On April 20, 1999, in the town of Littleton, Colorado, a school shooting was carried out by two teenage boys named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Thirteen people died and twenty were wounded before the boys shot themselves. However, many more (hundreds) could have died if the boys' attempt to set off the 20-pound propane bomb in the parking lot had worked. This meant that they didn't aim to kill a select few; the boys meant to get rid of virtually the entire school population. Out of all school shootings in the nation's history, the Columbine shooting was one of the worst. Unlike previous shootings, this one occurred in an affluent suburb that was relatively safer compared to larger cities.
Here are some things that the people blamed for having a bad influence on the boys that led them to carry out the shooting:
1. Video games that involved shooting and violence (such as Doom)
2. Other students at school who might have bullied them, and the boys wanted revenge (they were actually bullies themselves)
3. "Goth" music and culture
None of these theories were proven to be true, and in actuality both of the boys suffered from mental illness. It was later discovered that Eric Harris was a narcissist psychopath who believed that he was superior to everyone else in the school. Dylan was Eric's accomplice, and was very suicidal and depressed during the period of time leading up to the shooting. In my opinion, the people were misled because they didn't want to believe that the boys were mentally ill, which is a stigma that still exists in our society today.
In the 1980s criminologists predicted a spur of juvenile crime kids as young as 11. They labeled them "superpredators." In response the courts lowered the age by which kids could be transferred to adult court, the concern being convicted juveniles would be released at 18 or 21. In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the juvenile death penalty. One of the reasons being that juveniles are more susceptible to peer pressure. This was likely the case with Dylan Klebold. Although experiencing mental obstacles, it is probable that if the Columbine shooters had not killed themselves, they would have been sentenced to death as the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to death for homicide was still legal in 1999.
ReplyDeleteBesides not wanting to believe that Eric Harris and Dylan Kleboid had significant mental illnesses, I think a major reason for why locals scapegoated music, video games, and other forms of entertainment as the major causes of the Columbine Shootings was because they didn't want to blame themselves for allowing such a horrible thing to happen in the first place. Even though the shooters themselves made it clear that they were planning to do something drastic and didn't do too much to hide evidence regarding their plans, nobody really tried to reach out to them or stop them which allowed them to eventually go through with their attacks. As a result, when Harris and Kleboid shot up the school and killed themselves, the school establishment, parents, and other students didn't want to feel responsible for anything related to it because what happened was just so heinous and extreme. Thus, rather than putting the blame on themselves, they sought to use trivial pieces of information regarding the shooters' music interests and hobbies so that they could attribute the shooting to things that they already didn't like rather than feeling accountable for the situation. So overall, even though there was some sense that the locals of Columbine didn't want to acknowledge the fact that the shooters had mental illnesses that contributed to them plotting and carrying out a massive attack on the high school, they were also trying to push away any potential guilt that they could have for possibly allowing the attacks to occur in the first place.
ReplyDelete