The current event is the shooting at San Bernardino Apartment. According to CNN news, on September 12, 2018, eight people were injured after a shooting took place during a dice game at San Bernardino Apartment in California ( Amanda Watts , 2018). Police reports say that a 17-year old girl is in grave condition while two others are in critical conditions. However, the other five victims of the shooting did not suffer any life-threatening injuries. While the police report earlier on Sunday had indicated that the incident involved ten people who were all adults, San Bernardino Police Capt. Richard Lawhead later clarified on a Monday the number was eight and not ten as earlier reported. There has been a lot of gang activity in the area, and the police could not be sure if that played a factor in the shooting, at the same time saying that they cannot rule it out.
The police officers received a call of the reports of gunshots heard from the Apartment which is located on the east side of the city, Sunday at 10: 45 p.m. the police captain was reported saying, “ I can tell you multiple shots were fired, I don't want to guess how many," he said. "We do have some people that have been transported to the station for investigative purposes, so we hope that they will yield information for us” ( Amanda Watts , 2018). Neighbors to the apartment told CNN that they heard multiple gunshots ranging between15 to 20. Minutes later, a large presence of police were seen at the place. Police confirmed that handguns and rifles were present in the shooting and that there w ere multiple exchanges of the gunshots. However, the police confirmed that they were yet to make any arrests because it is difficult to carry out the fruitful investigation because the victims and the witnesses have not cooperated well with the police.
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Analysis
The event of the shooting is a demonstration of the existing crime and deviance in the community. It illustrates the way people can choose to deviate from the social norms of society and engage in criminal activities. The sociological explanation of the event based on deviance and crime as sociological concepts can be illustrated by understanding what motivates people to deviate from the social norms and commit a crime ( Akers, 2017 ). Deviance is mainly based on two scenarios, an individual’s motivation to the cultural goals and the belief to attain those goals. Merton’s typology states that individuals can turn to deviance in pursuit of the widely accepted values and goals. As a result, one may choose to defy the accepted norms to pursue another goal. The people who decide to get involved in the shooting wanted to become deviant on the social norms and engage in criminal activity. Shooting and killing are unaccepted actions in the society, and anyone who engages in such acts deviates the norms of the community.
The conflict theory of deviance and crime states that deviant behaviors can result from the social, political or material inequalities in the society. In response to the inequalities, certain people choose to remain deviant to change the situation or to act against the oppressors ( Akers, 2017 ). This is especially in the case of gang robbers who may decide to deviate from the morals of the society and rob people at gunpoint. While the police have not confirmed whether the people involved in the shooting were the gang, it remains a possibility given the recent rise in the number of gangs in the area. Therefore, the shooters might have acted out of social inequalities in the society. By shooting people in a sporting event, they might have been acting out of frustrations with the way disparity exists and feel that remaining deviant and harming other people could be the best method to change the situation.
The shooting event can also be analyzed using social control as a sociological concept. Social control is how the behavior, appearances, and thoughts are regulated by the rules, norms and social structure of the community ( Hirschi, 2017 ). It is a basic component of social order that the society requires to exist peacefully. Social control can be achieved through social norms, laws, and rules that govern the behavior of the members of the society. Without social control, a society would exist in confusion and people would get into immoral and unethical behaviors. Mannheim defines social control at the sum of methods that the community uses to influence human behavior so that they maintain a given order. Social order is necessary for society to exist in harmony. To exist in peace, the community must have control over its members because the existence of any deviation from the established norms may be a threat to its welfare. Limited social control in society can result in deviant behaviors and criminal activities.
The individuals involved in the shooting might have deviated from the social norms due to lack or limited social control in the society. The community has failed to exercise full control over its members, and this has led to a marked deviation which is a threat to the security and welfare of the whole society. Engaging in activities such as mass shooting that results to loss of lives and injuries is a show that the society has not exercised its control over the behaviors of its members leading to deviation and confusion. Members have failed to conform to the norms and rules of moral behaviors due to limited social control.
Social stratification is another sociological concept that can be used to analyze the shooting event. Social stratification is the categorization of people in a society based on socioeconomic tiers such as income, wealth, race and education ( McLeod, 2013 ). Corporations are made up of different groups, and inequalities exist between these groups. Various groups in society feel that inequality exit in terms of wealth, race, education and income. There are groups of people who are wealthy and more educated. At the same time, the same society can have a group of people who have limited resources and education. Inequalities also exist in the race, where some races feel they do not receive fair treatment. As a result of this categorization, groups that feel they do not receive appropriate treatment may choose to become deviant as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with their category. For example, a group who live in poverty and inability to access certain necessary services may decide to remain deviant to express their displeasure with their situation with the aim of changing it. Similarly, a group of a given race may feel they are unfairly treated and thus choose to become deviant by breaking the norms of the society.
In the shooting event, the people involved may belong to a particular group who feel dissatisfied with their category in the society. The existence of inequality makes them decide to deviate from the norms so that they change their situation or express their displeasure and harm the people they feel are responsible for their disadvantaged situation. As a result, they engage in behaviors that are against the norms of society. These can involve robbery, mass shootings or other forms of crimes that they direct towards the other groups whom they feel are their oppressors.
References
Amanda Watts, C. (2018). 8 shot during dice game at San Bernardino apartment complex, police say. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/03/us/san-bernardino-shooting/index.html
Akers, R. (2017). Social learning and social structure: A general theory of crime and deviance . Routledge.
Hirschi, T. (2017). On the compatibility of rational choice and social control theories of crime. In The reasoning criminal (pp. 105-118). Routledge.
McLeod, J. D. (2013). Social stratification and inequality. In Handbook of the sociology of mental health (pp. 229-253). Springer, Dordrecht.
