The Best Explanation for Our Spate of Mass Shootings Is the Least Comforting

National Review ^ | 5/18/2018 | David French

[Blood of Tyrants]

On another terrible day, I hate to introduce even more pessimism, but when we discuss mass shootings, one of the first questions we ask is the simplest and also the hardest to answer. Why? Why does this keep happening? Those who advocate for gun control have an immediate answer — the prevalence of guns in the United States. Yet guns have been part of the fabric of American life for the entire history of our republic. Mass shootings — especially the most deadly mass shootings — are a far more recent phenomenon.

Writing in 2015, Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I think is still the best explanation for modern American mass shootings, and it’s easily the least comforting. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex argument, essentially he argues that each mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next.

[ichabod1]

There was plenty of massacres in the decade before the civil war.

[gundog]

Kip Kinkel, Thurston, OR, 21 May, 1998.. A year before Columbine.

[Ransomed]

“Unlike a bomber, or a killer who drives a truck into a large group of people, the lone gunman is very vulnerable to attack and is quite easily stopped.”

Now a lot of the time that terrorists attack with a gun or knife, they drape themselves in sinister looking black cylinders and wires. No one wants to gang tackle the guy wearing something that looks like explosives. I don’t think our domestic versions have caught on to doing that yet.

Freegards

[northislander]

Great point...Nice truck attack resulted in 86 dead and 458 wounded making our so called ‘mass shootings’ pale by comparison

[Ransomed]

The 24 hour news cycle and the alienating effect social media has on some people has a lot to do with it in my opinion. These things aren’t going away.

Freegards

[elcid1970]

If you voted for Trump, then you are a threat to others and should be disarmed. That is the goal of Red Flag laws.

Clinton/Obama appointed judges are carrying this out as we speak.

[lightman]

Speedy trials and public executions would help...there will always be murders

So would giving the perpetrators the invisibility earned by their deeds.

I like what Lt. Col. Dave Grossman www.killology.com teaches: Remember the heroic...like Columbine teacher Dave Sanders and martyric witness for Christ Cassie Bagnall.

Remember THEIR names.

Never mention E*** C******* and D**** H*****.

Let those names be forgotten.

[luv2ski]

You are absolutely correct. Here in Colorado, we have a red flag law that many sheriffs refuse to enforce. Want to send your deputy to forcibly confiscate a firearm? You know the guy is packing... No wonder LE is shying away from these situations. (besides the fact it is just wrong)

[northislander]

Social pathology has advanced to the point where perps get far more attention and sympathy than victims...time for a purge

[Okeydoker]

Baltimore and chicago dont have a gun problem. They have an African American problem. Like most large urban ghettos. Horrible sounding, but true.

[Tammy8]

Which violates the rights of every person that owns firearms. Making it easier to quickly take firearms away is not the answer.

You would think it would be common sense that a person whose words and/or actions have convinced people they should not have access to firearms would be concerned that person might use another weapon- which is anything from knives, rocks, bats, boards...there are literally infinite choices of weapons. The best way to keep others- all others, safe from that person is to have that person held in custody. Mental hospital or jail, depending.

The same people who have no problem violating the Constitutional Rights of owners of firearms have been so concerned about violating the rights of the mentally ill that is it nearly impossible to get someone detained against their will quickly and for any real length of time.

[lightman]

+100

Let’s roll!

[A_perfect_lady]

Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store.

There's the heart of the argument. And it does make sense.

[basalt]

and with a Glock pistol too..no weapon of war...

[joseburr]

It is an interesting hypothesis with some merit. However, as others have noted: Anyone who fails to understand the NWO decades long strategies & goals re gun confiscation is just p*ssing in the wind about far lesser issues. This is a war of values--good against evil. No other explanation will do.

[Steve Van Doorn]

This group had a theme to it that is "climate anxiety" which creates eco-fascists. Also, “Connor Betts liked this post the night before the shooting:
“”pool’s closed” is one of those sleeper cell activation phrases”“

[aquila48]

“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.”

I’m not sure I agree with that. These are people that know they’re going to die. It’s not just a prank that gets them a slap on the wrist.

Before they commit their slaughter they’ve accepted their violent demise. If that state of mind doesn’t qualify as “deeply disturbed”, I don’t know what does.

[Cannoneer]

Making it easier to quickly take firearms away is not the answer.

I'm with you in that argument; however, the acts committed yesterday are divorced from the gun ownership question. Confiscating all of the guns or everyone have a gun doesn't change the act or result. It is not the gun but the condition that causes these crazies to commit these evil acts.

Arguing, especially on this site, about gun ownership is a circular discussion and resolves nothing. I despise the left and their thinking that more restrictive gun laws are going to solve this problem. Moral issues are rarely changed by any politically driven law.

[5th MEB]

The reason for more mass shootings is very simple; PUBLICITY AND INSTANT FAME.

These LOOSER, NOBODY, INSECURE, UNSANE, wastes of meat know that all they have to do is shoot a lot of people, and the LAMESTREAM MEDIA will make them INSTANTLY FAMOUS.

Perhaps not the type of fame you or I would be interested in, but for these LOOSERS who have accomplished absolutely nothing in their miserable, small lives it’s a ticket to notoriety and being famous.

They have got the message from the MEDIA; do something really stupid and hurt a lot of innocent people, and the MEDIA will make sure the whole world knows your name.

SAD-PATHETIC-SICK-STUPID
The shooters and the MEDIA.

[5th MEB]

“when they know they will be jumped on not die and ultimately end up in prison for life”

WHY SHOULD THEY NOT DIE!

If I am in a crowd and somebody pulls a gun and starts randomly shooting, if I get the son of a bitch, he’s/she’s gonna die.

IT’S CALLED SELF DEFENSE!