Gun Control Persuasive Speech

Emma Gonzalez starts off her speech with a moment of silence to support her 17 fellow students who had recently lost their lives in a tragic shooting at her school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, just 4 days later. As Gonzalez speaks to a gun control rally, she uses multiple aggressive points to support her claim that a solution to the problem of gun violence needs to be found to assure that there will never be another mass shooting. As Gonzalez stands on the stage in front of the crowd, she begins her speech with an emotional appeal to engage the readers and connect them to the issues she is speaking about. She states, “Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it 's time for victims to be the change that we need to see.” These sentences build a basis behind her argument as she enters the rest of her speech. By bringing in how recent the tragedy was, it shows how urgent the issue of gun violence is to her and so many others, especially because nobody, especially the government as she references, is doing anything to fix the problem. Specifically, she brings out a feeling of empowerment to the listeners and encourages them to step up and make a change. This empowerment continues on as she says, “We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we 're going