AbstractThis essay rhetorically analyzes stories about domestic gun violence from Everytown for Gun Safety’s website, “Moments That Survive.” These everyday writers challenge America’s dominant narrative of protection, offering a counternarrative of protection by asking readers to reimagine the perpetrators of gun violence, guns themselves, and moments of gun violence. Extending previous rhetorical scholarship, I demonstrate how and why “imagination” is an essential concept for rhetorical scholars seeking to understand gun violence rhetorics and advocates seeking to change them. Notes1 For their feedback on various stages of this project, thanks to Laura Michael Brown, Lesley Erin Bartlett, Anne Kretsinger-Harries, and Lori Peterson. Thanks as well to Rhetoric Review editor, Elise Hurley, and the reviewers, CitationJenny Andrus and a second reviewer who remains anonymous. I presented portions of this essay for a lecture at the College of Holy Cross’s McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture; thanks to Tom Landy for the invitation and the attendees for their feedback.2 For instance, gun suicides account for over half of all gun-related deaths each year (CitationSilver).3 This percentage is likely higher because it excludes the 48.9% of cases in which “the relationship between murder victims and offenders was unknown” by investigators. Only 9.9% of people were killed by confirmed strangers.4 Although I use “story” and “narrative” interchangeably in this essay, I acknowledge that literary scholars and sociologists, among others, have debated whether these terms mean different things. I use the term “counternarrative” here to indicate how narratives and stories can challenge one another. Counterstories, by contrast, are stories that “subscribe to CRT’s [Critical Race Theory] tenets, particularly in their critique of a dominant ideology (liberalism, whiteness, color blindness) and their sustained focus on social justice as an objective” (CitationMartinez 17). The “Moments That Survive” stories’ critique of dominant ideologies is at best implicit.5 For historical examples in rhetoric, see works by Aristotle and Quintilian (CitationKennerly). Beyond rhetoric, imagination has been usefully theorized by psychoanalysts and by social and political theorists, including postcolonialist, feminist, and queer theorists.6 My description of the “Moments That Survive” website borrows heavily from my earlier essay on stories about gun suicide (CitationRood, “Protection”).7 I have described how domestic violence is operationalized within these stories, but I want to acknowledge that there is disagreement over definitions (CitationSnyder 17). For instance, according to The National Council Against Domestic Violence, “[d]omestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another” (“What”). Although their definition is expansive in several ways, it seems to exclude violence committed by family members and former partners.8 The FBI’s 2019 data show that 482 wives and 505 girlfriends were killed by their partner, whereas 85 husbands and 187 boyfriends were killed by their partner. Yet these data have several limitations. First, there is no space for nonbinary folks. Second, a “wife” or “husband” is presumed to be in a heterosexual relationship. A note at the bottom of the FBI’s chart reveals that “the category of acquaintance includes homosexual relationships and the composite category for other known to victim.”9 The labels “us” and “them” can be slippery. The dominant narrative of protection often assumes and perpetuates cultural biases (such as racism) so that “us” means white people and “them” means people of color. But depending on who is speaking, listeners might imagine themselves—or hear themselves being imagined—as an “us” or a “them.” For instance, even though the NRA’s account of protection regularly relies on racist appeals, a person of color might nonetheless hear themselves as an “us” rather than a “them.”In their counternarrative of protection, the “Moments That Survive” writers urge readers to consider danger not just from “them” but also from “us.” Depending on the context, “us” seems to refer to “(a) ourselves and our loved ones, (b) the exclusionary “us” common in gun rights advocacy (e.g., white men), and (c) a capacious account of “us” that includes people historically cast as literal or metaphoric outsiders” (CitationRood, “Protection” 35).10 I do not focus here on depictions of people subject to abuse, but CitationDonileen R. Loseke highlights how women subject to abuse—and organizations seeking to support them—face pressure to portray “morally pure victims” to garner sympathy and support even though such depictions are exclusionary, unrealistic, constraining, and ultimately beside the point—the problem is with the abuser, not the abused (679).11 CitationCaroline E. Light and CitationAngela Stroud thoroughly critique “stand-your-ground” laws and explain why the underlying appeal to self-defense is not available to everyone, particularly people who are not white men.12 Jennifer Andrus illustrates why these different accounts of agency matter. Police tend to assume that the abused have unrestricted agency (they can just leave) or nonagency (they will inevitably return to their abuser). Consequently, police are often ill prepared to understand let alone help the victims/survivors that they are called upon to protect.13 Paige L. Sweet traces how therapy has come to be the primary way of supporting women subject to abuse—or at least an obstacle to receiving other forms of support. While therapy can be useful, it might also suggest that blame lies within women (rather than the men who abused them). Many women desperately need other forms of support (money, housing, food, and so forth), but therapy nonetheless became politically popular because it was seen as distinct from welfare.Additional informationNotes on contributorsCraig RoodCraig Rood is an associate professor in the Department of English at Iowa State University. He is the author of After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in an Age of Political Gridlock (Penn State UP, 2019).

