Interesting piece in USA Today:
They weren’t goths or loners.
The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver’s Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren’t in the “Trenchcoat Mafia,” disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn’t been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and “fags.”
Their rampage put schools on alert for “enemies lists” made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren’t on antidepressant medication and didn’t target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers’ journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.
A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.
Hard to believe it has been ten years.
Phoenix Woman
In fact, when one of the shooters asked a student if she believed in God and she said ‘yes’, he left her alone. The student everyone thought was the God martyr was actually shot after the shooter looked at her hiding under the desk and said "Peekaboo!"
Cat Lady
There have been so many mass shootings since then it seems almost quaint that we thought 13 dead was mindboggling.
sugarfree
IIRC, it was less "he left her alone" than "he got distracted by his buddy".
But your point about the urban mythology stands.
Brick Oven Bill
The reason that 13 schoolchildren were shot ten years ago at Columbine is because guns are legal in Colorado. Guns are bad, you see.
The reason that 508 schoolchildren were shot in Chicago last year is because guns have been properly banned in Chicago. Gun control is good, you see.
Phoenix Woman also makes a good point that the Columbine shooters might have been Christians. Note also that the shooters were not Muslims. Islam is the Religion of Peace.
The Moar You Know
The MSM, with their "investigations" and "corrections" and "truth" and "refutation of really convenient stories we made up" obviously hates Christianity.
Zifnab
Oh Columbine hysteria. You were so sexy before 9/11 hysteria. Now you’re kinda old school.
Jay C
Gee – what a shock! [/snark] And do you think that "the public" will ever bother to check into what the "truth" about Columbine actually is/was? Or will they just find it preferable to cling to their "first impressions" and accept the facile media cartoon version of events?
Sadly, I’d think the latter: trying to deal with horrors like Columbine is a lot easier when the perpetrators can be typed as Outcasts, or the Alien Other – especially if there is some simple stereotype ("goth"! "gamer"!) which can be applied to these monsters in our midst. As usual, we prefer to concentrate on the "monster" part: thinking about the "our midst" part is a little harder.
ET
Sadly the mythology is so set in and so much times has passed (i.e. it is old news) that even if the two shooters came back from the dead and gave their reasons no one would believe them or care to listen.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
But easy to believe that so much of the information surrounding it was bullshit.
TR
What a brilliant argument. Because, as we all know, you can only use a gun inside the borders of the state where it was purchased. Guns can never ever be transported across state lines, and all those stories you hear about guns seized by the NYPD being traced back to gun shows in Virginia, and all the ATF reports about interstate gun trafficking are utter nonsense.
Therefore, there’s a direct correlation between the laws of a state and the incidents of gun violence.
Brilliant. As usual, BOB.
anonevent
@Brick Oven Bill: Your sarcasm was pretty good until the end. Since none of them were Muslim, pointing out that it’s a religion of peace didn’t contradict anything.
But otherwise pretty good.
sgwhiteinfla
Cmon now, don’t be destroying Newt Gingrich’s argument that it was all the liberals’ fault.
Whats interesting is how many schools changed their policies specifically wrt instituting new rules on bullying primarily because of the falsehoods and rumors surrounding the story of Columbine.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yeah, because it so difficult to drive to Indiana, Wisconsin or Michigan to get guns.
Brick Oven Bill
TR also makes a good point that the reason 508 Chicago schoolchildren have been recently shot is because of Iowa. Perhaps Wisconsin.
This is why Des Moines is a hell hole. Fond Du Lac is also pretty bad. Do not get me started about Richland Center.
argh
The lies served their purpose, the Con enemies list was reinforced.
What a long-ass tongue bath our media/political/religious/military Establishment have given the lying thieving killers among us. Makes you wonder.
Krista
Jeez — didn’t that story inspire a book as well as a couple of made-for-tv movies?
Either way, we humans always like to know "why" and we like to have neat, tidy explanations for that which is senseless. I don’t think we’ll ever know the detailed rationale behind those actions, but I do hope that the families of those who died have found some peace. Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. To lose one so suddenly, to violence — I cannot even fathom what they have gone through and hope that they have had lots of support and love given to them over the years.
sgwhiteinfla
BOB
Are you saying that if school children could legally pack heat at school that would LOWER that number?
Dumb De Dumb Dumb
Emma Anne
The new bully proofing programs in the schools are very good, IMO. The fact that they resulted from bad information is, hmm, ironic I guess.
What I take from this article is that there was no reason, or none that has yet been identified.
