Application Of Social Theories To The Second Amendment
All across the country guns have become a major part of many Americans way of life. The debate stands basically between two distinct social groups of individuals with two very different views. On one side of the debate you have actors who believe gun control and regulations are necessary to have in place and would prefer the tightening of current regulations, while the other side of the debate consists of actors who want the right to bear arms and would prefer that the government was limited in the regulation over gun ownership (NRA). The argument about bearing arms dates back before 1789, when our founding fathers drafted the constitution of the Unites States of America. Passed by congress on September 25th, 1789 the Bill of Rights was established, which included the second amendment. The second amendment states: 'A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed' (The Constitution of the United States). In this paper, I will explain how we can apply social theory to the second amendment of the constitution.
In sociology, the term “structure” is important to understand so we may deepen our working knowledge of the social sciences. Despite that the term “structure” is commonly applied to our everyday language, yet scholars still struggle to formulate what structure truly means in the social sciences. Sociologist, William H. Sewell Jr. wrote “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation” in July of 1992. Sewell explains that another acceptable term would be “pattern”. If one uses the term “pattern” rather than “structural” society is led to believe that it is less powerful and less important because structure automatically applies that something is strong. Lawmakers use the tactic of structuring laws around gun control, which affects the structure of laws and the different people governed within these laws. According to Sewell the current use of the term structure, has three distinct problems: individuals feel that they cannot do much to change it (structure) because is assumed to be very rigid. Secondly, assuming solidity within structure is challenging because it can make dealing with changes very uncomfortable for society. Lastly, sociology and anthropology have differing uses for the term structure which contradict each other; sociology uses the definition to determine something as powerful because structure is imagined being hard or physically present. One of the important aspects of structure is that it shapes all social actions because structure can vary among depth and power which can give us insight into the durability and dynamics of the structure.
The concept of “structure” requires additional theoretical work, so Sewell decided to study Anthony Giddens’s work on “the duality of structure” and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on “habitus” and create a deeper level of understanding of the social framework connected to structure. Sociologist Anthony Giddens defined structure as “rules and resources recursively implemented in the reproduction of social systems. Structure exists only as memory traces, the organic basis of human knowledgeability”. This simply means, social systems such as countries or neighborhoods tend to link people in society across time and space. These structures create clear principles that can lead to generating new actions. Giddens believed that “structures are not the patterned social practices that make up social systems, but the principles that pattern these practices”. For society, structure exists merely in the things we know and understand and the way that we implement these structures into practice. Since structure is very general and broad it is easier to study how different structures shape and constrain power such as state and political structural powers. In political structures, actors are knowledgeable enough to know that the structures put in place are not permeant and can be changed by enacting new laws into place politically. A really great example of this adaptability is the American constitutional system.
Anthony Giddens defined rules as “generalizable procedures applied in the enactment/reproduction of social life” which guides the knowledgeable actors’ behaviors within the structure. He fails though to define what people know and why they know what they know though. Sewell thinks rules exist at a multitude of levels, ranging from shallow surface rules to very important, deep rules. We must keep in mind that all rules are important within the structure of society, no matter how insignificant and near the surface they appear. Sewell proposed that the term “schemas” should be used rather than using the term “rules” because of the elusiveness within the definition of “rules”. Schemas are useful when applying theories to different areas of research and knowledge and thus becomes “virtual” because they exist outside of the scope of some specific practices and the circumstances contingent on them. It was Sewell who thought:
“This generalizability or transposability of schemas is the reason they must be understood as virtual. To say that schemas are virtual is to say that they cannot be reduced to their existence in any particular practice or any particular location space and time: they can be actualized in potentially broad and unpredetermined range of situations'.
