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How Sociology Texts Address Gun Control
William R. Tonso
The Enlightened Conventional Wisdom
I was an undergraduate taking courses in machine design, mechani 1 and architectural drawing, and various shops (wood, metal, and electrical), working toward a degree in something called industrial education (sort of an introduction to industry), if anyone had suggested that I become a professor, I would have laughed in that person's face. Yet in 1969, at the ripe old age of 36, after having served as a military officer, worked white collar in industry, earned a master's in business administration specializing in personnel management, and finished all but my dissertation toward a doctorate, that is exactly what I became--a phenomenology-oriented sociology professor, yet.
But probably due to the roundabout way I got there, though dedicated, I took a rather skeptical perspective on professing into the classroom. For one thing, it did not take me long to conclude that sociology textbooks often smuggle value judgments into unsuspecting student heads under the guise of research findings nailed down through the rigorous application of a neutral and objective "scientific method." That bothered me, because to me the job of any professor is to help students learn to examine the world around them through the perspective, or perspectives, of the discipline being professed, whatever that discipline might be--not to indoctrinate them politically. And to me, both a product and a student of the "gun culture," the treatment, brief or extended, of the gun issue to be found in many sociology textbooks merely served as one blatant and easily isolated example of political indoctrination--what has come to be called "political correctness."
In circles considered to be enlightened, the conventional wisdom has long held that the United States is badly in need of greater restrictions on the private ownership of firearms. According to this enlightened conventional wisdom, while Americans in frontier days needed guns for protection and food hunting, modern Americans not only no longer need guns but would be better off without them, because their widespread possession contributes greatly to our high violent-crime rates relative to other modern industrial nations. Public opinion polls, the argument goes, tell us that most Americans support stricter gun controls of the sort responsible for lower violence rates in other
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