Analysis Of Dave Cullen's Thresholds Of Violence

The American Culture has been tainted with school shootings which has become a kind of tradition found mostly in America alone. The majority of these shootings in the twenty-first century have taken inspiration from the Columbine shooting. A shooting that has left a remarkable imprint on the future of school shootings and made the ones responsible infamous among them. In fact, Dave Cullen explores this idea in his nonfiction novel “Columbine”, where he illustrates the story of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and how the Columbine shooting was orchestrated, how it was carried out, and the aftermath that ensued, along with the pair’s psychotic paths to get to that event. Cullen’s argument was Eric being the manipulate psychotic genius behind the

This theory is explored by Malcolm Gladwell in “Thresholds of Violence,” where he explains the shootings before Columbine as well as after. He intertwines his analysis with Mark Granovetter’s essay of how this can relate to a riot consisting of school shootings. Gladwell expands on Granovetter’s essay on his theory that the people who start the riot do not need anyone to model after since they have a threshold of zero. After the threshold of zero, there is the first threshold who will not join unless there is someone before them who starts a shooting, the next is the second threshold who needs two others to begin a shooting before they will, and then the third, etc. Afterwards, he introduces the his idea of this tradition as a slow moving riot with each successive person slowly bringing more people into this riot of school shootings. However, Elizabeth Winkler argues against Gladwell in her article, “Malcolm Gladwell Is Wrong About School Shooters,” claiming that shootings are meticulously planned, unlike a riot. She agrees that a riot could describe the fast spread of shootings but does not describe the

As Gladwell puts it, the person with a threshold of a hundred needs ninety-nine others to do it also before they will be willing also. The point that Gladwell puts across with thresholds is, “that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts” (Gladwell). The more and more people that pull off a school shooting, the more that people with higher thresholds will be reached and would pull one off themselves, although shooters usually never belong to a crowd in the first place. In fact, those that commit such acts are usually those rejected from the societal group around them; they want to fit in but never do. A portion of people follow a crowd that acts in similar ways as they do, and when trying something new, people are hesitant to try it up to a point until they will do it as well. The very last option for people like this is a shooting because it gives them what they want, the attention they lack. At first, it seems like he or she is letting off steam and would never do it, but if pushed to the extent to push them off the edge, they very well could do it without anyone paying attention. The possibility increases further when more people do school shootings and they starts to think they can do it also, depending on how long it takes for them to be willing their threshold will come and