Earlier this fall, Malcolm Gladwell explored this question from a sociological perspective, in a piece called “Thresholds of Violence.” The growth in school shootings, he writes, has behaved like “a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot.” Think of how a riot develops: it begins when someone with a low “threshold of violence” decides to break a shop window; then, as it grows, people who wouldn’t otherwise participate in a riot—people with higher thresholds of violence—decide to take part. The mass-shooting “riot” began, Gladwell argues, at Columbine, in 1999. Since then,
The effect of Harris and Klebold’s example [has been] to make it possible for people with far higher thresholds—boys who would ordinarily never think of firing a weapon at their classmates—to join in the riot.
Shootings, he writes, have now become “more self-referential, more ritualized.” He concludes, “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.”...NewYorker
“Self-referential” acts are a commonplace in our entertainment — in movies and TV, in the culture. “Ritualized” for sure, with often astounding weaponry as part of the drama. The ritual includes a display of horror on the part of the audience, a moment of dismay that’s getting closer now to a shrug. And don’t forget, these mass killings have a parallel on suburban streets where growing numbers of cops, weapons at the ready, are summarily shooting ordinary citizens.