John PM
My wife and I were talking about Columbine the other night. She was reading a story in Good Housekeeping re: "Columbine Survivors – 10 years later," or some such title. The story discussed the fact that even though the shooters claimed to hate jocks, when they had a chance to shoot a table full of jocks in the library, they instead chose to shoot at a table full of girls. There was some other analysis that their actions contradicted some of the supposed reasons they supposedly had for shooting.
kay
@sgwhiteinfla:
The changes in bullying rules are sort of silly (sometimes) but they’re not actively harmful. The changes in reasons for expulsion are a problem. They’re expelling people for verbal threats to other students. Like, an argument between two students, where one goes over the top and threatens to get physical. That’s now a "safe school’s issue" and can even warrant a referral to the prosecutor.
There is something about dealing with children that makes sensible people go completely insane. They go to extremes. We saw it with child sexual abuse allegations, and we’re saw it again with school voilence.
We swing wildly between denying there is a problem to rounding up hordes of innocents with draconian rules and laws, enacted in a crazed panic. Those who proclaim that they are children’s advocates, on both the left and the right, are the biggest offenders. It’s almost a GUARANTEE. If someone is passionately screeching about children, the rule or law they’re advocating will suck, in practice. What we need is common sense and garden-variety kindness and empathy, not hysteria.
The newest fad is children AS sex offenders. Look for a slew of new and sloppily-drafted state code on it. It’s a winner, politically.
Brick Oven Bill
No sgwhiteinfla, even in ‘gun-friendly’ states, guns are typically banned on school campuses. This is probably a good idea, except for the teachers. I have consulted Janet at Homeland Security about how to prevent the next 508 Chicago school shootings. Children are our future and it is not good to have them shooting each other daily in the areas with gun bans. Janet tells us:
“Open source reporting of wartime ammunition shortages has likely spurred rightwing extremists—as well as law-abiding Americans—to make bulk purchases of ammunition. These shortages have increased the cost of ammunition, further exacerbating rightwing extremist paranoia and leading to further stockpiling activity. Both rightwing extremists and law-abiding citizens share a belief that rising crime rates attributed to a slumping economy make the purchase of legitimate firearms a wise move at this time.”
This means we need to set up information booths in the Chicago schools, to warn about ‘rightwing extremists’, as well as law abiding Americans, in order to better protect the children. This and to explain to the Chicago schoolchildren that the reason for the recent wartime ammunition shortages, especially prevalent in non-military calibers, is because, for the most part, the shooting in Iraq stopped years ago.
TR
No, BOB, they don’t even have to go that far.
Do you ever get tired of making yourself look like a dumbass, BOB?
pto892
@Brick Oven Bill:
As is said on Fark : 2/10-will troll again. Sheesh.
Yes, this country has a violence problem more so than a gun control problem. Combine that with the national gun fetish though and the results are pretty damn nasty. I’m pretty much as anti-gun control as you can find but give it a rest already.
More to the point-does anyone know of a reliable and unbiased account of Columbine? The times when I’ve tried to find out exactly what really happened using online sources runs into the usual issues of bias and motivation to attempt to spin it one way or another. A straight up, just the facts retelling of the whole event-does such a thing exist?
Bob In Pacifica
Gee, and I thought it was caused by Prozac. Or Effexor.
Teh USA
Hey, nuance and discretion – we ain’t got it.
geg6
A sociopath and a guy with clinical depression and guns.
What could go wrong?
Brick Oven Bill
TR has a point that there may be both rightwing extremists as well as law abiding citizens living in Naperville. It is no longer only Richland Center where you find these people.
The people of Naperville are thus responsible for the shootings of 508 Chicago schoolchildren. The people of Naperville must be thus controlled.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@pto892:
Try this.
TR
Right, because that’s exactly what I said.
I’m sorry you’re not able to compete with pesky facts and logic, BOB. Keep flailing away in your own shit. It’s all you have.
Ann B. Nonymous
Brick Oven Bob has been to Richland Center and they didn’t tar and feather him? They’re losing their touch.
BC
That myth of "do you believe in God?" was debunked almost immediately, but the family of the girl who died was really comforted by the thought that she died as a martyr to her faith, particularly because she had been such a problem child for them, so they kept it alive. It seemed to be churlish to correct this myth in 1999, when their grief was so palpable. Glad the story is being corrected now.
BC
Oh, and when did 538 schoolchildren die in Chicago? Did I miss another school killing? Or are these all the schoolchildren who died in one or two years?
pto892
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Thanks Rusty, I’ll check it out.
Prof. K&G
I randomly came across this clip from ABC, where they actually test to see if more guns in the classroom would help prevent this sort of massacres, as rightwingers are fond of asserting. The result is pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t dogmatic about guns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MX3QtumSuE
sgwhiteinfla
Off topic but Homeland Security is now paying attention to the wingnuts.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/federal-agency-warns-of-radicals-on-right/
wilfred
We should wait 10 years before we talk about anything – the truth needs at least that long to percolate through.
