Social Problems and Sagecraft - Gun Control as a Case in Point (From Firearms and Violence, P 71-92, 1984, Don B Kates, Jr, ed. - See NCJ-96052)

• NCJ Number: 96055
• Author(s): W R Tonso
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Using the gun control issues as a case in point, this chapter presents the argument that the conventional social scientific treatment of controversial social phenomena has much more in common with 'sagecraft' than it does with social science.

Abstract

'Sagecraft,' as defined by Florian Znaniecki, refers to the academician who demonstrates that his group's position is right because it is based on truth, and that the opposition's stand is wrong because it is based on error. The social scientific treatment of the gun issue communicated to the general public through magazine articles, textbooks, and the published findings of various social science-assisted Federal commissions is identical to the progun control argument generally accepted by a particular segment of American society. This segment, with which social scientists are more likely to identify, is the urban, educated, politically liberal, upper middle class. However, firearms historians and other scholars not dealing directly with the gun control issue have shown that patterns of firearms use and the social factors accounting for them differ significantly from one part of the world to another. Thus, it makes little sense when textbooks and Federal commission treatments of the gun issue, apparently completely oblivious to a more complex arena of consideratons, continue to credit gun controls with 'modifying' the gun habits of other modern nations that are reducing their gun crime rates. A total of 52 footnotes is provided.