Description
Choose any of the recent high-profile, mass public shootings and analyze the positivist sociology response to its causes. Which theory do you believe gives the better explanation?
Assignment 3: Positivist Sociology
Mass public shooting or “mass homicide” is a process to express violence with firearms weaponry and a major portion of victims severely are suffered or killed in the process. According to the criminal historical data, the U.S. has suffered more than one hundred thirty-three mass killings were happened and these mass killings or public shooting incidents highlight the increasing violence in social development.
Various press records suggest that the mass killings were categorized under several basic actions and these actions particularly focus on the medium of action. The categorized sections are divided into sections like “based on the number of deaths”, “based on the numbers of deaths and the nature or style of homicide”, and “based on the injuries” even this section also is divided into two sections: gun archive”, “mass shooting tracker” (Butcher et al. 2020, p.1530). Even the data further suggest the U.S. government witnessed and recorded the nature of mass killing occurred once in “every two hundred days”. Furthermore, the data highlights the decreasing “day gap” between the days and the mass killings started to happen between once in “sixty-four days”. Similarly the data also analyzed the “gun archive” violence method has been mostly adopted and the rate went up till four hundred seventeen killings and the number increased up to six hundred ninety-three at the end of the year of 2021.
The mass killing centers mainly occurred in public places like school grounds, and public grounds even the government has faced more school shooting mass killing activities to establish the ground power of terrorism (Butcher et al. 2020, p.1530). On the contrary situation, mass killing is also linked with the suicidal nature of humans and traumatic past experiences. On the contrary situation, the violence of gun weaponry has increased immensely in the past few decades. The black market of illegal weaponry participated actively in this perfuming violence.
The strain theory of mass killing highlights the concept of the motive behind such acts and the behavioral changes of a person. One of the major traits that have been particularly focused on in mass killing is ultimate violence. Often people feel helpless when they are unheard by society and they choose the path of violence to express or establish their rights. The strain theory resents these traits as the prime concept of criminal psychology and relates it as a part of criminal literature (Dufour et al. 2020, p.320). That particular individual expresses their insecurities through violence. This theory also provokes the dark side of angry teenagers and these teenagers particularly choose violence as a part of their lives but they often fail to understand the consequences of these acts on themselves and their surrounding environment.
One of the major characteristics that has been highlighted here is “the seek of revenge” in human nature. This theory also aims to analyze the life situation of that individual and highlights the reasons behind this needed violence. This theory first developed in 1930 to explore situational variances (Dufour et al. 2020, p.320). This theory further highlights that social involvement becomes the final cause of the mass shooting and analyzes the reactions of victims of this shooting. Although the data suggests that the primary basis of the theory is divided into three “cumulative” concepts these concepts highlight different segments of the individual’s mindset and thoughts.
This theory also highlights individuals past records and it has proven that the individual had faced more than one violent act in their childhood or teenage phase. This mass killing process is a major problem that the U.S. government has been facing and the crime rate has increased the ultimate data analysis. This analysis particularly focused on the high issues of mass killing.
References
Butcher, C., Goldsmith, B. E., Nanlohy, S., Sowmya, A., & Muchlinski, D. (2020). Introducing the Targeted Mass Killing data set for the study and forecasting of mass atrocities. Journal of conflict resolution, 64(7-8), 1524-1547.
Dufour, E., Goepfert, N., Le Neün, M., Prieto, G., & Verano, J. W. (2020). Life history and origin of the camelids provisioning a mass killing sacrifice during the Chimú Period: Insight from stable isotopes. Environmental Archaeology, 25(3), 310-324.
Youtube.com (2014), one-minute strain theory, [Retrieved on, 17th October 2022] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCuGJB1f8gQ
