Pick a time in your life that was greatly significant to you, one that Essay

Pick a time in your life that was greatly significant to you, one that marked a change in your life and perspective and one tha - Essay Example This mass shooting incident churned my insides because for the first time I experienced the meaning of death and the sense of loss executed by it. Before that ominous day of December, I attached no value to the idea of life being a hotheaded nonconformist that I was. I was engaged in an endless search for happiness and sense of purpose. That search took me to different places but I never got any answer. But after 14th December 2012, I realized that sometimes answers to fundamentally important questions of life can be embedded in witnessing the tragic demise of someone you dearly love. Yes, that is true. I realized the importance of my life after experiencing the tragic death of someone I had stayed close to for 5 long years. The person who died after the mass shooting occurred at the hospital because of fatal wounds was the little brother of my dearest friend. It seems like I have known this family forever and after I arrived in the US from Asia about 6 years ago, my friend’s family has been my family in its most literal sense. I have known these people forever and I adore them as fiercely as my own family. In my friend’s mother, I see the unbelievable generosity of my mother and in his little brother’s innocent tricks, I used to witness the youthful cheekiness of my own little brother living in Asia. I several times played the role of a big brother for that little man accompanying him to super stores whenever my friend was unavailable or assisting him in other chores. When I first heard the news of the tragic incident, I was sitting hopelessly bored at a cafe thinking about what interesting task could I engage in to make my life a little worthwhile. After I was told that my friend’s little brother had also got severely wounded amidst shooting, I acutely remember the whole scene literally darkened for some moments. And after his death, everything happened so quickly, watching my friend and his mother shell-shocked over their irrecove rable loss inculcated an overpowering respect for life in my heart in that same instant. I acknowledged the unique power of life and dark loss of death due to that unfortunate social event which depressed the entire society beyond possibility and is still making headlines. That event changed me as a person forever. Before that, I had minimal respect for life and the associations shared by me with significant others struck no chord in my heart for long. Now, I have a thriving passion for life and essentially attach considerable importance to every moment I spend with the people I love because one never knows what tomorrow might bring. That time of my life also compelled me to think about certain serious issues of the society in which I had no interest before due to lack of awareness. But, such an intense experience helped me to understand the validity of the anti-gun sentiments in the US. Considering myriad lives and families destroyed by such deadly mass shootings, I believe now tha t every college’s administration in every state should go all the way through to prohibit students from bringing guns. My perspective about the whole issue is also same as that of the majority’s according to which guns simply do not belong in a college classroom. Research also stresses that gun control is strongly related to sound societal values (Wilson 9) and inability of colleges to become major front in fight over carrying

Position Paper - Death Penalty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Position Paper - Death Penalty - Essay Example Death penalty has been present ever since the societal shift from being primitive communal to the slave society state wherein civilizations were formed and rulers were made. The death penalty was implemented by the earliest civilizations yet there were no formal records of a death sentence being served. According to the Web site library.thinkquest.org, death penalty has very old roots; in fact, there is evidence of its application even in peoples such as Babylonians, ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. (). The earliest recorded death sentence according to the Web site www.pbs.org was in the 16th century when a member of the Egyptian nobility was accused of magic, and was ordered to take his own life. (). Through the ages death penalty was implemented, it was only the manner of which it was executed and of how it was perceived changed through time, the manner changed from the guillotine and hanging through the firing squad and lethal injection, a brief history of how death penalty w as done and the violations which led to a death sentence is presented in the Web site www.pbs.org. () It was only since after World War II, that there has been a consistent trend in abolishing the death penalty. (â€Å"Death Penalty Worldwide†, en.wikipedia.org, ). Political as well has humane considerations have been taken into account in the abolition of death penalty as a punishment for some crimes. Since the start of abolition, the number of death penalty sentences served curved down, although capital punishment was still retained in other countries, most of these countries are those with religious considerations. The Instruments of death were also changed, some were more harsh than others, in some countries morbid methods