Article on Gabby Gifford's op-ed in today's NY Times

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The attached link will take you to a WSJ article about Congresswoman Giffords' article in the NY Times. The article was entitled "Gabby Giffords Poisons the Well." Its subtitle was "The incivility and unreason of her case for gun control."

This WSJ article does not cover the entire Giffords' article chastising the Senate over not passing the President's bill, but it does step you through the content and labels the arguments showing point by point the inconsistencies and faulty logic she uses. Her article was entitled "A Senate in the Gun Lobby's Grip," and the link is below.

Goodness knows nobody has a better right to feel strongly about guns than the person almost murdered with one, but this article shows that emotion does not trump fact.

I thought the article was a good primer on how one might recognize fallacious arguments about topics discussed around the office water cooler--especially the gun debate.

Here is the WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578430771447679726.html?mod=us_most_pop_newsreel

Here is the Congresswoman's article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?_r=1&
 
Considering she owned a pistol beforehand, and her husband has bought guns since then, they are nothing but hypocrites, assuming she is speaking for herself and not being used as a prop.

Regardless of whatever measures she purportedly supports, we know from their own words that the gun grabbers she shills for want to totally disarm all citizens, except the self-declared more-special-than-others ones. Gabby and Marc-y are shameless minions.
 
lee n. field said:
I wonder who really wrote it.
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There's no particular reason to think Ms. Giffords didn't write the article herself. She has difficulty with speech and some partial paralysis as consequences of being shot, but from everything I've read, her cognitive functioning isn't impaired.
 
I don't read the WSJ, but I was pleasantly surprised to read something from a major media outlet that also talked with some real sense for a change.
 
I am so sorry that Gabby Gifford was shot and friends of hers killed.

Still, her arguments remind me what I heard and read from the Women’s’ Temperance League. They argued that if “Demon Rum” was abolished then child hunger and poverty would end, men would stop beating their wives, that streets would be safe, we would all be civil to each other, and America would be a peaceful prosperous paradise. It didn’t work out that way.
 
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The WSJ piece is an excellent analysis of the flaws in Ms. Gifford's reasoning (although to call it that may be stretching a point). It's also useful as a guide to analyzing similar emotion-laden articles. We'd do much better if we were able to point to specific logical fallacies in such articles, rather than just declaring that "They're all lying!"
 
I don't read the WSJ, but I was pleasantly surprised to read something from a major media outlet that also talked with some real sense for a change.
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There are editors at the WSJ (and Forbes as well) who are surprisingly independent thinkers, and some do come down on our side.
 
Musher (and others who are getting the Log In page) -- it's likely because you have cookies disabled in your browser. Enable them for the Times site, and I think you'll be able to get to the article.
 
lee n. field said:
I wonder who really wrote it.
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Me too.

And I don't buy the argument that her cognitive functions are unimpaired, not as a rebuttal to "Who really wrote it?". My grandmother was left in a condition much like Ms. Gifford's by a stroke. My grandmother's cognitive functions were sufficiently functional that she understood what we said to her. For her to try to express any sort of meaningful idea in words, either spoken or written, was quite another story. In fact, it never happened. She lived ten more years after the stroke, ten years that had to have been incredibly frustrating to her because my grandmother was a highly intelligent and well-educated woman who loved discussing history and philosophy. To see her sitting in her living room, unable to form ideas into words in any medium, was heart-breaking.

I don't believe for a single nanosecond that Gabby Giffords wrote that. I think her husband wrote it and she signed it.
 
I think Giffords assumes too much. She has decided that the legislation failed only because her colleagues are afraid of the N.R.A. In her mind this legislation should have passed and she can't accept that it did not. She can not reconcile that perhaps, just maybe, those Senators voted my way because they believed it was the right thing to do. Personally, I just think that is as presumptuous as it gets.
 
If for some reason you cannot open the page to see it, . . . don't worry, . . . you didn't miss anything worth talking about.

Just skim reading it (not studying it) was enough to make me want to toss my dinner, . . . it's just a pile of foolish emotionalism (I actually had a couple of other words in mind, . . . but those will suffice to make the point).

May God bless,
Dwight
 
I don't believe for a single nanosecond that Gabby Giffords wrote that. I think her husband wrote it and she signed it.
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I was watching her head nod during the defeat speech. It kept time with statements O'bama was making as he scolded the Senate, the NRA, and us gun owners in general. I can only assume that if she can nod her head when she hears something she likes, she can nod her head when she hears something she likes that someone wrote for her. I can't know for sure who wrote it, but I do believe she can follow along.
 
What I don't get is when she says about the Senators heard from their constituents (who she says supported the bill), but yet voted against it because of the power of the NRA?:confused: Those Senators voted against it because they were probably getting huge numbers of calls from people telling them not to vote for it (i.e. their constituents---and people who call are people who vote). If their constituents were all really saying, "Yes, go ahead, vote for this bill, we don't mind at all!" I think they would have.
 
The problem in Giffords' article is not the use of emotion, but, rather, the overuse of emotion. The three modes of persuasion are ethos, pathos, and logos. Pathos, the use of emotion to persuade, is most effective when used with logos (logic) and ethos (credibility of the speaker). She employs some ethos by referring to her terms in Congress. Much or all of that is lost by the over-emotional name calling (calling them cowards, etc.). This is a turn-off for most readers and listeners. She employs absolutely no logos.

When we make our arguments, we should keep these modes of persuasion in mind. Try to craft your arguments with some facts -- "Here's some things they're not telling you about the bill," or "Did you know Internet sales already have to go through a FFL?". Make a calculated but respectable plea to emotion -- "Patriots beginning with the battles of Lexington and Concord have fought and died protecting our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms." Unless you are a publicly known and respected figure, you have to build ethos through the respectful, yet forceful arguments you make. We won't persuade the hard core opposition but we may be able to hold the middle.
 
Vanya said:
The WSJ piece is an excellent analysis of the flaws in Ms. Gifford's reasoning...
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Never having been shot in the head, I'm going to give her a hall pass on both her reasoning and her opinions on gun control. I don't have to agree with her to do that.
 
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