Hello! My high school requires that each senior pick a topic and formulate a 7 1/2 to 8 minute persuasive speech to be delivered to the student body in with a passing grade of 75 or higher out of 100 in order to graduate.
I come from a military family, (Dad retired USMC and current contractor. Mom reservist USMC, currently a civilian gov't employee for the USMC) and wanted to find a topic that was related to the military to talk about. I did a lot of research and came across the Military Working Dog; the amazing work they do, and the legislative obstacles they have been unfairly forced to face in the past decade plus.
I found out that the bill HR 4103 / S 2134 had passed and felt the wind fall out of my sails a bit seeing my possible argument now completely evaporated. I did a little more digging and found that the bill had left out the "reclassification" portion of the legislation to label MWDs as K-9 members of the armed forces rather than "equipment."
If anyone has any information or knows where I could find out more on why MWDs need to be reclassified I would greatly appreciate it. I feel strongly that this is an issue which needs to be fixed, but I'm just not sure what the implications of the label-change are and whether or not I have enough arguing points to go off.
For now I'm arguing that MWDs should be reclassified because they (1) have proven themselves to be more than equipment; saving lives, valuable, friendships (2) deserve recognition for the remarkable work they do
I feel like their might be something regarding their transportation and care that could be different if they received the change in classification. Again, my research has kind of hit a dead-end, if anyone can please help me out I would be very grateful.