Gun Control

“Specific Page Title or Article Title”	The case against gun control
Primary Contributor to the Website (if given) (author, editor, producer, etc)	Cato Institute
Title of the Entire Website (not www. )	cato.org
Publisher or Sponsoring Organization of the website (if given)	None given
Date Page was Last Revised	July 11,1988
Date You Read It	February 1, 2012
<URL address> (ALL of it)	http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa109/pa109index.html

FIVE FACTS FROM THE SOURCE (Embedded): EX: The article cites Maria Nikolajeva, a professor of at Cambridge, as saying that Bella does not "in any way promote independent thinking or personal development" in women, instead portraying a woman "meek and willing to do anything for her vampire boyfriend" (POV).

In the article two countries with lax gun laws Switzerland and the United States "suffer from far less murder rates than in other countries with strick gun laws".

The author also proves that more legally owned guns  do not cause more killings  as " between 1937 and 1963, handgun ownership rose by 250 percent, but the homicide rate fell by 35.7 percent.

In fact more law abiding citizens owning guns can actually lower crime rates in fact "In March 1982 Kennesaw, Georgia, enacted a law requiring householders to keep a gun at home; house burglaries fell from 65 per year to 26, and to 11 the following year."

This article suggests that if firearms were outlawed in the United States, criminals would make homemade firearms as "Bootleg gun manufacture requires no more than the tools that most Americans have in their garages. A zip gun can be made from tubing, tape, a pin, a key, whittle wood, and rubber bands. In fact, using wood fires and tools inferior to those in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, Pakistani and Afghan peasants have been making firearms capable of firing the Russian AK-47 cartridge."

Some people argue that give people a way to kill themselves, but suicidal people will find other ways to kill themselves in "Japan, for example, has strict gun control and a suicide rate twice the U.S. level. Americans have a high rate of suicide by shooting for the same reason that Norwegians have a high rate of suicide by drowning; guns are an important symbol in one culture, water in the other."

Summary of Source (Three-Four Sentences of the Who, What, Where, Why, and How in your own words. NO OPINION): 


Gun control is a hotly debated subject with many people being for it and many against it. But some of the aguments on the side for gun control seem to have no logical base and are designed to make people fear guns which have been an essential part of our history and culture since we came to america.

Credibility of Source: 
The author is David Kopel a former DA in Manhattan and is an attorney in Colorado. He has had experience on gun control as  New York's gun laws are one of the few states that have stricter gun laws than California. 
The website is from an .org website for an Institute that is also a non profit organization.Attachment: Does the author or site have anything to gain from writing this, or is it simply informative? For example, is it a cigarette business posting an article about the benefit of cigarettes, or is it a scientific community unaffiliated with the cigarette business? 
I think the author has nothing to gain from this and it makes this article an informative piece.

Bias: Do you detect a bias (a favoring of either side) in the author's writing? 
I did not detect a bias in the authors writing even though he wrote against gun control he did not go out of his way to slander his adversaries.

References: Does the author cite references in the writing? If so, do these add or take away from the credibility? 

In this article cites over 184 sources from the NRA  to government agencies like the ATF and FBI.Use of Source: How will you use this source in your project? 

I will use this source in my senior project by using it to counter arguments by gun control supporters.