In high school I wrote the best persuasive paper of my whole life. We had to pick a side on the death penalty, so I chose Pro. Everyone else wrote about the costs, whether it was a deterrent or not ect. and both sides just found arguments that supported their own points (we all had to read our papers out loud in that class). All I did was find the 5 most horrific serial killers of all time and wrote about all of the terrible things they did and then in my conclusion I asked if anyone in the class would stand up to defend their right to live.

Nobody said a word.

The lesson I learned there is that when you want to really make a good point, citing statistics means nothing, go for the emotional response.