Kolano 1

Brandon Kolano
UWRT 150
Collette Caton
March 28, 2016
PETA VS NRA on Animal Rights
The debate caused by the different viewpoints of animal rights and hunting has been
ongoing since animal rights activists began growing in popularity. Every debate has a minimum
of two different sides, each with their own viewpoints and beliefs. In this case, the viewpoints of
both PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and the NRA (National Rifle
Association) are analyzed. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with over
3 million members, and focuses attention to the four main areas where animals suffer the most:
factory farms, clothing trade, laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. The NRA has 5
million members, and focuses attention on protecting the American peoples right to bear arms,
furthering shooting sports, and protecting the rights of hunters. These two groups share vastly
different beliefs on the topic of hunting and animal rights. In order for each of these groups to
gain support for their beliefs, they utilize deliberate rhetorical strategies to create and support
their argument.
To compare how each group uses different rhetorical strategies to attempt to gain support
for their causes, each side of the argument must be analyzed. PETA utilized different rhetorical
strategies such as slanting, charged language, and selection, to support their ideas. In the
Huffington Post article PETA Takes on the NRA written by the president and cofounder of
PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, argues that hunting is just as bad as murder and should be treated as
such. Newkirk states that hunters are cowards and bullies who arm themselves out of fear of

Kolano 2

everything from a personal snub to a zombie apocalypse. Having a weapon in their hands helps
abate their feelings of powerlessness in the face of normal life. Newkirk even goes as far as
claiming that the legality of hunting is one of the causes of school shootings, stating that All the
facts about the Sandy Hook shooter are not yet in, but every school shooter before him had a
history of hunting animals and committing other violent acts against them. These bold claims
were chosen specifically to take advantage of the emotional distress of the public due to the
death of the students and faculty involved in the Sandy Hook School.
The NRA counters this argument by using facts, selection, charged language, and slanting
in the Huffington Post article NRA, PETA Battle Over Murdering Animals by Scott
Greenberger, a worker for the Center for Public Integrity, the use of selection, charged language,
slanting, and facts are utilized to gain support for idea that hunting is a protected right that should
be supported by either state or the national constitution. Greenberger states Hunting is a part of
our heritage and its been a rite of passage and a way for our youth to learn an appreciation for
the out-of-doors, firearm safety and the preservation of wildlife. He also mentions that
Hunters argue they are conservationists because the destruction of habitat, or the eradication of
species, would mean the demise of their sport. They note that President Theodore Roosevelt, one
of Americas first conservationists and the father of the U.S. Forest Service and five national
parks, was an avid hunter. These claims are made to remind the public of the history behind
hunting and how hunters dont kill animals just to kill them, because doing so will end their
sport.
Both of these articles utilize different rhetoric techniques, such as the ones brought up by
Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B. Birk, who are authors of works such as Readings for
Understanding and Using English, in the article Selection, Slanting, and Charged Language.

Kolano 3

The concept of selection is that a person will unknowingly select certain facts when they hear
something. This will change the way they interpret the things they learn. The article by Newkirk
uses selection by stating Hunters (and we are not talking about aboriginal peoples here but
rather the 3 percent or so of Americans who enjoy hunting) and If you cant get a license to
kill humans, you can simply walk into a store and get a license to shoot other vulnerable beings,
and its perfectly legal. These claims reflect Newkirks viewpoint on hunting, and how she
interprets facts about hunting. These ideas are a result of selection because she subconsciously
decided to interpret the sport of hunting as a legal way to kill. She loosely states incorrect facts
about the percent of Americans who enjoy hunting, which is 7% of Americans. She also believes
that the reason that people hunt is because they cannot legally hunt humans. What she fails to
mention is that to legally hunt, a person must take a hunters safety course which depending on
which state you are in could take anywhere from 1 to 3 months. This shows how selection is
used in this article to try to deter people from hunting and support the ideology of PETA. The
use of slanting and selection is used to change the emotions of the readers to feel as if hunters
only goal is to kill as many animals as possible.
Selection is also used in Greenbergers article when he states Hunting is a part of our
heritage and its been a rite of passage and a way for our youth to learn an appreciation for the
out-of-doors, firearm safety and the preservation of wildlife, Greenberger said. I dont think
were under so much of a direct attack now, but youve got to look 30, 40 years down the road,
and a lot of the stuff our kids read in school is very anti-hunting. This is a statement from a
member of the NRA, which fails to mention how hunting could also be potentially dangerous for
youth to participate in without proper supervision and training. This is important because it

