Today, I am going to present to you, my persuasive oral presentation on gun violence.
In my oral presentation, I am going to explain what is gun violence. I will tell you the main reason why there are so many gun deaths in America. I will include why we must prevent gun violence. In the end, I will show some of the solutions we have to prevent gun violence.
Imagine you are on your school holidays having a family trip to the beach, and you feel thirsty and you go down to the coffee shop.
Suddenly bang! You hear this loud unusual sound, followed by people screaming, shouting, crying. With confusion and fear, you pick up your little brother while you are trying to figure out what is happening. A man shows up holding a shotgun in his hand. Bang! Without hesitation, he fires, and one by one people fall on the ground. Your dad is begging him to leave you and your brother alone. But the response he gets is a bullet through his head. As the cold-blooded killer walks towards you, you are terrified.
This is an imaginary scene from the biggest massacre in Australia's history. On 28th of April 1996, a mass shooting killed 35 people, wounded 23 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. The nation was in shock. How could this happen in Australia? After a lot of political debate, the Prime Minister John Howard rallied all the states and territories to propose stricter gun laws. For the first time in Australia’s history, the government announced a gun buyback scheme. There was a lot of criticism from many farmers but the National Party leader Tim Fischer pushed ahead and supported Howard’s scheme. In just two weeks after the massacre Parliament passed the buyback scheme and announced stricter gun laws.
As we can see on the graph here, the total number of firearm deaths in Australia have dropped dramatically since 1996. Australia’s strict gun policy is often to use as an example of success on gun control in other countries. So If our policy has been so effective, why haven’t others followed? Think about it. If you are the leader of a country would you like to see your citizens suffering from gun violence? The answer is obvious, but there is always an obstacle we have to confront and that is gun culture. For example, America is infamous for its right to bear arms.
We can see on the left-hand side of this graph, there are an estimated 900 million civilian-held firearms around the globe. Most of those guns are in the United States. When we adjust for population size, which is the graph on the right-hand side, it also has the most guns per capita. With this many, it is no wonder that the US has a lot more firearm violence compared to other countries.
The reason why they have so many guns in the US is that they have this cultural and legal concept - the second amendment - which is ok for self-defence. But perhaps this law makes it too easy for people to buy guns and use them for the wrong reasons. Gang culture and more recently political extremists can easily buy a gun from a supermarket - just like Costco which we have in Canberra. I think Australia’s strict controls helps stop these kind of people from doing us harm with guns. The only people who seem to get guns here are criminals anyway. Not, for example, a college teenager like they can in Texas.
Imagine if Australia has this problem - in just one day in the US 21 children and teens are shot, four die and two are murdered. I can’t stop thinking about there is someone out there who is probably the same age as us - this is an age when all we should worry about is homework, relationships or any normal teen problems. It’s definitely not the age we should be worrying about school shootings, gun violence and dying from gunshots. Well see, here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be like that, like worrying about their lives every day, and for all the students and teachers out there, you can stop this from happening. Because every gun-related death is a preventable death. They are not random accidents. You can never say, this will not happen to me.
Just before our exam week last semester, a man armed with a firearm broke into a house and demanded money in Holt, which only four kilometres away from Hawker. Luckily the guy didn't fire his gun and the male victim was only left with small injuries on his face. But what if the robber fired the gun and killed the victim? Think about it. Now, do you still believe gun violence will not happen to you? Do you still feel safe? How many of you have been to the Charnwood shops? Yeah, ok for some of you don’t know where it is, it is at the top of the map, circled by the red marker. On Sunday, September 29th, two men, armed with a double-barrelled shotgun and a machete, went into a takeaway shop about 8 pm. They demanded money and threatened the staff, two shots were fired. Again, it was fortunate no one had been killed. We always hear these things happening somewhere else, but when it happens right in our neighbourhood, it is very shocking.
Gun violence like all violence is indiscriminate. It is a problem we all risk, a problem we all share and a problem we can all do something to stop. Taking action to stop gun violence can take time and there are different forms you can choose. For some people, they choose the form of fighting for the policy or political change and that won’t be easy. It could be long and frustrating, and sometimes it would have a negative effect to make the issue become more extreme. But it is not our only option, there is always something that we can do. Small but meaningful actions can change a lot. Let’s say we take five minutes, have a conversation with your parents at the dinner table about gun violence prevention. If you have one hour, post your discussion with your friends on social media. If you have one day, you could try and raise money through charities or crowd funding to support victims of gun violence or their families. But if we do nothing, we will become one of the “silent groups”. I’m talking about the solutions we can all do in our own homes and schools to ensure that the people that are suffering from gun violence get the help they need, to ensure that those who are crying out for help on social media are
Properly taking care, to ensure that our parent has raised enough concerns about gun prevention. You might be thinking, why I’m talking about guns in Australia, but as I revealed earlier. We have had two gun incidents in our area in just three days. There has been a huge increase in ICE addiction in Australia in recent years which is fuelling gun crime. Therefore I think it's time to remember to act now to prevent more gun crime as people seem to have forgotten the Port Arthur massacre. There are so many actions that we can take to protect our lives and each other from preventable gun violence, and that is why I need you to think about this.
One of the simplest things we can do is look out for each other through a police sponsored Neighbourhood Watch program which has been successful for many decades. To know that the change we wish to see begins with us and we can all take action to protect our families and the people we love from gun violence.
Here is the list of persuasive strategies I use in my speech.
The principles of persuasion I have mentioned are ethos logos and pathos. For example the use of ethos are commonly used in Anne Hathaway speech about the national women's day, she makes sure the audience knows that she is trustworthy, through appropriate appearance, effective delivery and a high quality of arguments. In my speech I have often used ‘group of three’ and ‘repetition’ to achieve effective delivery.
Secondly I use logos, which is the use of evidence such as facts and statistics for example the graph and the numbers I have on the slides to make the audience have more information to support my arguments and I also share a few stories about gun violence to give a logical reasoning on my speech.
Finally comes to the emotional appeals which is pathos, I use some shocking pictures such as the “gun buyback scheme” “The bullet holes in the chanwood shop” and I also use emotive language for example to create an emotional connection with the audience in order to help that information I give, to hit close to the heart of the audience.