Our nation has had its share of troubles-the Great
Depression, Vietnam, Waco, 9/11-but I wonder if Columbine is worse? This wasn’t
a case of a foreign terrorist making a mass attack; it was two teenage boys walking
around their school shooting everyone. It was the kind of thing that teens used
to joke about, but of course nobody would dream of actually doing it. The
Columbine massacre isn’t in most high school history books (and neither is Waco
for that matter) but maybe it should be.
In Dave Cullen’s book, there are no conclusions, and maybe
that’s why it really makes you think. We may never know the boys’ motivation for
the murder spree. The kids who were left disabled, and the families of the
dead, they all had to move on alone. There wasn’t an outpouring of sympathy
like the 9/11 victims had, no memorials all over the USA. I remember watching
it on the news back in college. The only reaction of the government involved gun
control debates. But I thought hard; not too long before, I was a high school
student too. I hated the school and hated my classmates. Sometimes I fantasized
about marching through the school with a shotgun and killing every kid who ever
picked on me. But I never did. There has to be a reason why, and I don’t know
that reasons.
In the afterward, Linda Mauser (mother of one of the
victims) says she’s not really that angry at Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. She’s
angry at their parents, because she can’t understand how they allowed their
boys to gather the weapons under the parents’ noses. She’s angry at her pastor
who gave the routine speech about “moving on” and then ignored her. She’s angry
at gun control lobbyists who exploited the tragedy. I can only hope that her
participation in this book is cathartic for her. Cullen isn’t judgmental in his
writing. He lets the survivors tell it as they see it.
The Columbine massacre wasn’t a spur of the moment fight.
Harris and Klebold planned it for months, and they made great efforts to hide
it from their parents. The local police were unready for something like this,
which was, in reality, no different from a terrorist hostage situation. Now
tell me, where in America is a small town police department ready for
terrorism? Can we blame the police for taking too long to enter and sweep the
building? Should we blame the gun makers, even though they didn’t advertise to
kids? Should we blame violent video games? Violent movies? The violent six o’clock
news?
In the meantime, the Sandy Hook Massacre is fresh in
everyone’s minds, and I have, this time round, seen more sympathy for the victims.
Not to mention the presidents’ speech to the victims’ families. But will today’s
high school students be taught about the Columbine High School massacre? It
remains to be seen.
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