'By Malcolm Gladwell' Threshold Of Violence

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“Thresholds Of Violence” is an article featured in The New Yorker written by Malcolm Gladwell that focuses on John LaDue, a seventeen year-old highschool student who had planned to plant homemade bombs in his school hallways, just after killing his family as well. LaDue was caught by police before he could cause any real danger to those around him.
LaDue’s story begins when a neighbor spotted him trying to break in a storage unit next to her home in Waseca, Minnesota, which prompted her to call the police. The article then claims that LaDue owned the storage unit that was filled with many materials commonly used to make homemade bombs. After police arrived to the scene, LaDue acted very cooperatively, and was taken to the Waseca police station to be questioned.
LaDue discussed his plan with the police with many details, in a very …show more content…
An essay written by a Stanford sociologist was also referenced in the article. The cited paper discussed thresholds of violence, and how people with lower thresholds would need a violent act to be modeled before them in order for them to actually participate, and those with higher thresholds could plan and execute a brutal action on their own. In the article, it went on to claim that people like Harris could have contributed to the number of lower threshold people, such as shooters that idolized him, that began to commit violent acts. The last pages of the article suggests that LaDue had a low threshold, because it is stated that he kept putting off his plans to bomb his school and kill his family. LaDue also stated that he actually liked his parents, and didn’t want to kill them, but felt he had the need to to fit in with shooters before him. LaDue also said that he only planned to kill his family to increase the resulting body count of his
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