in the future to be a better writer. I now believe when I sign up for classes next I will not be as worried when I see the word “research” in the course title.

Face to Face Conferences

I think the hardest part of writing my research paper was picking the topic. I had plenty of ideas but I did not know how to turn those ideas into a 7 page research paper. I finally decided on gun control because it held my interest more than the other topics. Even though it held my interest I had a hard time extending the length of my first draft. I knew what revisions I needed to make but once I did revise I still had a whole page that I needed to write to fit the criteria.

I ended up deciding it was important to say in my paper about how the authors of my sources did the same throughout their books. I did this because when I was looking through my sources before I started my paper I noticed everything started to get repetitive and I was interested to why these facts were coming up in every single piece.

I think I enjoyed the face-to-face conferences more than online editing. I got more out of it. It helped that you were able to interact with the person peer editing your paper, you can ask question to what they are saying and you can ask them to show you places where to improve. I feel like online editing just says in general what to do better but face-to-face shows specifics. I would have been really lost on my final draft it they didn’t tell me how to expand my paper and what to do to make it better. I thought that my paper was pretty good, but they showed me that it could be better.

They thing I got away from, from the conferences was that my paper needed to be more scholarly. It made it seem like my paper wasn’t up to college level which I wouldn’t of been able to understand on my own. I also got showed the things that were good in my paper, and that helped a lot because I knew to put more of that in when I edited my paper.

Research Paper

Saving At Least One Life

Whether or not civilians should be allowed to own guns, is more of a complex question than a simple yes or no answer. However, if you think of positives for both sides of the issue, it is clear that keeping guns out of the hands of civilians is the right choice. It may be a hard law to enforce but if this law saves the life of one person the work going along with enforcing the law is worth it. If people had to work and put thought into harming someone instead of just going out and buying a gun, would violence go down? If guns weren’t present in a house during a family argument, would the person have more time to think about what they were doing instead of harming their family? Would making guns less available to kids make school shootings a thing of the past? Guns need to be taken out of the hands of civilians to save lives and to stop violence.

“Roughly two-thirds of all gun-related deaths were self-inflicted accidents, suicides, or murders within the circle of family and friends. Guns purchased as protection against criminals or intruders all too often killed the people they were expected to protect.” (Nye 67) If this is true what’s the point of owning a gun? If it’s for self defense, is it worth it to have a gun to protect your family from a danger that may or may not happen? It seems to me if someone is trying to protect their family they way to do it is by not having a gun in the house. If having a gun in the house makes you feel safe in case of a burglary, wouldn’t you feel even safer knowing that guns cannot be purchased and this person wouldn’t have a gun on them? “Americans found guns ready to hand when they were careless, angry or depressed.” (Nye 167) David Nye the author of “Technology Matters” brings up a good point by saying how it is dangerous to have guns around while in arguments or feeling upset. When an argument gets heated its hard to think twice about what you are doing while you are angry. I feel like the phrase—sleep on it—can actually change someone’s mind and make them think about the situation going on, however, if the person has a gun readily available to them and has such strong emotions going on they aren’t as likely to think twice about their actions.

“In 1993, about 39,595 persons were killed with guns, the highest number in the nation’s peacetime history. Nearly half of these deaths, 48% were suicides, 47% were homicides, 4% were fatal gun accidents, and 1% were due to legal intervention.” (Kleck 1) Suicide is a serious issue, some may have suicidal thoughts for a long time before they decide to act on them or some may decide to act on a brief intense emotional experience. For both cases, it’s the time that they make up their mind to harm themselves that is relevant to the gun control issue. If a gun wasn’t around would they have the chance to change their mind or simply find a different way to kill their self? “A suicide attempter is only temporarily intent on dying, denied a gun, he substitutes a slow acting method. This allows others to intervene to prevent death, without the attempt being followed by later attempts.” (Kleck 273) I feel if someone attempts suicide by using a gun it is like a 100% chance that it will be fatal, however, if a gun is not the weapon choice maybe it will give the person more time. For example, if someone tries to overdose on pills while the affects of the pills are kicking it, it gives them time to think about their actions and find help or it gives them time for someone to find them before the worst happens. Basically without guns it gives a person with suicidal thoughts a second chance in most cases. Gary Kleck the author of “Targeting Guns” thinks that there is an association with gun use and victim death, since guns are so lethal. (Kleck 216) Since the choice of weapon really does play an impact in suicidal cases, maybe it is important to look into making guns illegal for this fact alone.

However some argue that it isn’t the guns fault it is the person using the guns fault. Constance Emerson Crooker the author of “Gun Control and Gun Rights” agrees with this. He says, “the majority of gun owners are responsible, and that you cannot blame crime on the tool, but on the criminal using the tool.” (Crooker 8) If this is true than why are so many people making the same mistake with the same tool? For instance in the article “Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Abusers: Handgun Purchases and Restraining Orders” it states that over half of guns purchased are bought after the persons restraining order expires. (Vittes 1) “Households in which intimate partner violence has occurred may be more likely to contain a handgun than households without incidents of violence, intimate partner assaults involving firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons or bodily force.” (Vittes 1) After reading this it is obvious that it is true it is the criminals fault for doing the crime. However, with guns around instead of just injuries the chances of death are higher. I think the criminal and the weapon go hand-in-hand, it’s the criminal’s choice to use the gun but if guns were illegal maybe it wouldn’t be around when domestic violence gets out of control.

