This is an article I did on the Columbine massacre. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of this terrible act but have any lessons been learned since that fateful day? Click below to see the article as it appeared in the magazine, keep scrolling to see a text only version.
Columbine – Text only version:
In the United States between 1st January and 31st August 2018 there was an average of 1 mass shooting for every day of that year. Over that period of time there were a total of 9,500 deaths by shooting, a figure that did not include suicides. According to the National Rifleman’s Association (NRA), a mass shooting is defined as an event when more than four people have been killed. Between 1991 and 2015 there were 55 mass school shootings recorded in America.
When we try to fathom the motivations for mass school shootings, we often point to the attack that took place on 20th April 1999 in the unremarkable town of Columbine. But why is this shooting still at the forefront of the minds of so many people in America and around the globe? Columbine was not the first, in fact the 1979 hit single ‘I don’t like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats was inspired by a far earlier mass school shooting. Nor was Columbine the deadliest. To understand why Columbine still haunts so many, we must examine the events that have since come to light.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hated life. They felt like outsiders and they wanted people to see their anger; to cause pain to the society that they believed was shunning them.
In 1996 Eric Harris started a blog on a private website on America Online, he initially used it to create levels for the video game ‘Doom’. After a while he started posting jokes and short journal entries with thoughts on his friends, family and school. By the end of 1996 he was posting suggestions for how to cause mischief as well as publishing the instructions for the manufacture of homemade explosives.
The site had attracted few visitors and was not a cause for concern until March 1998. Eric’s future accomplice, Dylan Klebold was aware of this site and he decided to show the website to classmate Brooks Brown. He wanted to warn Brown that Harris was making threats against him and his family. Brooks Brown’s mother had previously reported Harris to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office, believing that he was a dangerous and malicious individual. Her fears were confirmed when she saw the website. She immediately reported the site to investigator Michael Guerra.
The investigator viewed the site and wrote up a draft affidavit for a search warrant of the Harris household. He initially suspected that Harris had been involved in an unsolved pipe bomb case that he was working on. But the affidavit was never filed and its existence was concealed by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office until September 2001.
On January 30th 1998 Harris and Klebold stole tools and other equipment from a van. Both youths were arrested and pleaded guilty. They both attended a Juvenile Diversion program and were subsequently released early for good behaviour.
Harris’s blog disappeared and he started to write a journal that was filled with his thoughts and plans. Dylan also started writing a journal and the pair started making video tapes. In their journals they planned a major bombing to rival that of the Oklahoma City bombing and they fantasised about hijacking a plane. They started to formulate their attack on the school and had planned to detonate home made explosives in the cafeteria at lunchtime in order to cause the maximum number of fatalities.
The pair kept videos that documented the weapons, explosives and ammunition arsenal that they were building. They revealed where and how they hid their items without their parents finding out. They also shot videos of themselves at target practice with their weapons as well as the parts of the school that they had planned to attack. The final video they made, thirty minute’s before the attack, contained footage of them apologising to friends and family.
In the months prior to the attack the pair had bought two 9mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. They bought a handgun for $500 from Mark Manes and Philip Duran. After the massacre Manes and Duran were sentenced to six years and 41/2 years in prison for selling a firearm to a minor. Another friend, Robyn Anderson, inadvertently bought a rifle and two shotguns that were also used in the massacre.
Using the internet, Harris and Klebold constructed a total of 99 improvised explosive devices. On the day of the Massacre, Harris carried a 12-gauge shotgun (which he fired 25 times) and a Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9mm handgun with thirteen 10-round magazines (which he fired 96 times). Klebold carried a Tec-9 semi-automatic handgun with various clips and a 12-gauge Stevens 311D sawed-off shotgun. Klebold fired the TEC-9 handgun a total of 55 times while he discharged 12 rounds from the shotgun.
