REFLECTIVE ESSAY (rough draft)

Aleishia Bradac
English 102
Research Analysis Essay

I was eighteen when I shot my first gun. I was over at my friend, Katie’s house and her dad had a target set up in the backyard and was shooting at it. I was watching him shoot the gun and Katie asked me if I had ever shot a gun before. I told her no I haven’t, so she asked if I wanted to. I thought, why not, I like to think of myself as the kind of person who will try (almost) anything once. Her dad showed me how to hold the gun, and let me fire away. Surprisingly I had a pretty good aim. That was the first and last time I shot a gun. I have never been pro-gun or really dead set against them either. They were just sort of there. My family is very involved in the navy and the marines. My grandfather was in WWII, two of my uncles were in Vietnam, another two uncles and my father were in the Gulf War. My mom’s boyfriend is pretty big into hunting. So all my life I have been surrounded by guns. There have always been guns in my home, though I have not always been aware of it. I never really realized how pro-gun my family was until this past year, the thought just never occurred to me. As I mentioned in my Research Paper, my mom voted for McCain over Obama because of one issue: gun control. That phone conversation really opened up my eyes. I had never paid attention to my family’s obsession with guns; I wasn’t interested so I just kind of ignored it all. Honestly, the fact that my mother chose McCain over Obama for one reason kind of annoyed me. I found myself being disappointed in her and not really understanding why this one issue of gun control could be so important. Since when were guns THAT important? I didn’t feel this way, but it seemed like most of my family did. After that conversation, I never really brought up the subject again. I was still disappointed but did not want to have a meaningless fight over it. This was until I read Technology Matters by David Nye. In my blog I wrote:
Just a thought: On page 167 of Technology Matters, David Nye poses the question, "Do weapons make people safer?" He goes on to talk about owning guns, he says that in countries where you cannot own a gun homicide and accident rates are much lower than in the United States. He really brings it home with, "In states with more guns, more children are dying." This got me thinking, why are we allowed to own guns? Why is it in the Constitution that the second amendment is the right to bear arms? What were our Founding Fathers thinking? Did they foresee this becoming such a problem? Now I understand that there are people who hunt and all that jazz but still this is a huge problem. Too many people die because of guns, or is it just the people that use them, not the guns? If so do you think that if we outlawed guns, we would see more people killing with knives or some other sort of weapon or do you think that we would see homicides and accident rates decrease?

After I read that passage in Technology Matters, I began thinking about the conversation with my mother again and how it really bothered me. I just didn’t understand how people could be so pro-gun when the statistics are not at all positive. So instead of arguing with my mother over her beliefs, I decided that it would be the focus of my Research Paper. In a way, it’s a sort of argument and lets me put my views out there, without causing any unnecessary family drama over guns.
It started as a research about how technology makes us safer or how we believe that it makes us safer. But the main question was, does technology really make us safer? So with the gun, people own them to use as protection for their families. They believe that owning a gun makes them safer. So then I thought why is this? Why do we believe that owning a gun makes us safer even when all of the facts say otherwise? Yet you still have people who are pro-gun and really do believe that it is essential to own a gun. What makes them think this way?
The first draft of this Research Paper ended up being horrible. I’m not going to lie, it was dreadful. I believe my teacher said it was “like a safety commercial.” I was focusing on how guns are unsafe and really it was just me throwing a bunch of facts in there. I was a bit too anti-gun. I knew that my paper was in need of some major help but I was lost. We then had our first conferences, which was like a breath of fresh air. My teacher didn’t understand why I didn’t use papers. This was because I thought my discussion was too broad and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to narrow it down enough. She and my peers then asked me questions and gave suggestions. They were interested in the gun aspect of my paper and suggested I look at it from a different angle. I then thought about what I had written in my blog previously. “Why is it in the Constitution that the second amendment is the right to bear arms? What were our Founding Fathers thinking?....Too many people die because of guns, or is it just the people that use them, not the guns?” These questions lead to other questions like: What was the view of our Founding Fathers? How do others who are pro-gun view the world? Do they feel in control when they own a gun? How does owning a gun control their perspective?
After asking all of these questions I felt much more confident about my research. This idea of the gun controlling a person’s perspective fit perfectly in with my previous essay about the different ways technology has control over us. The paper turned from a question of safety to a question of why we believe the gun makes us safer. Why this technology has control over our perspectives.
For the beginning of my Research Paper I have a general discussion of the control and technology debate. I did this because I thought it would be beneficial to the reader to understand what is being said about this debate. I referenced the three texts that we focused on in class: The Human Factor by Kim Vicente, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and Technology Matters by David Nye. As a class we started with The Human Factor. As I began reading Vicente I started to have my own ideas of what he was saying. I wrote in the margins, “Technology can overpower us. We can lose the control. We may not fully understand what it’s capable of. Sometimes it can turn on you without you realizing. What happens when we lose all control? What can we do to gain back control?”These were the first questions I began asking in class and it showed up in all of my assignments. So when I went to write my blogs, I looked back on my notes from reading it the first time. In the essay, the Human Factor was what stood out to me the most and I began to think about it in every way possible. I thought that it had many different ways of showing itself, which I began to explore in my Research Paper. Then we read Cat’s Cradle and I could just see all these different ways the Human Factor came in to play with the characters. I especially was interested in Dr. Hoenikker and his “science smarts” and his “social stupidity.” Then I thought about how Vicente talked about control and I was thinking that some of the characters in Cat’s Cradle had completely lost control of their lives; which made it all connect for me.

NOTE: I feel like there should be more, but I’m not sure what to elaborate on. Should I be quoting my Research Paper and then be explaining things?