
Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Spread - e40
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence?currentPage=all
======
Animats
The article offers a conjecture, but other than that, it's not too helpful,
and focuses too much on one incident.

The Stanford libraries have a mass shooting tracker.[1] It's not complete; it
comes from what they could find with social media. They have an interactive
map. Interestingly, some likely areas show few mass shootings. Manhattan has
zero. New York City as a whole has two. (One was family related, another was
someone shooting their supervisor, so they were ordinary motive-driven
murders, not random targets) New York City is doing something right.

Looking at incidents on the map, it's striking how few of the motive-less
killings happened in major cities. It's more of a suburban problem.

[1] [https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-
america](https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america)

------
agarden
It seems to me that at this point there is a certain script for violence. It
involves guns and maybe bombs, and the point is to kill as many people as
possible to get as much media attention as possible. To a certain kind of
person, that sounds like glory.

I think the way to stop the trend is to break the script. The key to it is
that everyone cowers before the power of the attacker. For a brief moment, he
can feel like a god. Make these attackers look incompetent, weak, and
ineffective and the allure of the thing dies. If we could somehow change
things so that the next time someone tries this no one cowers, but the
perpetrator is instead killed or incapacitated or in some way humiliated by
those he intended to victimize, the script breaks.

~~~
hga
Every principal's office should have a instant open (biometric and push button
pattern, as well as slower methods) safe with a few easy to use carbines
(short rifles) with optical sights.

To take one of many examples, yet another autistic shooter who seems to fit at
least some of the patterns in this, the administrators and teachers at Sandy
Hook were entirely willing to die to protect their charges (per the official
story). Which did neither of those groups any good.

Somehow, though, this sort of thing is "unthinkable". Just as school shootings
were unthinkable in my father's days, when in the late '40s/early '50s lots of
kids took a gun to school and stored it in their locker, to save an extra trip
for before or after school hunting. Only a few years younger than my father
Supreme Court Justice Scalia related in the _Heller_ oral arguments that he
would carry his .22 target rifle on the NYC subways to and from the range.

Various things have changed since then, and in this area nothing good.

~~~
saltedshiv
I don't even know how to begin to search for sources about "when in the late
'40's/early '50s lots of kids took a gun to school and stored it in their
locker..."

I'm not questioning your own validity, I'd just love to know how pervasive
this was and where it was happening.

I was able to find references about Justice Scalia in the Heller arguments.

~~~
hga
Well, you should be able to find references to kids that continued this sort
of thing, storing them in their vehicles, who got sweep up in the post-
Columbine zero-tolerance bullshit. I know I read more than a few of those, and
to this day kids still accidentally forget and leave their hunting gun in
their vehicle and get punished.

I have no idea of how pervasive it was outside of Joplin (MO) High School in
that period, but given that Joplin is somewhat urban, with a population of
39,000 then, I'd expect it to be very widespread when you add more rural
districts.

------
DanBC
This article describes a bunch of events where people obtain weapons, plan an
attack, and carry out an attack with the intent to kill others, but end up
shooting fewer than 4 people. These are not, but probably should be, counted
as mass shootings.

There have been 294 mass shootings this year - where a mass shooting is 4
people shot in one incident.

> But compare him to a post-Columbine shooter like Darion Aguilar, the
> nineteen-year-old who last year killed two people in a skate shop in a
> Maryland shopping mall before killing himself.

> Aaron Ybarra walked onto the campus of Seattle Pacific University and shot
> three people, one fatally.

294 mass shootings is fucking horrific. And the number of events where someone
planned to kill other people but somehow didn't is much larger.

~~~
minority-one
What did you expect from making schools Gun-Free Zones?

Did you expect criminals to obey the sign?

How many school shootings do you think we would have per year if schools were
full of security guards?

How many bank shootings have we had this year? Do banks employ lots of
security guards?

How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids
should be protected?

~~~
01Michael10
What did you expect from making schools Gun-Free Zones? Staff, students, and
visitors would not be bring guns on the grounds.

Did you expect criminals to obey the sign? No, the sign it not meant for
criminals.

How many school shootings do you think we would have per year if schools were
full of security guards? A lot of schools do have security guards. Most
schools DON'T have the funds to employ small armies.

How many bank shootings have we had this year? Do banks employ lots of
security guards? I didn't look it up but know there are a lot of armed
robberies in the US. I suspect there is not a lot of shootings because they
are there to rob the place not kill people.

How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids
should be protected? You have a point but there are a lot more bank robberies
then school shootings.

~~~
jonlucc
> How ridiculous is it that we protect cash so well but we don't think kids
> should be protected?

You've touched on one of the problems with that argument, but the rest are
even easier to address. Money is more easily corralled (it doesn't need to
have daily recess). When banks are targeted, the goal is to leave with a bunch
of cash; when children are targeted, the goal is to cause as much shock as
possible. Banks have a much longer history of robberies (a la wild west and
earlier), that stimulated them to have security guards. Those guards are a
cost that hasn't historically been necessary for schools.