DougJ
What I found strange was how much the media wanted to paint the picture of “outsiders” who had been bullied by “jocks”, despite the lack of evidence that that had happened.
Xanthippas
That’s a good article, but I think it’s largely repetitive of this Slate article from 2004. I have to say, I’m one of the people who assumed more than I knew when it comes to Columbine, and the Slate article was an eye-opener. Both articles make it clearly that Harris was plainly a psychopath, something we might not know had Harris not gone to the trouble to record his thoughts in great detail in a journal (which he did I’m sure because he felt the world needed a permanent record of his glorious rantings.)
starviego
If you want to find out what really happened at Columbine I suggest you read what the eyewitnesses had to say:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/columbineeight.php
Kirk Spencer
BoB, you dishonest schmuck.
13 deaths and 24 injuries at one school with a total student population of approximately 1600 (including teachers and other staff). That’s approximately 1 person shot per 43 people.
Chicago has over 435000 students, and an estimated 14500 and other staff. 280 of them shot is a bit more than 1 per 1600 people
Add, for giggles, the fact that Columbine was in one day and Chicago is for 16 months. Add further that Columbine was in the school and all but three of the Chicago shootings are outside school.
And then you add a non-sequitor about gun control laws? Irrelevant, immaterial. It’d be just as relevant to discuss the lack of gun control laws in Somalia.
Paul L.
Can’t let facts get in the way of The Narrative.
See the Jena 6
Brick Oven Bill
America has 300+ million people and we find ourselves marking the ten-year anniversary of those 13 shot at Columbine, which is duly noted as a tragedy, but ignore the 508 children who have recently been shot in Chicago.
I would like to know your theory for the divergent media focus Kirk.
kay
@wilfred:
It’s a good rule. Go back and look at some of the tape of the 1980’s child sexual abuse hysteria. Just listen to it. It’s insane. They were babbling about elaborate satanic plots, in county courtrooms. Prosecutors went berserk, basically, all over the country, like some kind of mass hypnosis. People were imprisoned for YEARS on false charges. Stories of clowns, trips on space ships. This was introduced as evidence. Juries convicted. It’s as if you utter "child" and "danger" in the same sentence and it trips some mental trigger, and people lose their shit.
r€nato
An armed society is a polite society. Just ask any resident of Afghanistan or Iraq.
Evinfuilt
BoB
Just shut up please.
10 years ago my heart stopped. I lived in Littleton back then, my cousin was still in High School (fortunately not Columbine, but the one closest to it, didn’t know the moment i heard of the attack.) I felt lucky the only person I knew who was personally involved was a friend who worked as a substitute art teacher, who had the misfortune of having to work at one of the nicest highest schools in the area.
Columbine was a tragedy… Still is in my mind, I was just then planning my move to Texas when it happened. So it still hurts me to think about it.
I don’t care about the gun debate right now. I care about getting the right information out, so people can stop stereotyping… Heck, I’d like people to just stop and realize school shootings are still very rare, and that they’re not a new phenomena, just the way media spreads news makes it so much bigger. I would hope that some take this anniversary to look back and show how much they knew was wrong.
I wish the tragedy stayed in Littleton, and didn’t cause the national uproar it did.
Evinfuilt
Oh, and a sidenote. I’m sure School Shootings, just like Suicides, increase with media coverage. Not that the media cares, they’d probably admit it and include a disclaimer warning "Listening to this report leads to higher cases of copy-cating."
ricky
Or the argument that Glenn Beck killed the cops in Pittsburgh.
Or that the CIA, MAFIA, LBJ, Clint Murchison, Castro, the Russians, and gay people killed Kennedy.
Charlie Whitman acted alone.
kay
@Evinfuilt:
It makes me cringe, the coverage, because it’s so manipulative. Columbine WAS a tragedy. They don’t have to sell it. A recitation of the facts is enough.
NonWonderDog
@Brick Oven Bill:
I had a teacher in high school who almost lost his job because he used a fire extinguisher to put out a fire in the bathroom. The school had to pay a big insurance penalty because they let "non-qualified" personnel try to put out fires.
Now imagine what the premiums would be if the teachers were expected to go around shooting armed and dangerous students.
Brick Oven Bill
Evinfuilt;
We agree on the tragedy of Columbine. But what is the reason that nobody seems to care about the 508 schoolchildren who have recently been shot in Chicago? 508 recently shot school children is over thirty-nine times the number who tragically lost their lives ten years ago.
Why the absence of coverage?
