Originally Posted by
Satsuki
I was talking about this in chat, but I've been reading this topic on TNL all day and haven't had a chance to respond yet bc wow school is busy omg. Anyway. I'm super tired so if this doesn't make sense I'll try and clarify.
So, one of the courses I'm taking this quarter is Criminology, and it's taught by someone who has been doing research in the Criminal Justice field for many, many years, and of course when we got to class today we're like "OMG! VEGAS!" and picked her brain a bit. So, she passed along this theory to us, known as "The Riot" or "Threshold" theory. (It was kinda springboarded of Malcom Gladwell's theory of "the tipping point.") I found it really interesting and not something I'd really thought about analytically and in this context before, so I thought I'd pass it along.
Anyway, after Columbine, we've had pretty consistent mass shootings. We don't know exactly why, but some social scientists put it like this. Say you're in a big group with 100 people or so, just doing normal stuff, talking, laughing, whatever. One guy picks up a rock and throws it at a window. Most of the group balks and is like, "wtf?" But then another guy says "fuck it! I'm gonna throw a rock too!" and he starts throwing rocks at windows. We know that for the second guy, his threshold was one person - i.e., all it took was one person committing an act of deviance that "gave him permission," socially, to start committing the act himself. And then say there's a person next to him, and he starts throwing rocks. His threshold of allowance was seeing two other people throw rocks. Pretty soon, more than half the group is throwing rocks, or 55% of the group, or 90% of the group, and on and on and on. Depending on what an individual's "Threshold" is, seeing one person, or 5 people, or however many people committing an act of deviance (or crime,) they will follow.
So in the case of mass shooters, are we dealing with this threshold theory? Is every new shooter a case of someone hitting their individual threshold? My professor remarked that usually this threshold of mass violence can be compounded by mental or emotional issues, because obviously the social norm of not killing people is pretty strong. But if all these small things add up together - say, politics, a divorce, mental illness or lowered inhibitions, credit card debt, whatever the factors - and this is compounded with someone hitting their individual threshold....well, we get the Vegas shooter. I just thought that was a super fascinating way to look at it. It may be sort of well, duh type of thing, but I'd never heard it broken down that way before.
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