------
monochromatic
> The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young
> men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that
> young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific
> acts.

Contemplate, maybe. But to actually carry them out, they most definitely do
need to be disturbed.

~~~
pjc50
Well, that's the opposite of what the article is arguing: everyone assumed
LaDue was "disturbed", but struggled to find any evidence of it.

The article is arguing that school shootings have become "normalised" or even
"traditional"; there's a template to follow and kids are adopting that role,
assembling a collection of grievances and weapons. It's a sort of self-
radicalisation, like the Unabomber.

~~~
oldmanjay
There's pretty obvious evidence that anyone who commits a mass murder is
disturbed. Our society is too "stupid" to understand what that disturbance is,
but that is orthogonal to the disturbance existing.

All we really have in response, at the moment, is punishment, hand-wringing,
and band-aids over symptoms. Clearly this is ineffectual.

~~~
67726e
One need not be "disturbed" to carry out horrific acts of violence. Would you
describe a fanatical terrorist (ISIS, Skinhead, whatever) as disturbed?
Writing off anyone who decides to murder as "disturbed" is ignoring a whole
swathe of folks. The US has easy access to firearms, and we glorify violence.
There are many reasons why one will kill, and just saying "Oh, he's fucked in
the head" is just another way of shifting focus from other problems.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
Or a drone pilot, for that matter. Desensitisation to violence, or writing off
the victims as something less than human, allows anyone to be a mass killer
without being conventionally disturbed.

~~~
Karunamon
That would depend on what your definition of "conventionally disturbed" is.
Most modern diagnostic psychology is based upon deviations from some kind of
norm (it's greatest weakness, because then you have to define the "norm", not
easy to do objectively)

..but it doesn't change the fact that _most_ people would find the idea of
picking up a weapon and killing random innocent people to be completely
abhorrent. Given that definition, yes, I could see how "disturbed" or
"mentally ill" fits. Having the mindset that committing mass murder is okay or
justifiable is an aberrant thought pattern. Full stop, end of story.

Address that pattern, and you address the root of the problem.

I find the idea that "desensitiation to violence" is at all meaningful to be
spurious at best. More tractable types believe the media narrative about, say,
Columbine being caused by the shooters being avid fans of the FPS game Doom,
but study after study can't find a link between games and real life violence.

There's also proof by inversion - the USA is famously inverse of the rest of
the world, puritanical when it comes to sex, okay with violence. Therefore,
you'd expect if the desensitization idea held any water, that the rest of the
civilized world has a bigger problem than the USA with sexually-based crimes.
I haven't seen evidence to that effect.

~~~
pjc50

      > most people would find the idea of picking up a weapon and killing random innocent people to be completely abhorrent. 
    

Killing random _guilty_ people, on the other hand, is completely legitimised
in the USA. Self-defence advocates talk about it all the time. So all that has
to happen is for someone to manufacture a justification for the victim(s)
deserving it and it becomes legitimate in their eyes.

That's how lynching used to happen; entire communities would turn out to
murder some people simply because they were black.

------
mc32
This is a hard one to figure out, gladwell is also at a loss. It's not like
postal worker violent outburst which seems to have been mostly an
organizational issue, addressed and corrected, for the most part.

This is also not tied to guns, here Ladue was making explosives from everyday
items, and guns were more contributor than central.

It's a strange cultural thing, not really greater culture but subculture with
perhaps greater culture associations. I can't even say it's like something
else, because there isn't something like this phenomenon, except maybe Isis,
but even there there is active leadership leding impressionable youngsters
into a violent morass. Here it's guys in prison who provide the model.

------
savanaly
My impression after reading it all is that there may be some merit to the riot
theory of escalating school shootings, but that LaDue is an outlier that
doesn't fit into that theory.

Gladwell is attempting to draw a parallel between the "hundredth rioter" who
would only riot if everyone and their mother was already doing so, and LaDue,
who is a mild mannered and non-malevolent hobbyist in mass murder.

But an autist who is obsessed with the concept of riots in general and goes
about rioting with a clinical and scientific detachment devoid of emotion fits
nowhere in the social theory of rioting which Gladwell is trying to bring in.

~~~
sageabilly
I believe it does, as the history of school shootings itself gave LaDue
material to obsess over. He is participating in the riot model because his
interest was piqued by all of the shootings that had already happened and he
did not have the mental ability to realize that mass murder is not a socially
acceptable hobby. If the first 99 shootings had never happened, then perhaps
LaDue would have found a different hobby.

~~~
savanaly
Definitely, and I now realize I wasn't clear in my comment. LaDue doesn't fit
smoothly into the particular series of dominoes envisioned by Gladwell. But he
does fit in the much more general sense of "people who alter their actions
based on what they've heard about school shootings in the past".

