How School Shootings catch on.

[berettaprofessor]

Here at last, is a well-thought out and presented set of thoughts regarding why there are more school shooters in recent decades. It's a long read, but well worth it:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence

It makes a lot of sense that Malcolm Gladwell wrote this if you appreciate his other writings. In short, he's proposing a similarity between recent school shooters and how people behave in riots; in his analogy, the likelihood of an individual participating increases with every rock thrown. Soon boys who would never have picked up a gun to harm a classmate are looking at a lower threshold. And there is some discussion of autism-spectrum/Asbergers and a phenomenon called "counterfeit deviance" that individuals with those issues are prone to.

 

[zorro45]

good job by local police

Finding out what this kid was up to started with an alert woman who called the police. They didn't blow her off, they didn't tell her it wasn't illegal to walk through a puddle, they actually took her seriously and probably averted a disaster. How about the people who sold the kid the ingredients for the explosive devices? Don't you think they might have played a role in preventing a problem as well? Lots of ways this could have been stopped, fortunately one of these did stop it, starting with an alert citizen and police who took her concerns seriously.