Article Critique 2

    I chose to critique the article "Guns in America: You know the case for background checks is weak if..." by John R. Lott written on Fox News. I chose this article because I felt a need to change up my view a bit from the presidential race to something a little closer to home. I personally have always wondered what the arguments about gun control laws were one way or the other. This article by Lott is mainly to capitalize the idea as to why extensive background checks are not the issue and instead look more into better mental health evaluations. 

     Lott starts his claim by referencing the mass shootings that have all been the focal points as to why change is needed to the gun control laws we already have. Lott claims that after these events President Obama speaks about the tragedy that's happened while stating that these are specific problems we will focus on. The only problem with this according to Lott is that there is evidence already supporting that the attacks will not decline from an expanded or more extensive background check. The only problem I have with Lott's argument here is that I would like to see these studies to get a more in depth feel that the proper work has been done regarding this issue. But Lott does claim that some of the studies done with gun control laws, expanded background checks and even mental health evaluations is that the information is cherry-picked to only show a small amount. I like this argument that a lot of the information we do see is hand picked to be most favorable to either side of the argument, I would like a look at the entirety of this research but that is just me and my opinion. 

     I would like to have seen a bit more information from Lott in this article but it is a good beginning to a concept that should be more looked in to. All in all I like Lott's argument that expanded background checks are most likely not the solution and that we should be doing a better job with mental health evaluations instead.