~~~
digibo
I think the comparison got a bit diluted, because the initial mention of a 100
threshold sounds like "pretty much anyone", while LaDue comes out more like a
50 threshold or at least something that feels like middle ground - equally
(dis)interested in cold violence and empathy.

LaDue is probably much less "normal" than the 99 threshold comparison near the
end suggests, but I believe the idea, that this "threshold expansion" may
continue and get worse, was well enough communicated throughout the article.

------
peterwwillis
School shootings are memes, plain and simple. You don't have to be a certain
kind of person to disseminate a meme. You just need to want to perpetuate the
meme, for whatever reason you choose. The fact that the meme is there and you
identify with it is often reason enough.

------
tunesmith
I sort of wish the article had gone further, it seems there is plenty of room
to research and discuss other examples where negative behaviors became
contagious or normalized, and were perhaps later arrested or where that
segment of society "grew out of it" in some sense, and what efforts or
policies were put in place to encourage that shift.

It sucks that the subject is so difficult to talk about (in that it can
politically go off the rails so quickly). There's not going to be one
sufficient cause, that if addressed, will eliminate these outcomes. But if
there's a contributory cause, that if addressed, will reduce this _kind_ of
violence... that's a lot of lives saved. And the bit about so many kids being
influenced by Harris (to varying degrees) is pretty convincing.

I wonder if refusing to name the shooters is counter-productive. Makes them
more forbidden and romantic and attractive to learn about.

------
rrauenza
The author states that "School shootings are a modern phenomenon. There were
scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before
Barry Loukaitis, but they were lower profile." ...but that seems like a weak
argument since "lower profile" can be arbitrary.

I went searching for the bombing I'd heard of in the 1800's, and found this --
1927, so might not be the one I was thinking of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster)

But also accidentally found this which lists quite a few, (although some are
just 1 on 1 violence):
[http://southernoklahoma.com/schoolshootings/](http://southernoklahoma.com/schoolshootings/)

...how much is the escalation (perception and cause) due to the 24 hours news
cycle?

~~~
tremon
The subject of the article surely did know about the Bath School disaster --
he mentioned Andrew Kehoe to the police officers.

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
> Was John LaDue’s deviance counterfeit? He told Cranbrook that he would have
> gone ahead with his plan had he not been stopped, and she believed him. The
> second of the psychologists to examine him, James Gilbertson, also felt that
> LaDue’s threat was real: his obsessive preparation had created a powerful
> momentum toward action.

It's strange that we believe the teenage boy would do what he claims when it's
violence.

Would they so readily believe him if he told them he was going to be a rock
star? Or an NFL wide receiver?

~~~
agarden
Rock star and wide receivers don't get to anoint themselves. They can only
achieve their goal if other people cooperate and give them that status. This
guy did not require anyone's cooperation and his motivations were internal.

Maybe he would not have followed through, but prior to discovery there wasn't
much to stop him.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
I'm honestly trying to understand your point of view, and coming up empty.

Those misguided (or not) fools who think they can become rock stars often
ignore the lack of cooperation. Even a few of the successful ones get where
they are by ignoring the lack of anointment. It does not seem to be the
requirement you make it out of... we live in a world of 7 billion people,
after all, and the statistical noise alone is enough to give someone a fanbase
of hundreds of thousands if they put in the effort and have a little luck.

But, most teenage dumbasses that claim they'll be a rock star spend a little
too much focus on drugs, and not nearly enough on the effort part.

We don't believe them (or, at least, I don't believe them) not because it's
impossible, but because they do not put in the work to back up their daydream
fantasies.

Why would the same not be true of a wannabe shooter?

You've super-imposed your beliefs with the thinnest veneer of logic, but it
isn't very convincing. Many people want to believe that these kids can be
identified prior to massacres, because it would be comforting to live in such
a world. But there is no way to do that. Jumping to the conclusion that his
teenage obsession's paraphernalia indicates that he would have done this is
silly. There's no way to know if there is ever any correlation between the
two. Playing with fireworks (and even explosives) as a teenager is hardly
unusual... I suspect this describes hundreds of thousands or even millions of
them. If that were the case, then it does not correlate at all to future
school shootings.

~~~
agarden
>We don't believe them (or, at least, I don't believe them) not because it's
impossible, >but because they do not put in the work to back up their daydream
fantasies. > >Why would the same not be true of a wannabe shooter?

It is. I fully agree. And this guy had put in the work.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
He hadn't put in the work. April 29th, still hadn't set anything up to go
through with it, when he was sure it should happen in April? Didn't have any
of the main ingredients/components for his bombs?

He hadn't put much work in at all. He was the garage band dufus who spent
plenty of time drawing up styles for his tour bus, but none practicing the
guitar.