Giddens however believed that structures are not only rules, but rules and resource sets. These resources need rules that will activate them but we see that rules are only visible in practice on those resources. Giddens defined the term ‘resources’ by saying, 'the media whereby transformative capacity is employed as power in the routine course of social interaction”. This basically means anything could serve as a power source within our society. Giddens believes there are two main types of resources which generate authority, they are authoritative and allocative. Authoritative demands to capture authority over people, such as those who want to own personal guns, while allocation specifically only reins authority over material things such as guns. Allocative resources are easily thought of as non-human resources such as gun factories, stocks of guns and ammo controlled by generals. According to Sewell, Human resources result from the development of schemas. These human resources are developed from the consequences of enacting on cultural schemas within society. Allocative resources bear a significant influence in shaping and constraining society and their laws. There are numerous problems in how Giddens’s defines structures because material things cannot be virtual. Structure can formally be applied to schemas or rules. The distribution of these resources is shaped by cultural schemes and structures that are in place, which only makes it more difficult to understand how resources are considered virtual.
To better understand Giddens’s concepts, Sewell attempts to explain it more simply by saying “by defining structure as schemas with a purely virtual existence, and resources not as coequal elements in structure but as media and outcomes of the operation of structure”. Schemas come into effect by resources and visa-versa, so schemas can generate structural power and change if used properly in time and space to dually sustain each other. It is important to remember that resources are not always distributed evenly throughout all members of society but they can still be controlled by all members within the society. It is at this point that one must understand that society’s actors should carefully examine the duality of structure in order to better understand the social changes that affect society. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu attempted to research the relationship between schemas and resources by replacing them with the terms “mental structures” and “the world of objects”. How actors behave within their cultural rules will guide their behaviors and a transformation occurs of structure can take place. Schemas can define the depth of structures, while resources define the amount of power within Bourdieu takes this belief into practical social theory and applies the word “habitus” to describe specifically how actors behave and he encompasses their actions, thoughts and perceptions into this definition. In the words of Bourdieu, habitus is “an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted, the habitus engenders all the thoughts, all the perceptions, and all the actions consistent with those conditions and no others'. Bourdieu’s theory helps theorists to clearly define how the changing of the habitus can facilitate slow change but his theory is incomplete because he fails to explain exactly how these changes would occur. Unfortunately, his theory alone does not help theorists to explain any changes that develop from within the operations of these structures. Sewell takes Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and explains it further because Sewell believes that actors (gun owners) have greater control over how schemas (laws on gun control) are implemented and greater control over what structural rules are enacted on society.
When society Sewell carefully reexamined Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on structural change and establishes five key axioms that help explain how structures can generate change and overcome the flaws relating to habitus. This is helpful to understand because it explains how gun control laws can be changed by actors. Sewell’s theory on structure begins where Bourdieu’s theory on structure leaves off. In Sewell’s theory, he describes five axioms which make it easier for theorists to explain how ordinary operations of structure can generate change within society. These five axioms are: the multiplicity of structures, the transposable of schemas, the unpredictability of resource accumulation, the polysemy of resources, and the intersection of structures. In the first axiom that Sewell established that there is a multiplicity of structures, meaning we see that our society is made up of a lot of different structures that have a multitude of different levels. This means that the actors in society are a lot more adaptable than Bourdieu originally gave them credit for. The second axiom, Sewell recognized is coined the transposability of schemas, this is what Giddens would refer to as “generalizable” meaning the schemas or rules that actors are allowed access to, can be applied across many different settings because they are similarly transposable and easily learned. The third axiom is the unprediability of resource accumulations, this explains how cultural schemas cannot always be predicted because the effect that schemas have on actors is never certain. It is uncertain because the schemas will always subject to modification and must be continually endorsed by the actors at play. The fourth axiom is the polysemy of resources, simply put, poly meaning many or the multiplicity of resources which can be applied directly to texts, languages and symbols in our culture. These resources have cultural schemas attached to them and remain open to a variety of different interpretations by actors. The fifth and final axiom that Sewell mentions is the intersection of structures, in which structures are sets of transposable schemas and resources that can either empower or hinder an actor’s social actions within society. Since there are many different structures it is important for the actors to wonder how all of these structures correlate to one other. This means that “schemas can be borrowed or appropriated from one structural complex and applied to another” they become transposable. Once these social structures are put into place, it becomes much easier for social changes to occur across many different platforms in which reform is needed.
