Rifkin’s “A Change of Heart About Animals.” Rebuttal

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In Rifkin’s “A Change of Heart About Animals.” uses refutation rebuttals as his main arguments in convincing his audience that animals are just a complicated as us. He states that some scientists think that animals can’t show individualism so that makes them not self-aware. Rifkin gives examples of monkeys at zoos caring about their appearance. The next he says that mourning the dead and feeling grief was an indication on how we are different. Rifkin uses elephants standing next to their dead kin for days, as another example. He uses the rebuttals to share examples, to feel connected with the animals by relating to them, and how the examples show that animals are more similar to humans than we think. 

“Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals” Prompt

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  1. Nicholas Kristof’s paper called “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals” is about how guns don’t have to mean danger.
  2. Nicholas Kristof claims that gun ignorance offends and enables the NRA by not proposing effective gun regulations. Another author’s claim is that guns should be kept away from high risked individuals and a more efficient way to promote gun control is by calling for gun safety by rebranding gun regulations.
  3. Kristof uses a cause and effect claim as well as proposal claims to promote his argument.
  4. The author uses lots of data and facts that include studies, statistics, and expert quotes that adds up to a lot of convincing evidence.
  5. The author uses logos and rebuttals to persuade his audience to get educated about guns and pass gun regulations that are efficient.
  6. Nicholas Kristof did have “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals ” and pointed out what some liberals are doing wrong, but still somehow convinced me to support his more liberal claims. Kristof didn’t make the issues he wanted solved about political parties he made it about the people they were affected, which was a very smart idea. He snuck in what he wanted to say with a click bait title that would attract a different audience than a more traditional paper about gun control. I think “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals”, by Nicholas Kristof, is very effective in conveying its arguments to support his underlying motive. 

“Do We Have the Courage to Stop This” Prompt

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  1. The overall argument in Nicholas Kristof’s paper called “Do We Have the Courage to Stop This” is for more safety regulations on guns.
  2. Nicholas Kristof has many claims like guns are like cars. He also have claims to help reduce the deaths in mass shootings like universal background checks, like restricting high-capacity magazine, and serial numbers more difficult to erase. Nicholas Kristof last claim was his ending sentence of his paper. He stated, “if we don’t treat guns in the same serious way (as auto safety), some of you and some of your children will die because of our failure (paragraph 20).”
  3. His main claims were comparison claims, proposal claims, and claims about values
  4. Kristof uses many types of evidence, including: research from an expert, counter examples, and data. An example of a use of evidence is a counter example, it talks about what the other side of the argument would say if they we there discussing with you while the author was writing. This Counter argument was “ it (gun safety regulation) won’t make a difference because the crazies will always be able to get a gun (paragraph 9),” and the author handles this argument with pathos, by saying that it could reduce death by guns by 10,000 lives annually. By using fairly strong evidence Kristof influences you as a reader to agree with the author.
  5. The author uses logos and pathos with his claims and evidence to persuade his readers to want to regulate guns.
  6. I thought Nicholas Kristof chose the right path to convincing people to want more safety regulations, but there were some flaws. Using people’s fear about the thought of losing a loved one in a shooting was a good persuasive technique. It makes what you say, as an author, memorable and for people to take what you said into consideration. The data and other evidence were also a good technique because you can rarely argue with data if it is correct. I think the only thing that was a little distracting was that the author started from the beginning, comparing cars and guns, but in paragraph six Kristof started to compare guns with ladders and as the reader I wished that he would have stuck with the one analogy to keep me focused. The paper “Do We Have the Courage to stop this?” by Nicholas Kristof  was fairly well written and introduced me to possible regulations that I would consider advocating for.