Tag Archives: Funmi

The Gun as Murderer

By Nick Gubbins and Funmi Osinubi

According to NRA bumper stickers plastered on the backs of countless American vehicles, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. The gun is an instrument with which a murder is committed as opposed to an independent force. Yet throughout True Crime analyst David Owen’s chapter The Smoking Gun, the gun is represented as the concrete scientific factor within a case; the gun is the objective force that overrides any human emotion. Investigations revolve entirely around looking for scientific evidence, as opposed to the former focus on the psychological aspect of criminal and witnesses. In his composition of this chapter, Owen concentrates on the gun in the text, images and the case study of “Sacco and Venzetti”, offering little human interaction. Through analysis of these three factors (text, visual language, and case study), the emphasis on forensic science and technology supersede that of the human element.Owen neglects the human aspect of a case in an attempt to remove any possible subjectivity from the science. The only human contact we get within the pictures are of scientists carrying out experiments, as seen on page 116. This forensic scientist is one who lies outside the realm of emotional distortion; while working he cannot let any of his feelings influence his work. He must follow the formulas to find out the scientific, indisputable fact and that is all. Once there is an objective scientist, science can be an irrefutable tool for finding evidence, and ultimately “securing a guilty verdict” (Owen 127). Continue reading