By Tristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober
In the aftermath of the
Las Vegas shooting that killed a staggering 58 people and
injured roughly 500 others, the Trump administration has tried to
steer Americans away from political debate. “There’s a time and place for
political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country,” White House press
secretary Sarah Sanders said in a press briefing following the tragedy.
But while it is important
to collectively mourn those lost to senseless violence, it is equally important
to understand that mass shootings are not isolated events in American society.
Mass shootings are still relatively rare in the US, but occur much more often
here than in other countries. There are far too many to consider them random,
unpreventable acts of violence committed by a deranged individual.
A great deal of commentary
attempts to tie mass shootings to a single issue. Often, that seems like the
easiest way to make sense of atrocities. That’s why we get sound bites that
lean on mental health (when shooters are white), terrorist ties and
affiliations (when shooters are brown), gang violence and “urban decay” (when
shooters are black), bullying (when it happens in a school), and overwork (when
it happens in a workplace).
The truth cannot be boiled
down to any single issue. As sociologists, we can look to the bigger picture,
point out patterns, and identify common denominators. Our research suggests
that gun control is, indeed, an important piece of the problem. But in order to
understand the factors behind America’s mass shootings, it is also critical to
consider the relationship between masculinity and violence.
International
gun ownership and mass shootings
International evidence now
makes us incredibly confident when we say that the number of guns in a society
is positively correlated with the number of mass shootings in a society, as
supported by a studyspanning three decades of analysis in a collection of
nations around the world.
Please continue this
article here: https://qz.com/1095247/the-sociological-explanation-for-why-men-in-america-turn-to-gun-violence/
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