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Laquita Brooks
Jessica Gravely
Textual Analysis
16 September 2008
Ban Them All
The article “Ban the Things. Ban Them All” by Molly Ivins is about how the
there should be a stricter law for guns or guns should be banned completely. Ivins is basically
saying that people should not have the power to kill. She agrees with the Second Amendment
that well-regulated militia should have guns but allowing unregulated citizens to have guns is
destroying the security of the state. Ivins believes that there should be some restrictions about
ownership of a gun such as the gun should be licensed as well as the owner; there should be restrictions applied to the usage of the gun; and the guns’ buyers should be tracked. Ivins states
that any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it, so why not just ban them all.
I completely agree with Ivins about how there should be much stricter laws on guns because anyone can get their hands on a gun in today’s world. Guns are not safe and they can’t be
used for anything good, their only intent is to kill. If guns are not going to be banned, then there
should be a lot more restrictions applied to the usage of a gun.
Guns are a serious matter and they are not to be played around with nor joked about but
Ivins seems to think otherwise. In the beginning of the article Ivins pointed out that she wasn’t
anti-gun but pro-knife and suggested that general substitution of knives for guns would promote
physical fitness and the whole nation would turn out to be great runners because you have to
catch up with someone to stab them. It was supposed to be semi-humorous but I found no humor
in it at all. That statement made her argument less effective, less appealing and made her sound
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stupid because neither guns nor knives should be permitted. She contradicted herself because at
the end of the article she said guns should be banned but at the beginning of the article she says
she is not anti-guns. Make up your mind! I think Ivins had a lot of great arguments but saying
substituting guns for knives was her least convincing argument because either way it goes, she is
still condoning violence and acknowledging the power to kill because a knife can also kill someone.
Ivins had a lot of good arguments but I did not agree with the way she made her points. I
think Ivins should have put a little more emphasis on how random innocent people die everyday
because of a gun. The fact that a bullet does not have anyone’s name on it and people die everyday because a gun ended up in the wrong person hand is an argument I would have added to
support Ivins point. Everyday there are people dying from a stray bullet - mothers, kids, elderly
and who ever else is in the way because some fool picked up a gun and decided he or she had the
power to kill. This is the best reason to ban guns, so we can stop losing loved ones. I can recall
an incident this summer when a former classmate of mine three year old son died because he was
shot in the face on accident by his own uncle. That was a shameful and unnecessary death of an
innocent boy because there are no strict laws or banning of guns.
Therefore I do not think there should only be stricter laws on guns; I think guns should be
banned completely. Guns can only do one thing – KILL, so why that should be allowed? The
only people that should be allowed to have a gun are people who form part of a well-regulated
militia such as the Army, Police, National Guard etcetera and that’s only because their job is to
protect and serve. Don’t get me wrong though, they should have licenses and restrictions to a
gun as well. Anyone outside of those walls shouldn’t even be able to look at a gun.