Abstract Even though gun suicides account for well over half of all U.S. gun deaths each year, they largely are absent from collective attention, policy discussion, and rhetorical study. Using stories about gun suicide from Everytown for Gun Safety's website, “Moments That Survive,” this essay examines how the authors depict gun suicide as a public problem and a gun problem rather than as a private problem limited only to the individual gun user. In so doing, these stories revise three of the gun debate's key terms: collective grief, character, and agency. More than simply drawing attention to gun suicide, these stories critique the dominant narrative of protection (protection from “them”) and urge readers to reimagine suicide, protection, and gun violence.

I call communication that attempts to stop further communication "rhetorical closure." This essay focuses on a form of rhetorical closure that implies character judgments of the interlocutor or audience in order to force assent and delegitimize dissent. Using Ayn Rand's rhetoric as an exemplar, the essay demonstrates what rhetorical closure by character judgment looks like in practice, examines its dynamics, and assesses its enduring appeal.

Other| June 01 2015 Rhetorical Studies and the Gun Debate: A Public Policy Perspective J. Michael Hogan; J. Michael Hogan J. Michael Hogan is Liberal Arts Research Professor and Director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Craig Rood Craig Rood Craig Rood is a Ph.D. student in Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2015) 18 (2): 359–372. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.2.0359 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation J. Michael Hogan, Craig Rood; Rhetorical Studies and the Gun Debate: A Public Policy Perspective. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2015; 18 (2): 359–372. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.2.0359 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Forum: Responses to Collins on the Second Amendment You do not currently have access to this content.

Under headings that include rhetoric of assent, critical understanding, pluralism, rhetorology, and listening-rhetoric, Wayne Booth’s scholarly work for over thirty-five years hinged on a simple question: “How can I get each side to understand the other?” Booth’s imbroglio with Kenneth Burke demonstrates that “understanding”—Booth’s key concept—is not confined, as Booth had suggested, to respecting opposing views, searching for common ground, and finding reasons that warrant shared assent. Understanding is also enabled and obstructed by a number of factors, including six I examine: form, process, emotion, differences, power, and additional rhetorical/material constraints. Analyzing Booth and Burke’s published exchange in Critical Inquiry (1974), along with their correspondence from 1972 to 1983, reveals how their disagreement evolved; how their prolonged dispute highlights limitations in Booth’s theory; and how Booth’s engagement with Burke, along with Booth’s subsequent reflections on their exchange, extends Booth’s project to offer a more rhetorically robust theory of understanding.

I theorize four civility moves—opening up, searching for sameness, examining differences, and listening deeply. Although I ultimately offer these as rhetorical strategies to be taught and practiced explicitly, I use them here as a framework for interpreting student writing that emerged from an assignment to produce a collaborative anthology of arguments.

By exploring two perspectives on civility—the invitational and confrontational approaches—this article argues for revising the neoclassical model of rhetoric commonly found in introductory writing and speaking textbooks. This article further claims that a revised conception of civility—here termed “situated civility”—can help rhetors communicate ethically and practically about and across political, cultural, and personal differences.