Kirk Spencer
@Brick Oven Bill: BoB – you keep using that word "recently". Over 16 months. Over half the "children" shot were over the age of 16. And "Shot" is not "Killed." The words you keep using do not mean what you think they mean – or possibly (and worse) you know what they mean but you’re lying with semantics. After all, if the other person doesn’t catch the slippery differences of precise language, it’s not YOUR fault, is it?
Bah.
Yes, it’s a tragedy that there are so many people shot every year. It’s a tragedy that there were so many people under the age of 18 shot over the past 16 months. But it’s not relevant. You, yourself, killed any reason for the rest of us to acknowledge the tragedy when you piggybacked a talking point (gun control laws, existing and not) onto the subject. At that point you became a troll. You made it worse by (implying) the other tragedy was insignificant – your tragedy was worse, and any lesser just didn’t matter.
I’ve seen similar behavior in other areas, and despise it. I’ll give you a specific example. I watched the widow of one of the passengers who died in the Twin Towers crash dismiss the pain of a parent who’s child died in the bombing of the Murrah building. Paraphrasing from the time, "That was ten years ago. Get over it." Yes, this was in 2005 – do the math about the towers to see why I was a bit angry.
As to your last request – the explanation of media focus? Suddenly you’ve added yet another aspect. As it happens, I can explain, though you’ll probably not appreciate it. Media sells, or it dies. A single instance shines brighter than attrition, and media sells more when capturing the instances than by repeating the same old grind. It’s really (and sadly) that simple.
thomas
Rusty @ 13, you don’t have to drive to Wisconsin or Indiana to get guns in Chicago. They’re sold ‘legally’ in suburbs immediately adjacent to the city.
The big reason 500+ people were killed in Chicago and so many other cities and towns around this country is that drugs are illegal. Legalize and control ‘controlled substances’ and watch the murder rate drop.
Jeff
@Paul L.:
Can’t let facts get in the way of The Narrative.
See the Jena 6
Yeah, citing Michelle F*n’ Malkin really sells your point. Are there questions about what happened in Jena? Sure. But the main point — that white students hung nooses on the formerly "whites only" tree — has never been disputed.
Dumb-ass.
Elie
We seem to be a people prone to strange impulses and some of those impulses, baked into our children as well, end up in violence. Reading this thread, I see echoes…
We also had an eight year "spell" where we did violence to Iraquis, Afghanis, ourselves and our Constitution that will take years to repair. We are mystified by our own lack of self knowledge. We blame our tools (guns) or various internal and external "groups" (terrorists, muslims, sects)
We are lost and are detached from who we are and our obligations to each other. We whirl around and see the enemy everwhere. We are consumed with negative energy to dominate and exterminate our foes — but we freak out to see that the image in the mirror is sometimes us..and that we and our children, our seniors — are lonely and isolated
Maybe the price for our modernity and wealth has not been to bring us together in one big national community, but to split us apart from each other into factions and bands, each pointing at the other and hissing "its YOUR fault".
I think that we have the means and could have the will, to fix ourselves…the old biblical question resurfaces; "Am I my brother’s keeper?" While we value autonomy and independence, we must somehow also value experiencing and sustaining our brothers and their children. The alternative is individual enclaves, clans, at war with each other — chimps with sticks, stalking and raiding each other. Our biology will always give us that easy reflex. Only with our brains and hearts can we make our existence rise above that.
Those poor children were ours and from our biology..somehow, the larger lesson of humanity – kindness, love and decency didnt take and from what I read and sense, is that we really do not know for sure how to see that — much less fix it.
gwangung
@Paul L.:
Very convincing. Citing a known supporter of concentration camps that were based on race, talking about a racially charged incident.
Says a lot about you.
Tom
@NonWonderDog
That is 100% urban legend/local myth. No way either of these things happened as you described. A teacher may have been disciplined for using a fire extinguisher when there was no significant fire, e.g., he sprayed it at a student that was smoking.
Schools and insurance companies are both interested in having people using fire extinguishers to put out fires as soon as possible. They aren’t going to penalize people for it. It’s conceivable if their workers comp carrier is different than their building casualty carrier, but even then I can’t believe the law would allow the penalty. Public policy dictates fires get put out as soon as possible, and by non-professionals when possible.
My apologies in advance when you produce any credible documentation of this.
James F. Elliott
Actually, this is very true. I took my little sister to the range a week ago. Two boxes of Winchester White Box .38 Special and two boxes of 9mm Luger cost me frigging 75 dollars. That’s like an hour of shooting. I thought maybe it was a fluke of living in the Bay Area with our absurd hatred of all things firearms, so I called my father-in-law in Albuquerque. Prices were only about 50 cents lower there. And he reported that the Albuq. PD can’t buy enough ammunition to adequately train and equip its officers. Granted, ammunition shortages and increased prices have been a problem since the Iraq War started, but with the election of President Obama, it’s gotten a whole lot worse as the tighty-righties keep twisting their knickers in knots.
