Sociological Perspective of Gun Violence

The ad that I have chosen for this assignment represents two kids standing in a classroom environment, both kids have one thing in common, they're both holding an object in their hands. One of the kids is holding a surprise egg, whereas the other kid is holding a gun. I have seen this ad in one of my social media accounts. The advertisement is very compelling and regards to one of the main issues that people in United States face these days. I will be analyzing the sociological perspectives of gun violence and how gun control should change, and how guns are more dangerous than a surprise egg.

In order to understand the sociological perspective of gun violence it is important to understand what the reason behind gun violence is. As one of the main key points in understanding its perspective is the socialization, which is how one's behavior is. The definition of term socialization refers to socializing agents which are mainly family, school, religious intuitions and the peer groups. (Caffrey, K. P. (2013). As the primary socialization group is the family. There are patterns where people get their beliefs and values from. Therefore, to understand why gun violence or any other violence occur it is important to consider the sociological factors of one's life. The criminal behaviors are learned, and socialization is what causes these behaviors as socialization is a process of learning and adapting.

Furthermore, as the main goal of this ad is to portray how guns are more dangerous than the surprise eggs. The main goal is to differentiate what is dangerous and what is safe. One of the main issue in the year of 2018 have been the school shootings. School shooting have increased by a large number as the learning environment have become a dangerous place for students. I have researched the statistical number and correlations for most of the school shooting and the numbers indicate that there have been 23 school shooting starting from January to May of 2018. Which is equivalent to an average of one shooting per week according to CNN news. (Ahmed, S., & Walker, C. 2018) So, what is the issue behind these numbers increasing is the question that can be interpreted by correlating the similarities between most of the shooters.

Gender, could masculinity be one of the reasons for school shootings. As the statistical data indicates that all the shooters in the school shooting were male. Is there a certain pattern which would help us to understand how gender plays a role in these shootings? All social institutions and practices”education, marriage, law, the economy, fashion, health care, even baby names”are in some way tied up with gender norms and expectations.( Conley, D. (2017).pg. 290) It is a social norm for men to be more dominant and violent. It seems like the violence is one of the identities given to all men as both genders have norms. One of the norms for men is to be more dominant, are the gender roles one of the issues or reasons which cause violence, and specifically school shootings, where guns are used as the weapon.

What can we predict about the future of education institutions, would gun violence prevent people from getting the proper education, as education plays an important role in our lives. The amount of education we get these days can contribute to a better future and a better job. By looking at this ad I was thinking about schools and the victims of school shootings, would the people who were victims of a school shooting be traumatized to go back to school be fearing that these events can occur more than once. Would school shooting be one of the concerns of people that don't continue school? Probably not, as it's still not to the point where students are afraid to attend school. Yet, if no action is taken and fi gun control and laws regarding guns don't change. The gun violence will be one of main sociological issue people face in the era. Looking at statics and the races for most of the shooters, there are strong patterns which will lead to solid assumptions that most school shooting are convicted by white male people or specifically and more often by white male students. Who are going through serious psychological and mainly sociological issues. As a school is a social platform. People who have problems regarding school have sociological issues, because educational institutions are one of the sources for socialization.

One of the scholarly articles that I have found on school shooting is by Jorge Celis, as he is looking at the patterns of school shooting and gun violence. He mentions that societal factors impact school shooting, as I mentioned from the from my other source that socialization is one of the societal factor, in addition masculinity according to Celis is the other societal factor which leads to school shooting. He finds schools to be the social entities which are responsible for internalizations of social values (C., & J. 2015) Furthermore he shares a geographical distribution of school shooting from 2013 where Unites States hold the first place. Another interesting fact that I have learned from this article is that school shooters are the good students with good grades, as their grades drops as these students are exposed stressors for the most of their life. Historically we have known that men are physically stronger, could the school shooting be a representation of strength. As most of us know the school shooters are mostly victims of bullying could the act of shooting up a place be a representation of strength?

From scholar article one and from the second article we can initiate that there are two factors to the sociological perspective of gun violence and mainly to the school shooting one of which is the socialization which is one of the main resources in our life, as the way we socialize can change who we are and who we become, another sociological perspective is masculinity. Would carrying a gun around make you look more masculine as it is a social norm for men to portray their masculinity in public. My main question is, have any of us seen a woman carrying a gun around with her at her waist? I personally never seen a woman carrying guns around however there have been many times where I see men carrying guns around. As masculinity is something that needs to be shown to be proven, the violence is learned.

Scholarly article by sociologist from University of Montana assumes that when a behavior is reinforced many times it will increase in frequency. Therefore, according to Krista Caffrey violence is learned and it starts from the childhood. Studies indicate that early intervention, both in the classroom with disruptive and violent children and in the home with emotionally and physically abusive families, can result in a reduction in adult criminal behavior (Caffrey, K. P. (2013). As I mentioned before the violence is learned but does the increase in number of school shooting indicates a new norm. I don't specifically want to call this a social norm, but it seems like throughout the first five months of 2018 the number of school shooting have increased. Does this mean students learn violence through media? How does social media portray school shootings, and does it encourage others to get into this act of violence is a great sociological question.

As I am trying to interpret the sociological message in the ad, I might have gone very deep in to the topic of gun violence. The sociological message in the advertisement is to show how the two objects that are being help by these two innocent kids are both dangerous for these kids however only one of them is banned which is the surprise egg, which contains a toy that is found to be hazardous for kids. Kids seem to get killed by the hazardous toys that the surprise eggs have inside them. But the main problem is that the girl in the ad holding the gun shows that there's something more dangerous that is killing kids these days as the shootings have increased drastically in the past years in the United states mainly. Does that mean something needs to be done as the laws on gun control should be changed and more actions which will prevent these shootings especially school shootings as they're the most common type of shootings that happen these days.

In conclusion, my main goal was to interpret the sociological messages given in the advertisement which has two kids holding two different objects, a gun and a surprise egg. As I concentrated on interpreting the sociological perspectives of violence and school shootings which are the act where guns are the main weapon. I used two perspectives of which one was the socialization and masculinity according to the second scholarly resource that I used for this paper. The school shooting has increased in the year of 2018, as the numbers increase I have a strong assumption that the number will continue increasing as it has been a norm for the school shooting to be very common. The way social media portrays them, and the way people feel about these violence acts should change. People need to be aware that this is a big issue and socialization as the main reason should be improved as kids should be given lessons if needed to attain better sociological atmosphere. Yet it is sometimes difficult to control one's actions as the main socialization factors is the family, as according to my first scholarly sources the violence is learned. Which passes through the group you get socialized with, however looking at this ad there are things that can be done to change the laws which will make guns less accessible.

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