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Joined: 28 Sep 2015
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Location: United States (TX)
Concentration: Strategy, Other
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WE:Military Officer (Military & Defense)
Please review my AWA Essay... it's what Nancy Reagan would have wanted
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12 Mar 2016, 10:52
Hi all! Kindly provide any feedback to the essay below. This is my first attempt and any assistance is appreciated. I ran over time by five minutes, but I thought it best to finish my thought, therefore I've underlined the portion of my essay that was written after time expired. Thank you for your time and consideration. -JB-
Prompt: The following appeared in a newspaper editorial:
"As violence in movies increases, so do crime rates in our cities. To combat this problem we must establish a board to censor certain movies, or we must limit admission to persons over 21 years of age. Apparently our legislators are not concerned about this issue since the bill calling for such actions recently failed to receive a majority vote."
The above newspaper editorial addresses that the issue of rising crime rates in a particular city is tied to the increase violence in movies. The article concludes that the local legislator is not concerned abour the aforementioned issue due to the fact that the legislator has failed to pass a bill establishing a censorship board for said movies. These claims are rife with flaws that call both the premise and conclusion into question. This essay will address these problems in further detail and
The claim that the increase in crime corresponds to the rise in violence in movies is given without evidence and, at best, should be considered pure speculation. There is no mention to nature of the crimes commited in the city and whether or not violence was even a factor. For example, so called “white collar” crimes typically do not include violent acts but, nonetheless, could be direct cause of the rising crime rates. There is also nothing mentioned regarding the state of local law enforcement’s capabilities or reactions to the said rise in crime. A shrinking budget for peace officers and overpopulated prisions could just as easily be blamed. The author of this editorial could lend merit to their view by including some sort of reports or data that demonstrate a direct correlation between cinematic violence and the increase in crime, however there is none provided.
The call for limiting the age of entry to violent movies to over 21 is also not supported with any factual evidence. Since the time of which the so called “violence in movies” started to increase was never provided, there is no way to properly identify if the alleged criminals were ever exposed to movies with more violence before the age of 21. There is also no mention of the age of the perpetrators throughout the piece. This calls the effectiveness setting further age restrictions on movies into considerable question.
Finally, the statement regarding the failed bill proposed by the local legislator and their supposed lack of concern is equally unfounded as the other claims made. Since the text of the bill was not present in the excerpt, there is no way of determining if other mandates were tied to the bill, such as increased taxes to fund the censorship board, which could have been considered undesireable. There could also be other issues, such as party politics or possibly the reputation of the author or authors of the bill that were not considered when the editorial was written.
This argument is neither sound, nor persuasive. The writer has failed to offer sufficient evidence to his or her ideas as to the cause of the rising crime rates or offer truly compelling reasons to doubt the care or consideration of the local elected officials.