Along with purposely using a gun to harm someone, accidents can occur when having a gun around. “By definition injuries caused by accident are not prompted by any intent to kill (unlike suicide and to a lesser extent homicide). More than half of all gun accidents occur in and around the home; most of the rest are hunting related.” (Spitzer 55) It is uncommon to be killed by a gun because of an accident but it still happens. It is more likely for someone to get injured. Accidents from firearms normally consist of people being irresponsible while handling guns, or keeping a loaded gun in the house especially when kids are present. (Spitzer 50) “Accidents are directly attributable to three factors: gun availability or density (the number of guns in a locality), the accessibility of guns (the ease or difficulty in operating a gun), and conduct (how guns are actually handled, including frequency and skill).” (Spitzer 54) Even if it is uncommon to have accidents while handling guns they do happen which makes sense if there are no guns there wouldn’t be accidents involving guns. The main reason someone has a gun around is for self defense but this is where the most accidents happen. “The risk of a gun accident to the average gun owner will outweigh any reasonable estimate of the defensive value of guns.” (Kleck 293) How bad the accident is depends on what gun the gun owner is using, some guns do a lot more damage than others, if guns can not be banned from citizens hands should a certain types of guns be banned?

“What remains a constant is the effort to identify and more strictly regulate guns or ammunition that are regarded as especially dangerous and criminally useful, to search for especially ‘bad’ guns that are even more problematic than guns in general.” (Kleck 106) The main type of gun used in crimes are ‘Saturday Night Specials’ these are small, cheap handguns, these are specially used from criminal use and have really no other purpose. (Kleck 130) They could cause injury or even death but one would have to be a skilled guns man to be able to deal either to a victim because these guns are hard to aim, unreliable, and have low power, they are useless for someone to own it just for self-defense. Another main type of gun used is hand guns, however if these were banned the user would just go to a long barrel gun which is more lethal. (Kleck 136) “Never place restrictions on a subcategory of weapons without also placing restrictions at least as stringent on more deadly, easily substituted alternative weapons, Thus, controls aimed solely at handguns or small, cheap handguns are a mistake, because they encourage substitution of more lethal types of guns.” (Kleck 139) It seems like even having restrictions wouldn’t help with the problems of violence with guns, the only way to go is banning civilians from owning handguns.

COMPARE THE AUTHORS HERE

I feel like all the authors, Nye, Spitzer, Kleck, and Crooker would agree that it may take time but focusing on gun control could help save lives. There is no guarantee that criminals will not change their choice of weapon to something other than guns but there is also no evidence that taking guns away will not lessen the violence. I feel that gun control is important because if it saves one life it is worth it, that person will be out of harms why by the government stepping up and enforcing new laws to help save citizens.

annonated

Crooker, Constance. Gun Control and Gun Rights. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Constance Crooker use to practice law, her main focus was defense of gun crimes. Before she retired she had her own private practice mainly involved criminal defense. The stakeholder that Crooker represents is lawyers or those directly dealing with the law. The audience for her book “Gun Control and Gun Rights” is to anyone who is interested in viewing both sides of the gun control debate. Crooker’s purpose in this book is to show the positive and negative effects on gun control. She balances both views by using theories, looking back throughout history, and talking to other politicians. She choose to add facts about gun rights groups and talks about different gun control laws show that this debate will not end anytime soon. This book allows readers to formulate their own opinion, this will be a useful source to help my opinion be unbiased.

Kleck, Gary. Targeting Guns. Hawthorne, NY: Walter de Gruyter Inc, 1997.

Gary Kleck is a Professor at the University of Florida, in the criminology department. He represents one of many researchers in Criminal Justice. The author’s audience is aimed at those who agree there should be gun control. He also talks to those against gun control and try to get them to agree with him. Kleck’s purpose is on the debate of gun control. He uses research, statistics, and real life examples to show how gun control would be a good thing. He does leave out how gun control could be a bad thing, mainly because his opinion for gun control is so strong. This source will be very useful for my research paper because of how in depth he goes and he is a credited source with good facts.

Spitzer, Robert. The Politics of Gun Control. 2nd. Chappaqua, NY: Seven Bridges Press, 1998.

Robert Spitzer is a Political Scientist. He received his PH.D from Cornell University. He is a stakeholder for those interested in politics. His audience is to anyone who wants to be more informed on gun rights and how groups for gun control are growing. He looks into the history of gun rights more than any other author I have used so far. He looks into the positive and the negative effects of gun rights. He explores why gun control is such a huge debate between people. This is a helpful source because it shows the history of guns and takes a closer look at the laws regarding gun rights.

These three sources are my best sources because they focus primarily on my question on whether guns cause citizens more harm or make them safer?. I feel like these sources did a good job of exploring the debate on gun control. They did make me questions if guns make us safer, and made me want to focus on the negative effects on guns. They are helpful because they explore the positive and negative effects on gun control so it allows me to see both sides of the argument.