On Tuesday morning, April 20th, 1999, Harris and Klebold placed a small bomb in a field to the south of Columbine High School. It was set to explode at 11:14 a.m. It was intended to be a diversion but it failed to detonate fully and was quickly extinguished. At 11:10 a.m., Harris and Klebold arrived in separate cars at the school. Both parked by the main target – the cafeteria. Their cars contained bombs that were set to detonate at 12:00. The pair then carried two 20 lb (9.1kg) propane bombs in bags and placed them in the cafeteria. The bombs were set to explode at 11:17 so Klebold and Harris went and sat in their cars in anticipation of the explosion. The bombs were big enough to kill or severely wound a large number of the 488 students in the cafeteria. But when the bombs failed to explode the pair armed themselves and headed towards the school.
At 11:19, students were eating lunch on the grass by the west entry of the school when a pipe bomb was thrown near them, but it only partially detonated. Some survivors have described how they assumed it was a prank and carried on eating their lunch. It is at this point that witnesses heard Eric Harris yell “Go! Go!” The massacre at Columbine began as the gunmen pulled their guns from beneath their trench coats and began firing on students.
The attack lasted almost an hour. Some 50 minutes later, when Klebold and Harris stopped shooting, their rampage had claimed the lives of 12 students and 1 teacher. There were an additional 21 people injured during the shooting.
The pair had covered vast sections of the school campus, making multiple trips to areas including the cafeteria and the library, where they found many students hiding.
In the library, the pair have been described as playing a most cruel and macabre game. It is unlikely that anybody will fully understand why they chose to execute some students on sight, yet the shooters seemed to randomly decide certain other students be allowed to live. These survivors may have avoided any physical injuries, but the mental anguish and survivor’s guilt that many feel is a cruel scar that they will carry throughout their lives. Of the 12 students killed, 10 were in the library.
At approximately 12:08 p.m. Klebold and Harris both committed suicide. The coroner’s report stated that Harris fired his shotgun through the roof of his mouth while Klebold shot himself in the left temple with his TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun. A total of 188 rounds of ammunition had been fired by the gunmen during the massacre (67 by Klebold and 121 by Harris).
After the shooting, it was initially claimed that the gunmen had been motivated by the bullying that they had suffered. Brooks Brown, who had been the target of threats on Harris’s blog claimed that Klebold and Harris were the most ostracised students in the entire school: “They were the losers of the losers”. Klebold had once remarked to his father that he hated the ‘Jock’ culture at Columbine. In the weeks before the assault it was believed that a group of youths—all members of the football team—had sprayed both of the boys with ketchup and mustard while subjecting them to homophobic taunts.
In 2007, a memorial “to honour and remember the victims of the shootings was dedicated in Clement Park, on a meadow adjacent to the school where impromptu memorials were held following the shooting.
In the 20 years since the attacks there have been many attempts to explain how two unremarkable boys could find any way to justify their actions. The blame has shifted from video games, movies and even Marilyn Manson. Ultimately, no one will ever know why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to go to school and take the lives of their fellow students on that day in April.
Sadly, America seems not to have learned from Columbine and numerous other tragedies. After each school shooting there is a local and national outcry, yet little is ever changed. The NRA are one of the most powerful organisations in the USA and make heavy contributions to too many political careers. Ironically, each mass shooting causes a surge in sales of automatic weapons, with people fearing they might be banned.
But why we do we still remember Columbine?
I believe it is because we watched it unfold, live on our TV’s. Columbine was one of the events that was broadcast to the world through affiliate and syndicated broadcasts over global satellite systems. Columbine took place in a time when the world was hungry to see real life from the other side of the world in all of its shocking glory. We had watched the pursuit of OJ Simpson’s white Ford Bronco truck. We saw Michael Jackson’s trial. We speculated alongside newsreaders as we saw a Paris tunnel where Lady Diana had her fatal crash. We had seen Nelson Mandela walk from Robbin Island and Terry Waite stepping down from a plane to freedom. We were horrified by the explosion of a Space Shuttle and the planes that crashed into the twin towers. Was Columbine merely a memorable episode in our TV viewing?
