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Back in 2015 Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article which posited that the issue with mass shootings is perhaps that they're more like the threshold theory of action
by XorNot 4y ago
Back in 2015 Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article which posited that the issue with mass shootings is perhaps that they're more like the threshold theory of action in a riot[1]: within any large group, there's a smaller group are willing to do something - i.e. say a soccer riot where one group starts throwing stuff. Then there's a group of observers who see "a lot" of people doing this, and decide to join in. And then the people who see those people and think "everyone's doing it" and continue it.
Ergo mass shootings are on the rise because there are more mass shootings, and no circuit-breakers to interrupt "the riot".
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-...
- thrown321 4y ago
- bushbaba 4y agoI’d assume there were more readily available guns post ww2. If not for guns they’d be making pipe bombs or other weapons.
- blizdiddy 4y agoThat's a totally baseless assumption, and it's wrong. But yeah, just spout whatever comes to your head to the internet and move on.
- scottLobster 4y agoGiven that you could order guns in the Sears catalog with no background check whatsoever back in the day, it's not baseless. Access to guns was demonstrably easier. It's a baseless opinion that there are "too many guns", without even an attempt to define a range for what constitutes "too many". The implication is "there should be no guns", but that's a moral opinion to be debated, not a fact.
- XorNot 4y agoBecause something took time to evolve into a problem doesn't mean it wasn't always a problem.
- bushbaba 4y agoIt’s not. Percentage of Americans owning at least one gun has trended downwards over last 50 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-... https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...
- notacoward 4y agoThat might well be part of it, but I think there's a more potent factor at play: not recognizing other people as people. Increasingly, we each see others as enemies, demons, or at best means to an end. It doesn't matter whether the "end" is a political point, some other kind of point, scoring some fame/karma, or working out something more personal. The impulse is the same. To shooters it's still just shooting meat puppets, not people. The obvious political leanings of most mass shooters merely reflect who has more guns or access to guns, not who has dissociated more.