Bubblegum Tate
It’s 10 years later and the real killers–Marilyn Manson and the creators of Doom–are still on the loose. Shameful.
The Raven
Y’know, bringing up the right to own firearms in this discussion of a horrific violent crime looks like–and probably is–the expression of an obsession.
For the rest, I note that, as is often the case with such figures, there was plenty of warning, no place for the people who knew of the pair’s potential for violence,to report their concerns, and no preventive action on the part of police and school officials. Most violent psychotics make their mental status clear long before they actually commit serious crimes, but there is seldom any preventive effort made. The amassing of large numbers of firearms and the building of bombs by individual civilians are warning signs and, if we weren’t so busy going on about how guns are good for us and violence is good for us, and if the police weren’t so busy losing the drug war, this might have been prevented.
Which means…more food for corvids! Krawk!
Mike G
I don’t blame the parents for mythologizing the situation to cope with their grief. But the way her story was manipulated and exploited by the religious right even after it was apparent that it was not factual, told me all I needed to know about that movement’s contempt for truth and its besottedness with feel-good fantasy stories; traits that made them gullible marks for Repig charlatans.
ThresherK
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn’t been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and “fags.”
Is this an either/or contention?
Can’t Harris and Klebold have existed somewhere in the pecking order between the acknowledged bullies and the bottommost targets, picking on the latter to prove themselves?
Or has HS changed so much since the ’80s?
Cyrus
Ever since DougJ became a front-page poster and stopped spoofing, you guys have forgotten how to handle trolls. The customary response to Paul L. is to ask him about the Duke lacrosse team and Mike Nifong. The best way to handle Brick Oven Bill is to call him a spoof or, considering his contribution to this particular thread, accuse him of going after jackalopes. Tradition, people!
Although, Paul L., I still have a question that you haven’t answered. A few weeks ago now you mentioned a bunch of Congresspeople, one of whom you called "Mccommie." Who were you talking about there? I’m honestly curious. It wasn’t apparent from context.
Blue Raven
@ThresherK:
I’d say so. I was bottom rung in my high school socially. The kids who picked on me were lower-middle. The ones in the upper echelons mostly ignored me unless we were thrown together by something, and tended to be at least civil at that point unless they were bored and in a large enough group to feel like reasserting their place in the pecking order at my expense. This happened a lot less often once I demonstrated an ability to cut them down harder than they could cut me.
I’m now wondering considering H&K’s bias toward shooting women and their insistence on picking on "fags" if they had some really bad luck in the dating scene combined with teenage-brand anti-gay paranoia going on as part of the real stew.
DavidTC
Well, I luckily graduated HS the year before all this.
But I’m sure the fact that the killer weren’t bullied and weren’t loners or goths and didn’t wear weird clothes or play video games…will be a great comfort to those who were bullied and/or did do weird things and were treated with all sorts of suspicion and craziness after that, on top of what these often troubled outcasts normally had to deal with.
Oh, wait, no it won’t.
Thanks, media asshats, for making several hundreds of thousands of somewhat weird kids’ lives a bit worse by just inventing facts to sell newspapers.
Elie
Raven @ 59:
"Most violent psychotics make their mental status clear long before they actually commit serious crimes, but there is seldom any preventive effort made."
I believe most violent psychotics hide in plain sight in families that see their behavior through the veil of denial. Given we already have a society that enjoys a certain amount of violence for recreation, the differential between a child that is just very active and enthusiastic about action (how we euphemistically refer to aggression sometimes) versus one that actually digs violence is subtle.
I believe that violent behavior that truly deviates enough to be identified as abnormal would be more readily picked up if we asked our children, particularly the boys to do activities that required kindness and care giving. Adults who are tuned into bringing those qualities along in children will see more clearly the children who really have trouble with those behaviors. There are many "tells" during early childhood as well — the kid who hurts small creatures or has a propensity for cruel jokes that are right on the edge. Unfortunately, many times these bahaviors do not stand out against the innate cruelty that we seem to normalize in our boys particularly. We camoflage it further in allowing firearms fantasy play — where is the line that marks the kid with the real problem from the game enthusiast?
As I said, though we think we are not seeing the aberrant children, we are really just not seeing ourselves.
wilfred
Apart from getting metal detectors placed in some schools, what did all the soul-searching, examining of the collective American psyche and the other wankology that came out of Columbine result in?
