Help me professor. I have been researching the statistics of factors in communities that effect gun violence, such as economics, location and population, gender and race. I wrote my definition essay about the concept of how these factors can effect gun violence, in which I realize now, is sort of a causal argument also. My main goal right now is to find a city or area that has certain gun control laws with no effects on decreasing gun violence, and then look into their community factors. I am still researching, but am I heading in a good direction right now? I am stuck on this causal argument now because I feel like my definition argument is very similar to what my causal argument should be.
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Counterintuitive 
In order to give some sort of assistance to as many of your classmates as possible before the Causal Argument deadline, Carson, I’ll limit myself here to answering your specific questions the best I can. I’ll be happy to provide more help later if you return this post to the Feedback Please category following significant revisions.
So, for now, what you report is quite common. Definition Arguments bleed into Causal Arguments all the time. The attempt to separate them is valuable, but total success is impossible in cases where we attempt to define behavior with its inevitable cause-and-effect characteristics. Gun violence is causal. Defining it without describing its causes and effects would be self-defeating.
HOWEVER. We still need to know what you mean by gun violence. Some examples:
—guns used as threats in muggings
—guns used to force compliance
—guns fired as warnings
—guns fired with intent to wound or kill
—guns not used at all but merely possessed by perpetrators
—guns found at the scene of a crime and named in reports
—guns brought onto restricted premises but never brandished or fired
—wounds caused by bullets fired intentionally
—accidental shootings of known targets
—driveby or collateral wounding of unintended targets
—accidental self-woundings
—deliberate self-harm or suicide
—deliberate shootings to wound or kill
It could all be counted as violence. Your definition argument should contain a careful analysis of WHAT THE GUN VIOLENCE NUMBERS actually measure. Any conclusions you draw from numbers you don’t understand will be suspect.
You’ll have noticed that several of the definition/category items above require an understanding of the gun-wielder’s intentions. As always, the lines between definition and causation bleed into one another. But this list above is MUCH closer to the basis for a good Definition essay than the analysis of why people shoot one another would be.
This is meant to be a conversation, Carson. Does this help? Your responses, please.
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Yes this helps, thank you. I have been trying to figure out which branch of gun violence I want to go with, and I have chosen homicide. For the causal argument, would it be a good to research the causes of gun homicides and why they happen?
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If you think you can, yes, that would be very valuable. I wonder what you’ll find. Do gun violence statistics distinguish between turf war killings and jealous boyfriend slayings?
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On the other hand, depending on what overall thesis you decide you can prove, the motivations of the killers might not be important. Your causal chain could ignore motivation in favor of an analysis of the relationship between NUMBER OF KILLINGS and READY AVAILABILITY OF DEADLY FORCE. Or the relationship between DIAGNOSED MENTAL ILLNESS and MURDERS BY MENTALLY IMPAIRED SHOOTERS. I’m not recommending specific storylines here, just identifying some ways causality might be blind to motive.
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