Adam Gopnik's "Shootings"

Martha Blanchard
Dr. Ruth Martin
English 111 (6)
September 29, 2010

Adam Gopnik’s article “Shootings (2007)”, published in The New York…………….., uses examples of mass shootings that have happened in our schools as a connection to the United States’ problem with gun control.   He explores the reason why the United States have a higher percentage of trouble with mass shootings then the rest of the world.
Gopnik begins by mentioning how the American’s like to “heal” from these tragedies first without actually “treating” the problem.   However, the whole world saw how much of a problem it was becoming.
Gopnik then goes on to mention how it took a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, killing sixteen children and a teacher for the British gun laws to be tightened.   Also, Gopnik refers to a shooting at a Quebec school killing fourteen women in 1989.   The survivors helped begin a gun control that ultimately helped in changing legislation of gun control in Canada.   Gun control became a top priority in 2002 in a Paris suburb when a man killed eight people at a town meeting.   These are just examples of how different places in the world have tried to stop gun violence and have more gun control.
In the end Gopnik points out how reducing the availability of guns will not put a stop to all gun violence, however, nations with gun control have less.   Gopnik reminds us that having these laws in place doesn’t guarantee us that these tragedies will never happen again.   “But the point of lawmaking is not to act as precisely as possible, in order to punish the latest crime; it is to act as comprehensively as possible, in order to prevent the next one.” (Gopnik, Shootings (2007), ………., paragraph 7)