Did anything change? Or did we just get Iraq?
binzinerator
@James F. Elliott:
And we have a new bubble to replace the old one.
Maybe Wall Street will come up with a way to securitze this.
r€nato
@NonWonderDog:
That is fucking insane. I suppose if one of his students had a seizure right in front of him, he should not attempt to administer any sort of first aid at all; just call 911 and let him lay there until the paramedics show up.
Elie
# 66 – "did anything change? Or did we just get Iraq"
I think we got Iraq and with the obsession on this thread with how many bullets the "others" are amassing, its pretty clear who the problem is and the answer to the larger question that you asked.
We are the articulate and the empowered at least to the point of being able to verbally communicate. But we obsess on the bullets being collected for use against our "clan" by the "others". Is there really a difference, other than the ability to control the impulse to act on the fear, between those boys ten years ago and many in our country right now? If so, its only a matter of the degree.
Karen
To get a handgun LEGALLY in Colorado, you have to pass the background check done by the C.B.I. & you have to be of legal age to buy them.
Harris & Klebold weren’t. They were supplied their guns by a "friend" who went to a gun show, where there are no questions asked.
They got their guns the same way most criminals get theirs. Illegally. It makes no difference if they’re legal or not.
Colette
Fixt. I can haz tax dollars back now?
Mnemosyne
Just out of curiosity, how many of those shootings of schoolchildren that BoB is citing actually happened at school? Is the quote only for shootings that happened on the school campus (meaning that there were many more minors shot when they were outside of school) or is he lumping in all minors and calling them "schoolchildren" to try and imply that they were shot at school when they were not?
We’ve had several sad cases here in Los Angeles where children have been killed by stray bullets that came through the walls of their homes. That’s not quite the same thing as children being shot while they’re at school, but I suspect BoB would use it to start raving about how "schoolchildren" are being killed in Los Angeles just like they were at Columbine.
jerry 101
yeah bob, the gun shops that set up right on the very edge of the city in wonderful suburbs like Cicero don’t contribute at all, especially when a gang banger can drive up to the back door, buy a gun no questions asked (bonus – no serial number! Somehow, it got filed off!) any old time. Provided, of course, that he heads straight back to Chicago. Black people aren’t allowed in Cicero, you see. Gun dealers selling weapons to thugs are fine and dandy, if they’re white.
Wonk
@pto892: Coming in late here, but I’m currently reading "Columbine" by Dave Cullen, who seems to have had access to just about every person, web site, journal and recording related to the shootings.
Excellent book. I received it on Friday and I was almost halfway done with it by Sunday evening. If I hadn’t had holiday obligations this weekend, I could have read it in one sitting, it’s that riveting.
binzinerator
@wilfred:
The Right adopted as a political tenet the NRA’s belief that having an unimpeded unrestricted right to own as many high-capacity rapid-firing weapons as we want is worth far more than having a dozen or more of our children shot dead in their classroom. And the right succeeded — yet again — in persuading a majority of America to accept this valuation.
As is typical of wingnuts and others who are lacking in empathy and abundant in hubris they also believe it will never be any of their own kids shot dead. Apparently they succeeded in convincing America to believe that as well because I can’t help but think that if a majority of Americans really sincerely and truly believed the next massacre would likely happen where their own children went to school, we’d soon see not only assault rifles and pistols outlawed under draconian penalties, but also the existing ones rounded up and melted down.
I noticed that as a bonus for the wingers these school massacres validate their obsession for home schooling and for universal concealed carry.
As it stands, what with the gun nuts and the Movement Conservatives and the NRA, the nation won’t even get a reasonable debate out of these massacres let alone an honest self-examination.
It’s all of a piece for the Right. It’s one big self-fulfilling circle jerk. The more fucked up our gun culture becomes, the more necessary they make it out to be and the more they seek to perpetuate it.
Elie
#75 Binzinetor and others…
We have two issues on this thread: 1)gun ownership, gun culture and gun use and 2) how do we tell the troubled kids most likely to do mass murder? They are not the same issue but obviously they overlap some
While I do not disagree that access to guns and allowing kids and others to use guns adds to the risk of their use in this horrible way, I dont think that is the whole tamale.
There is a leap between having a gun and using it for killing someone and even in the most gun obsessed, politically extreme person, most do not use guns in the most extreme way — to kill many people. What is that difference and how can we tell when a person, children or others have crossed that threshold? I think that we need to learn that and add that to our school screening activities right along with metal detectors, don’t you?
pto892
@Wonk:
That’s what I need to read then. Reading through some of the comments on this thread is diverting but way besides the point. I must say that BOB knows how to troll ’em, he threw about a bunch of red herrings about Chicago and people just fell all over themselves to reel them in. Impressive work, even if it was predictable.
