Dear Dallas Morning News,
In the editorial, Arms in class too risky for one prof, there are many points that are brought up by John M. Crisp throughout the piece that don’t provide and or establish a foundation that connect to the relevance of the topic being discussed which is the Senate Bill 11. Without proper foundation having been established, the points that were brought up have no concrete credibility which make them inaccurate.
Senate Bill 11 was a bill that was passed in the state of Texas, which allowed students on public universities the right to carry a concealed firearm without facing consequences. With Senate Bill 11 being passed and going into effect in August of 2016, (The New York Times), there’s a professor, Professor Emeritus Daniel Hamermesh, who decided to resign teaching at the University of Texas at Austin due to the increased risk of losing his life through the job. Having titled the article with Arms in class too risky for one prof, makes it seem like the professor can’t take risks for the sake of students gaining more knowledge that will be useful for the rest of their life. The title gives readers the impression that the professor is selfish and prefers to step down from his position because he only cares about himself rather than his students. With the title being what it is, it provides a bad image to the professor that’ll follow him around to his next job, which could possibly be a private school or a school out of the state of Texas. It probably would’ve been better to give your editorial a different title or atleast a title that has facts in it concerning Senate Bill 11 appropriately.
Going into the first paragraph, you stated ‘barely noticed day-to-day death toll from guns or by regular mass shootings’, what was failed to mention was the absent regulations on either state or national level of security. In the present day it’s not difficult for civilians to walk into any stores that carry firearms and walkout a few minutes later being an owner of a firearm. Obtaining a firearm isn’t difficult due to little background check being performed on those who are interested in becoming an owner of a firearm, There is more extensive background check being performed on people interested in adopting a dog than someone who wants to purchase a firearm. So, having included that sentence implies that people need to have firearms in order to protect themselves from the mass shootings that occur daily. But, part of the reason why mass shooting are occurring regularly is because of the little to no background check on people who are purchasing lethal weapons.
Going back to the Aurora, Colorado theatre mass shooting in 2012 where a man walked into a screening of The Dark Night Rises, not long after having walked in, he murdered 12 people with many more injured, (The Atlantic). There was also the Sandy Hook shooting that occurred later on in 2012 that took the lives of 20 school children leaving multiple injured, (The Atlantic). The list goes on and on with shootings that have occurred within the past decade, every year becoming more and more frequent as gun/ firearm regulations remain the same and continue to sell lethal weapons to people that might not be mentally stable in terms of their thoughts and intentions of hurting people. If you were trying to persuade the readers to purchase firearms in order to be safe from the mass shootings, then citing a source at that point would’ve been useful and would’ve caused the readers to start thinking the way in which you perceive the situation.
Later on in the editorial piece, Crisp continuously stated that on a large university, it can be difficult for professors to identify students that may be going through a rough patch and don’t know what’s going on until a tragic event happens, yet Crisp continues to make Hamermesh sound like a selfish professor who doesn’t care about students receiving the education necessary for them to obtain a degree. Crisp also develops a tone that isn’t sympathetic towards Hamermesh despite Hamermesh probably not wanting to step down as a professor from The University of Texas at Austin.
With the lack of foundation and the development of an unsympathetic tone throughout the entire editorial, Crisp doesn’t properly establish his argument on why concealed carry should be allowed on university campuses to keep students safe.
Sincerely,
Vania N.
Works Cited
“The Case for More Guns (and More Gun Control).” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/.
“HCC passes Campus Carry policy.” The Egalitarian, hccegalitarian.com/5146/news/hcc-passes-campus-carry-policy/.
“New Texas gun control law allows concealed guns on campus.” BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36948149.
“What University of Texas Campus Is Saying About Concealed Guns.” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/university-of-texas-campus-concealed-guns.html?_r=0.
endlessautumndays 