God, guts, and guns made this great country of ours free, and you can bet your buns it will take more of the same to keep it that way. One of the very last things in this world we need is handgun control.

The following selections were taken from the letters-to-the-editor section of a newspaper. Each can be interpreted as expressing one or more arguments. Begin by identifying the conclusion of each. Then disengage the covert assumptions, value claims, and other cognitive assertions from the emotive language and translate them into emotively neutral premises. Use the two examples in the text as models. Finally, evaluate the restructured arguments. Some may turn out to be good ones.