Kolano 4

shows that there is more to hunting then to simply go into the woods and pull the trigger of a
gun. It shows that the sport has more than just killing, and that the sport has a history.
The concept of slanting, as described by Birk and Birk, is that we automatically chose
what we notice when we read or hear something. This could be the facts we chose to remember,
the words used to describe something, and the emphasis used on certain words. Slanting is also
used in these articles. When Newkirk states There is nothing reasonable about taking pleasure
in killing other living beings any other living beings. And the hunting of human beings is just
another vile form of hunting, she uses slanting to compare how hunting is just the killing of
living beings, and further compares hunting to manslaughter. The concept of slanting is also
used in Greenbergers article when he states The law has raised $8.4 billion for wildlife
management, helping to restore populations of bighorn sheep, bobwhite quail, ruffled grouse and
wild turkeys, among many other species. He uses slanting by stating facts that hunting laws and
taxes have positively contributed to animal population numbers and how hunting is not
negatively affecting the environment.
In addition to the use of slanting, Birk and Birk describe the use of charged language as
being the use of personal beliefs to support claims, and shape the way you chose your words.
The concept of charged language is used in Newkirks article widely. Some examples of charged
language that Newkirk uses is All the facts about the Sandy Hook shooter are not yet in, but
every school shooter before him had a history of hunting animals and committing other violent
acts against them. This is an example of charged language because Newkirk is generalizing all
school shooters to share a common hobby of hunting, which is a bold statement to use in the
United States given its history of school shootings. She also uses charged language when she
states He had set off to blow away some geese who were minding their own business on a lake

Kolano 5

somewhere outside the Beltway, when he tripped and fell, causing his gun to go off and pepper
his legs with shot. He was full of self-pity at how much his injuries hurt yet, like most hunters,
didnt connect the dots from his own experience to what he had been about to inflict on other
living beings. These are examples of the use of charged language because Newkirk claimed
that all school shooters started killing by hunting. She chose to say this in this article, which was
written a week after the Sandy Hook shooting, because she knew it would connect to the people
and the emotional distress that the American people were experiencing at the time. This would
cause the reader to view hunters with the same distaste they have towards school shooters. She
also uses words that would demonize hunting such as to blow away and claims that hunters
dont consider the pain they are about to inflict in another living being. The use of charged
language supports her claims that hunting is on par with murder because she chose to display it
in that light by selecting certain words.
Each of the authors uses different rhetoric strategies to support their claims. The use of
slanting, charged language, and selection in each article reflects the authors viewpoint of the
argument. The uses of each of these strategies are used to gain support for each debate. The
downside of the use of these strategies is that the article would then become unbalanced and
clearly be biased to one side of the argument. By displaying facts about each viewpoint without
having a bias towards one side will create a balanced article, in which the reader can interpret the
article the way they want. The use of different rhetoric strategies causes the readers emotions,
opinion and mindset to change as they read the articles. For example the quote by Newkirk
when she generalizes that all school shooters have a history of hunting, even after stating that she
doesnt know the facts on the recent Sandy Hook Shooter shows that she was using a tragic event
to play with the emotions of the American people to get them to show distaste towards hunters.

Kolano 6

Works Cited;
Greenberger, Scott. "NRA, PETA Battle Over 'Murdering Animals'". The Huffington
Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Newkirk, Ingrid. "Why PETA Is Protesting The NRA." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Birk, Newman P., Birk, Genevieve B. Selection, Slanting, and Charged Language