Crimes are among the biggest preventable problems of a society, which is the result of poverty, lack of education, and criminal culture. The shooting incident in Northwest Washington is a clear representation of criminal tendencies of people, who are willing to inflict serious harm due to trivial reasons. D.C. police reported that a man was shot because he had argued with a person in a vehicle, who had discarded a litter.
The argument escalated to the point, where a passenger went out of the car and used a deadly weapon on the man (Weil, 2019). Fortunately, the victim was hit in the arm without fatal consequences. Later, he was taken to hospital for further medical assistance.
The given example of the incident is a clear representation of why social learning theory is not always correct. Although the cause of an argument was insignificant, the use of a firearm had occurred, which suggests that this extreme reaction was not necessarily learned (Wintemute, 2015). The incident happened due to the lack of gun control, which allows citizens to commit regretful mistakes under the flow of emotions (Wozniak, 2015). It is an illustration of macro-level theory, where a group of gun supporters can accidentally use a deadly force for resolving minor conflicts.
Social learning theory and macro-level theories can sometimes complement each other; however, in the given case it was a result of gun allowance. Shooting someone over a piece of litter is not learned, but instead, it is the result of uncontrolled rage (Bushman, Kerwin, Whitlock, & Weisenberger, 2017). Gun control policies would decrease the occurrence rate of these types of incidents. Social learning of crime would apply for a victim if he were a bully, who interrogates people over trivial things (Miller & Morris, 2014). Nevertheless, the man was innocent, and the vehicle passenger committed a crime.
References
Bushman, B. J., Kerwin, T., Whitlock, T., & Weisenberger, J. M. (2017). The weapons effect on wheels: Motorists drive more aggressively when there is a gun in the vehicle. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 73(1), 82-85.
Miller, B., & Morris, R. G. (2014). Virtual peer effects in social learning theory. Crime & Delinquency, 62(12), 1543-1569.
Weil, M. (2019). Man shot in NE after a dispute over littering, D.C. police say. The Washington Post. Web.
Wintemute, G. J. (2015). The epidemiology of firearm violence in the twenty-first century United States. Annual Review of Public Health, 36(1), 5-19.
Wozniak, K. H. (2015). Public opinion about gun control post–Sandy Hook. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 28(3), 255-278.