Right Thinking From The Left Coast
Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. - George Burns

Ten Years On
by West Virginia Rebel

This week has marked the tenth anniversary of the Columbine shootings. As it turns out, much of what we thought happened didn’t.

They weren’t goths or loners.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver’s Columbine High School...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.

People on both the left and the right projected a lot of their own fears about teenage subcultures and gun violence onto these two. Columbine became one of the touchstones in the “Culture War”, mostly for all the wrong reasons. The plain fact of the matter was that these two were psychopaths who needed little outside influence to do what they did. The lesson of Columbine? It can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

Posted by West Virginia Rebel on 04/20/09 at 11:39 AM (Discuss this in the forums)

Comments


Posted by on 04/20/09 at 08:49 PM from United States

This is a really great post, WVR! :)

I have a favor to ask you if you wouldn’t mind. I’m still on MooreWatch duty, and there’s been a lot of chatter for the last day or two about how right Moore was with everything he said in “Bowling For Columbine”. Obviously this is bullshit and I’ve been trying to hash out a short post explain how wrong anyone who thinks that is. However, you’ve already written the perfect post - this is everything I wanted to say and you said it wonderfully. Would you mind terribly if I republished this post on MooreWatch, giving you full credit and a link back of course? I would really appreciate it and you’d be doing me a huge favor - what do you say?

Once again, nice job! :)

Posted by West Virginia Rebel on 04/20/09 at 11:13 PM from United States

Not at all! Thanks for the compliment-as you can see, I don’t get a lot of ‘em :)

Posted by on 04/21/09 at 05:23 AM from United States

Done! Thank you so very much! Once again, great piece. :)

Posted by Thrill on 04/21/09 at 11:27 AM from United States

I wish you’d let me know that was going on Donna.  I did a huge research paper on Columbine some time ago. 

One thing you might point out is that the way Harris and Klebold envisioned the attack was that they were going to detonate a propane bomb that they built in the cafeteria when it was most full of students and then shoot people as they evacuated the building.  They also had rigged their vehicles with explosives to kill first responders in the parking lot.  Had the timer on the cafeteria bomb worked, the death toll would have been worse than the OKC bombing.  When the bomb didn’t go off, they improvised and went into the school randomly shooting people. That wasn’t the real plan.

I’d like to know how Moore and his acolytes think banning guns would impact the ability of ordinary people to assemble explosives from easily purchased sources and kill hundreds.

Columbine was supposed to be a bombing, not a mere school shooting.

Posted by on 04/21/09 at 12:22 PM from United States

I wish you’d let me know that was going on Donna.  I did a huge research paper on Columbine some time ago.

Dude! I had no idea! Hey, ANYTHING you might want to contribute on the subject I would be more than happy to republish at MooreWatch. Honestly I hadn’t been keeping up with the developments on the case so when the topic suddenly came up I knew I was deficient in my research - hence my joy at seeing WVR’s great post. If you’ve got anything you’d permit me to repost or share at MW I’d absolutely LOVE to have it. Thank you! :)

Posted by Thrill on 04/21/09 at 12:43 PM from United States

If you’ve got anything you’d permit me to repost or share at MW I’d absolutely LOVE to have it. Thank you! :)

I’ll come over and see what I can do.

Posted by on 04/21/09 at 03:23 PM from United States

I’ll come over and see what I can do.

I love you.

Posted by on 04/21/09 at 03:28 PM from United States

Good find WVR.

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Next entry: Geitner Moment

Previous entry: No Booze Either

<< Back to main