NonWonderDog
@Tom:
I was a student at the time, but I distinctly remember the vice-principal standing outside the burning bathroom (smoke billowing into the hallway and all) and telling everyone to stay out. One of the math teachers picked up a big CO2 fire extinguisher from his room (a former chem lab) and tried to go in. The vice-principal stopped him, and they argued for a bit before the teacher just went past him and put the fire out anyway. All the teachers complained afterward that the guy was put on probation for it.
The insurance penalty might have been more rumor than truth; I’m not sure if I ever heard anything authoritative on that. There was an extra-deep round of budget cuts that year, though.
Another teacher (my favorite English teacher) was fired, in part, for painting a mural on her wall (with administration permission!) without getting an allowance from whatever union was in charge of painting the walls. What sealed the deal on her job was when she hugged a graduating senior (a female student), and a third student who saw it accused her of inappropriate touching or something.
binzinerator
@Karen:
It does in countries that have strict gun controls. I’m not arguing the merits or disadvantages of the political systems of these countries but simply on the face of it your statement is bullshit.
I don’t understand how someone can acknowlege that the guns were bought and sold in avenues exempt by law from these laws and then claim those laws make no difference.
How can you conclude gun laws have no effect when by design the law could not be applied?
If gunshows were not exempt from the laws, and if Harris’ and Klebold’s friend were not exempt from the penalties of buying and selling guns without CBI authorization then your assertion would make sense.
But these exemptions were intentionally provided for by law and your assertion is nonsense.
Typical rightwing bullshit. NRA gets the GOP to make exemptions in the gun laws. Some nuts use those exemptions to obtain guns thereby defeating the whole purpose of the gun laws — as intended. NRA and gooper asslickers promptly declare the legality of a thing is unimportant.
Considering these are the same people who brought us torture, kidnapping, secret imprisonment, warrantless eavesdropping and a rigged war, and who now talk of insurrection against a democratically and legally elected government, it ought not to be surprising to anyone here. Their whole fucking mantra that it makes no difference if they’re legal or not.
pto892
@binzinerator:
I’m not speaking for Karen here but you’re confused about how and where gun laws work at a gun show. If you’re in the business of selling guns regularly in the US you must get a FFL (Federal Firearms License) from the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) to do so. Anyone who has a FFL must follow all appropriate federal laws (and state laws too) regardless of where the guns are sold. There is no exception for selling at a gun show, if a gun dealer (a FFL) sets up a booth at a gun show he/she has to follow the law. As of right now that means anyone buying a gun from a FFL must fill out a BATF form and then have their name run through the NICS check. That usually means a phone call to the NICS hotline, where the FBI runs the name through a variety of databases to check if the name has been flagged for some reason (felony, mental disorder, etc). If the person fails the NICS check then no sale can be made. Again, it doesn’t matter where the sale is being made, the FFL licensee must comply with the above. What does happen is that private sellers also set up and sell guns at the shows, and private sellers don’t have to run a NICS check. A private seller isn’t a dealer, they are someone selling their own private property. The BATF has pretty strict rules about who and what is a private seller and when they cross over into becoming a dealer and need a FFL, and they are aggressive about enforcing the rules. Occasional sales are OK, but showing up at every local gun show and selling "private" stock on a regular basis will earn a visit from the BATF and possible time in a federal PMITA facility. The reason why private sellers go to gun shows is obvious, that’s where the buyers are. But they also have other avenues, such as classified ads, Craigslist, Gunbroker, etc. Like it or not people can and will sell off their own personal guns privately.
With that all said, I don’t know what the state of the law was in Colorado in 1998, and if the NICS system was in effect at the time. I do know that Klebold and Harris used a straw buyer to get their guns since they were underage, and that they did get their guns from private sellers at a gun show. They could have just as easily bought them through a classified ad or from a black market seller too, for what that’s worth.
Cosmonaut
Drug laws focused on rehab vs. punishment + tighten gun control + more economic opportunity = drastic reduction in gun-related deaths and injuries.
starviego
The fact is is that numerous witnesses ID’ed a third suspect:
— Crystal Archuleta, junior (EP1-197)
"…she did see one person throw a pipe bomb. …..She told me at the time she thought it was Robert Perry."
–Seth Dubois, freshman (EP21-125)
"…Seth told Katherine(Carlston) that Robert Perry was seen shooting a girl in the back while leaving the library."
–Wade Allen Frank, senior (EP1-91)
"Mr. Frank told me that he thought origonally one of the individuals(shooting) was someone by the name of Robert…" "He stated that the person was tall, approximately 6’3" and kind of ackward(sic) and gangly."
