antigun control essays

antigun control essays I. Intro. - Imagine you are sitting home one night with nothing to do. Your parents have gone away for the weekend and there is absolutely no one around. So you sit around that night watching TV for awhile but find nothing on worth watching. You go on upstairs to your room and get ready for bed. Turn off the lights, lay down, and close your eyes. All of a sudden you here a crash of glass in your kitchen. You rush to your feet and put your ear to the door listening to whats going on downstairs. You begin to hear the voice of two men as they start going through the living room, making their way to the stairs, right outside your room. What do you do? You arent going to confront them since its just you-remember you thought you heard two of them right? Well you are really stuck in your room and all you can do is sit there hoping that they leave soon and dont harm you. Now if it were at my house things would be a little bit different. For starters I would get out my shotgun from my closet and begin to see what is gin on down stairs. As soon as those burglars saw me walking around with a gun, you better believe they would think twice about sticking around any longer. A. 39% of felons aborted a crime due to the victim being armed B. 74% say they avoided dwellings all together if they felt they might be shot. One of the major arguments against the theory that gun control would save lives is that although two-thirds of all homicides are committed with firearms, firearm controls would have no effect on homicide, because human nature is what it is. Even if guns disappeared from the crime scene, criminals would replace them with knives, clubs, axes, or even fists. Guns dont kill people, people kill people. Stated simply, these crimes occur because some people have come to hate others, and they will continue to occur in one form or another as long a ...

Give up willpower this year - Emphasis

Give up willpower this year Give up willpower this year At this time of year, our thoughts inevitably turn to fresh starts and making resolutions for better ways to live and work. If youve pledged to give up cake or make the gym your second home, youre certainly in good company. My friend Philippa is one of many who have declared this Dry January (which I confidently predict will be followed by Wet February – you heard it here first). Or maybe youve decided its your working habits that need to shape up, that this is the year you wont leave writing up reports, emails and proposals to the last minute anymore. Its an issue many of us struggle with, and some to a very dramatic extent. I recently read of a man who always left writing reports until the night before they were due. Well, he did that until he discovered that he could get up at 4am on the actual day he had to submit them and write them then. Clearly, thats no way to live. And definitely not a great route to writing great reports. Being unsure of where to begin your document can lead to a lot of wasted time and (if were honest) procrastination. Too often, we dont start to write until the fear of writing something imperfect gets displaced by the fear of not writing anything at all. Of course, lots of people put off starting that crucial document or critical email for much longer than they might like to admit. The fear factor The trouble is that willpower sometimes just wont cut it. If your brain perceives something to be a threat (the prospect of failure), it will do all it can to avoid that threat until a bigger one (the consequences of not writing anything at all) comes along. Believe me, your willpower is not much of a match for millions of years of evolution. The way to get round this is to trick your brain by still avoiding the threat while doing something that actually moves you closer to finishing. So if writing is the problem, dont write. Plan instead. The art of getting started Most painters sketch out the general outlines of their pictures before putting paint to canvas. This gets all the elements in the right place and then naturally leads them into the act of painting itself. When you take time to plan, you do the same thing with your writing. In fact, planning is doubly useful. Not only does it overcome procrastination, it separates your writing and thinking processes. And that separation will produce much better results. Too many people use the writing process to work out what they think. This is actually dangerous. First, its likely to result in quite a disordered document or email. Second, it fools you into believing that what youve written is logical. More likely is that what youve written is the record of what could be a jumbled thought process – a record that you then inflict on the reader. Map it out There are many ways to plan. Lists are better than nothing. Mind maps are much better, as they are non-linear: they allow you to make connections between ideas that may not have initially occurred to you. But, however you plan, try not to do it on-screen: this will make it difficult to get the necessary perspective. And let’s not forget, your computer is also where all the tempting distractions of the internet lurk. So, instead, use a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. (Yes, paper.) And switch off – or even step away from – your screen if it helps. Since you’re unlikely to beat evolution, you may as well work with it to get the results you want. As well as have the occasional lie-in. Image credit: alphaspirit / Shutterstock