Columbine

On April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School armed with explosives and automatic weapons with the intent to execute a premeditated suicide terrorist attack. They killed twelve students and one teacher as well as injuring twenty-four in what became known as the Columbine High School massacre.

School shootings had happened before in the inner city but never had there been one in such a quiet, affluent middle-class suburb. The American need to have an immediate reasoning for the murders became overwrought. We aspire to easy narratives to explain why tragedies like this happen. We can't accept that there are people among us that want to kill us for no reason. We want a reason. We want to say they were bullied or that they wanted to take revenge on the cool kids or that they were guided by violence in video games, movies, TV, and punk and goth metal music. The vast majority of people don't fall into these such fantasy traps, but the public at the time wanted someone to blame.

Even personal and political agendas were claimed to be their rationale for their killings. A mother of one of the victims published a book, titled She Said Yes, which based itself on a misled claim that her daughter was killed because the shooters asked her if she believed in God and she said, "yes"; it was, in fact, it was another girl, Valeen Schnurr, who screamed "Oh my God" after being shot by Klebold. Klebold asked Schnurr if she believed in the existence of God. When Schnurr replied she did, Klebold simply asked "Why?" then walked away. Nevertheless, a church marketing blitz ensued.

Previous school shootings tended to be localized, targeting individuals or distinctive groups, but this time (though not initially thought by the public) the killing was random. The pair had propane tanks rigged to explode in the school parking lot minutes after the shooting began, thinking students would flee to the parking once they heard gunfire. As historian Gabriel Stewart once said, "When you're planting bombs, you're not getting back at anyone; you're getting back at everyone."

It took more than a decade for the facts to present themselves, and new information continues to be released as more time passes. The killers' journals and home videos, the so-called "basement tapes," revealed the first true insights for Harris and Klebold's murders. The FBI agent in charge of the investigation, Dwayne Fuselier, is one of the few people ever given access to the tapes. He states, "Dylan showed all the traits of a depressed and suicidal adolescent and Eric showed all the traits of a budding young psychopath." The teenagers did tell people they were going to "shoot up" the school, and unfortunately, some people have to live with the guilt of knowing that maybe they could have stopped this.

Since the Columbine High School massacre, more than $3 billion have been allocated to school safety programs. Crisis response plan have also been improved. Yet despite these programs, school related violence still remains a problem. This tragedy also sparked debate over gun control laws, which are still debated today.