KeithReynolds wrote:
Im not scared of anyone sir. Gun or not. Ive had a gun pulled on me 3 seperate times. Im still here arent I?
When I read that, I couldn't help but think of the diner scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson says, "I hate to bruise your ego, but that's not the first time I've had a gun pointed at me."
"He's the electric horseman, you better back off!" - old sKool making a reference to the culturally relevant 1979 film.
LHSL wrote:
You can be Mr. Semantics if you want, but the facts change not. You can't draw conclusions about the proliferation of firearms and there use in violent crime.
Didn't you try and make a blanket statement about social scientists agreeing on cultural factors being the explanation for violence? Reductionist explanations often don't deduce the variables of real world social phenomena. To begin to get at least an overview of something as complicated as violence requires to jump head first into the literature. I would question the internal validity of any study that reduced something as complicated as violence down to a single set of variables.
Call it semantics if you wish, but the axiomatic assumptions of any scientific paradigm are going to lead to varying conclusions about the theoritical model and etiology of a specific topic. You said most sociologists agree about something having to do with the culture and violence. Ask a structural functionalist, a conflict theorist, a symbolic interactionist, and a post-modernist about violence, and they'll all give you an answer that's different but isn't necessarily wrong. With all due respect, if you think that epistemological absolutism exists in the social sciences, then you have much to learn about social science.
You may get lots of answers about any topic from different people... My point was: very few people believe that the presence of firearms in society are the lone reason, or even a major factor in violence overall.
No matter the weapon, people will still commit acts violence.
