Columbine: A Superb Account by Dave Cullen

Reviewed by Ben Wolinsky

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.