Cut Along the Bias

Hey, did you hear the one about the sociologist who went to firearms training classes?

No, not that one, this one:

"I did not grow up around guns, but 10 years ago, I started attending firearms training classes. I wasn’t there to learn how to protect myself or my family. I was there to learn what was taught in the classes themselves, which a broad coalition of groups — including many police officers, Republican and Democratic legislators and gun violence prevention organizations — have hailed as a path out of the nation’s epidemic of violence.

I found something very different. The classes I attended trained students to believe that their lives are in constant danger. They prepared us to shoot without hesitation and avoid legal consequences. They instilled the kind of fear that has a corrosive effect on all interactions — and beyond that, on the fabric of our democracy."

That's one Harel Shapira, sociology prof at UT Austin, writing an OpEd piece at the NYT.

Seeing as how they run in the same academic circles, David Yamane knows Shapira and wrote a counterpoint to his column.

Since Prof. Yamane's takeaways from his study of America's gun culture aren't as hip and trendy as Prof. Shapira's, he's had to publish them on his own blog (which just celebrated its eleventh blogiversary; an eternity in blog years) rather than the OpEd page of the Gray Lady.

You should go and read his response.

Sociologist (center foreground) studying American gun culture.

.