–Bryan Frye, sophomore (EP25-69)
"He stated that the person he had previously believed this shooter to be was Robert Perry. …..In a previous interview, after receiving his yearbook, he had told his father that he believed the shooter to be Robert Perry. He also stated that the gunman had bad acne."
–Courtney Haulman, freshman (EP25-91)
"There was three guys. The guy I remember most was the main guy. He’s over 6′ tall and has long curly dark-colored hair. He was wearing a trench coat. His name is Robert Perry."
–Lacey Hohn, freshman (EP1-186)
"…can you identify or descibe who was shooting? ….Ms. Hohn said that she does not believe it was Harris or Klebold. Ms. Hohn believes it was an individual named Robert."
–Bijen Monty, junior (EP1-110)
"I asked her if she saw the source of the shooting. She told me she saw who she thought, at the time, was Robert Perry with a gun hanging around his neck. She said she never actually saw him shoot the weapon.
"She asked me if I had any information in regards to Robert Perry. I informed her I did not."
–Tessa Nelson, freshman (EP1-113)
"I asked her if she saw the source of the shots. She said she saw a male, who she thought was Robert Perry, wearing boots, dark jeans with dark hair, walking down the stairs outside the cafeteria. She said the male suspect pulled a gun and started shooting."
–Katelyn Sue Place, freshman (EP21-285)
Kate said, "It was (Redacted). I’m almost positive of it. I remember looking him dead in the eye. He was in my debate class….. . …Dylan kind of looked like Robert, but Dylan doesn’t have the long face. Robert’s teeth are messed up and he was smiling and I saw his teeth then. Kate said that she has since seen pictures of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, and she said, "It’s not one of them."(Referring to the person she saw shooting out on the outside commons.)
"She remembers him shooting Ann Marie(Hochalter). …. Robert was just randomly shooting. …Robert was still shooting. ….Kate said that Robert shot Ann Marie before he smiled at Kate. ….She looked and saw Jason(Autenrieth) trying to help Ann Marie, dragging her away from Robert, to the side."
–Lacey Smith, junior (4470)
"On the diagram she depicts (Redacted) as walking in through the doors, past where she was sitting, and going in about as far as they north end of the school store. It was at that time she heard the windows breaking and then realized she was hearing shots.
….she did not have any trouble indentifying PERRY when he walked past her. I asked SMITH how sure she was that the person she saw and spoke with was (Redacted). I asked, "90 percent sure? 50 percent sure?" Her response was "100 percent sure." I then showed SMITH a photo lineup which included a picture of Dylan KLEBOLD, and asked her if the person who walked past her was in the lineup. She stated he was NOT in the lineup. …..As (Redacted) passed her and was near the commons area of the cafeteria, she then explained that (Redacted) pulled a weapon out from under his trench coat and started firing into the cafeteria."
–Brenton Hooker, junior (16397)
"….he turned around and observed an individual he thought was ROBERT PERRY(ex-student of Columbine High School) standing outside the door just to the north of the main entrance shooting a pistol in his direction…. ….HOOKER described the individual he thought was PERRY as 6’8" – 6’11" in height, very skinny, tight black pants, black trench coat… ."
bwvalentine
@The Moar You Know
The MSM, with their "investigations" and "corrections" and "truth" and "refutation of really convenient stories we made up" obviously hates Christianity.
Yeah, because obviously christians are too good to hate and kill, right?
Grab a history book, sit your pretty little self down and READ IT, my friend.
benj
This article is full of lies.
It says they weren’t bullied. And they were.
It dismisses Eric as a "psychopath." That’s their conclusion after ten years.
It says they weren’t on anti-depressants, when Eric had a therapeutic amount of Luvox in his system during his autopsy.
It’s only believable because Dave Cullen wrote it, but his book his full of LIES. He has two main resources for his book, none credible.
Cindy Davis
10 Years latter, My heart still aches from the pain of theses needless killings.
I am only one person but, this is my community of 30 years and not a day goes by without a thought of Columbine.
My heart bleeds for the children, the teacher, the family, friends, and the community all of us were touched deeply by this tragic hystorical event, my thoughts and prayers are with each of you as you try to get through yet another year without your child, your brother, sister, father, niece, nephew, grandchild, husband, uncle, grandfather and friend(s).
I will be bringing flowers to the Memorial tomorrow in rememberance of the “NEVER FORGOTTEN” Columbine.
I visit the Columbine Memorial often and never leave without tears in my eyes and pain in my soul. I think of the families often and I pray God has given you peace, because you will never know the answer to “Why”? Why my school, Why our child? Why my father, my husband. WHY GOD?