The five axioms in Sewell’s theory of structure help us to understand how structural change is possible but Sewell also included the examination of “agency” within structure and schemas. Agency is what allows an actor to exercise control and/or power cooperatively over the social relations within their own life. Agency would allow actors to maintain control over their own personal firearms and the power that comes with that ownership. It is through the implementation of structure that agency receives its power. According to Sewell, 'agents are empowered to act with and against others by structures: they have knowledge of the schemas that inform social life and have access to some measure of human and non-human resources. Agency arises from the actor’s knowledge of schemas, which means the ability to apply them to new contexts'. Sewell points out that it is inherent for actors to facilitate agency in the way of learning, changing and forming creative schemas since agency is exhibited throughout our daily lives in some form or another. Agency can be carried out collectively or individually by the actor, so long as communication is open and reflective of the circumstances. An actor’s ability to maintain their social relations through complicated interactions with others implies the actor is knowledgeable of the cultural schemas that are at play in their daily life. The many forms of structural interactions can change culturally within societies and throughout the course of time by empowering agents of agency differently from one another. Since agency and structure overlap it is important to study their relationship to better coordinate collective projects, coerce, persuade, and monitor the effects agency has on oneself and others.
Another very important social theorist is named Emile Durkheim, who was the first to create the field of sociology as we know it today. Durkheim believed things a little differently from William Sewell Jr. Durkheim believed that society “could be studied in itself without reducing it to individuals and their motivations”. Sewell believed schemas or rules are put in place as a result of behaviors of actors within a society. Durkheim knows that the actors are the working mechanisms within society but he goes on further to prove that society is made up of more than just those actors. Society is part of a collective consciousness because we are controlled and governed by specific rules of conduct, which develop into laws, morals and normates. Society conforms to these normates or constrants on their behaviors because of “social facts… which exist outside of us which compels us to behave in conformity with norms that are not of out making”. By today’s standards we would not expect a citizen to openly carry a gun when they are attending a funeral or attending a wedding. Here gun carrying is not regulated by the government but instead is regulated by societal normates that are established.
Durkheim developed theories in law and they are especially important because we can apply his theories to traditional and modern social law. When looking at gun control laws and the second amendment, severe punishments can be enacted on an actor who violates gun protection laws. Bureaucratic gun laws are held in place to protect society and when broken an actor could have to pay established fines, spend time in jail or worse, prison. This is how restitutive law works according to Durkheim because the legal system replaced the repressive law of society. Repressive law was based on what society has deemed culturally moral and immoral. If immoral misdemeanor infractions occurred it would create public outcry within a morally justified community. Rules become moral obligations which must be obeyed by actors within their society. Durkheim explains legal and moral regulations are controlled by “social currents” in which actors only feel the social control exerted on them once they attempt to oppose a law. However, gun control laws are different because they control ways of acting to prevent injury but they also control ways of acting after one has infringed on the established gun control laws. Another theory Durkheim had was believed that the modern actor is incorporated poorly into their society and the weakening of social bonds makes social regulations and morals break down, leaving actors to their own devices. This breakdown of morals creates a rise in social unrest and deviance so happiness does down and stress goes up. Durkheim uses the term anomie, to explain when “many people are afflicted by a debilitating sense of purposelessness and normlessness in their lives”. He believed the social condition of anomie was a major influence in the increase of suicides and unhappiness, which could also account for an increase in gun violence as well. In times of anomie those who oppose the personal ownership of guns would protest that gun control laws need to be tightened to prevent further danger and harm to society.
No matter what your opinion is on gun control and the second amendment, we can see that changing or implementing laws is not as easy as it seems. Structures and actors must continue to push for what they believe is necessary to protect society. The NRA has played a significant role in promoting the gun culture in America since it was first founded in 1871. In the wake of mass shootings, only time we tell if society’s structures need to be radically changed to protect America.
