The central focus of the package is a
minute-by-minute timeline describing the
events of April 20, 1999, in great
detail. It dramatically collapses the
amount of time the massacre took to
unfold, claiming gunmen Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold only spent seven and a
half minutes in the library, killing 10
and wounding 12. “They carried more than
enough ammunition to kill all 56 people
in the library,” it says, adding that
the 34 victims were killed or injured in
the first 16 minutes of the attack.
After the killing rampage, there were 33
minutes in which nobody was shot until
the gunmen killed themselves.

The report provides the most
comprehensive profiles yet of the
killers, offering newly disclosed
passages from a variety of sources,
including
school essays, journals kept by both
killers and interviews with the killers’
parents. While some information was
known about Harris because of his
Web site, and href="/news/feature/1999/09/23/journal/"
>passages from his journal published
by Salon, one of the biggest surprises
in the report is writings from
Klebold. Klebold’s newly revealed
journal depicts him as depressed,
outcast, paranoid and suicidal. “I swear
– like I’m an outcast, and everyone is
conspiring
against me,” he wrote in 1997. He
mentions suicide repeatedly and in
November 1997 describes getting a gun
and going on a killing spree.

His tone changed only briefly in
1997, during a period where he describes
his “first love.” “It appeared that this
was an unrequited love,” the report
says. “Throughout his journal, Klebold
named several girls he ‘loves’ but he
did not indicate that he ever actually
spoke to any of them. He even went so
far as to write letters to one girl but
it appears he never sent them
because they remained in his journal.”

Harris’ journal doesn’t begin until the
spring of 1998. The report
describes it as expressing Harris’
hatred of mankind and love of his own
anger, though it omits the journal’s
opening line, which sets its tone: “I
hate the
fucking world.”

“There were also many common themes
throughout their writings. Harris and
Klebold both wrote of not fitting in,
not being accepted and their lack of
self-esteem. They reflected on natural
selection, self-awareness and their
feelings of superiority. They plotted
against all those persons who they
found offensive — jocks, girls that
said no, other outcasts or anybody they
thought did not accept them. Most of
those teens were unaware that they had
ever offended Harris or Klebold.”

Klebold’s journal provides evidence
confirming what investigators have been
saying for months: that Harris and
Klebold were both involved in the
planning of the attack. Shortly after
the shooting, media reports focused on
Harris as the mastermind, casting
Klebold as a somewhat reluctant
follower. The report also states that a
“hit list,” generally attributed to
Harris, was created by both killers, and
puts the final
figure of people whom they listed as
disliking for various reasons at 67. It
does not reveal the names, though in
September, lead investigator Kate Battan told
Salon News that the list included some
unusual names, including Tiger Woods.

Investigators had repeatedly said that
no one on the lists was killed or
injured, but the parents of Rachel Scott
strongly protested in December
that comments on the videotapes clearly
identified their daughter. The
report concedes that one person on the
list was “injured,” but that the person was a
male. “There is no evidence that he was
specifically
targeted,” the report says.

Investigators could not pinpoint exactly
when Harris and Klebold began
conspiring to commit the massacre, but
the earliest evidence of mutual
understanding occurred a year before the
attack.

In April 1998, Klebold made four entries
in Harris’ yearbook. One referred
to “the holy April morning of NBK
[Natural Born Killers].” Another
includes
the lines “killing enemies, blowing up
stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for
January’s incident will be godlike. Not
to mention our revenge in the
commons.” The reports says investigators
believe the January incident
referred to their arrest for breaking
into a vehicle on Jan. 30, 1998.
The main bombs were set to go off in the
commons. The report says that those
bombs could have killed all 488 people
in the cafeteria. It also concludes that
the casualties were a fraction of the
number
intended chiefly because Harris and
Klebold were poor bomb makers.

Harris made similar entries in Klebold’s
1998 yearbook: “God I can’t wait
till they die. I can taste the blood now
- NBK” [Natural Born Killer] …
You know what I hate? … MANKIND!!!!
… kill everything … kill everything.”
He also drew a gunman standing amid a
sea of dead bodies with a caption:
“The only reason your [sic] still alive
is because someone has decided to
let you live.”

Investigators also retrieved eight pages
Klebold apparently wrote and drew
just a day before the attack, discovered
in his notebook along with his
math homework. “About 26.5 hours from
now the judgment will begin,” one
passage began. “Difficult but not
impossible, necessary, nervewracking and
fun.
What fun is life without a little death?
It’s interesting, when i’m in
my human form, knowing i’m going to die.
Everything has a touch of
triviality to it.”

The report also seems to downplay the
significance of the Trench Coat Mafia,
another focal point of many of the
stories just after the shooting. It
states: “Although the investigation
identified Harris and Klebold as being
‘members’ of the TCM, it appears that
the Trench Coat Mafia was a loose,
social affiliation of former and current
Columbine High School students with no
formal organizational structure,
leadership or purpose such as that
typically found in traditional juvenile
street gangs. Contrary to reports
following the Columbine shootings, there
is no evidence of affiliated Trench Coat
Mafia groups nationwide.”

Previously, investigators had minimized
the pair’s role in the group,
characterizing them as “fringe members.”
In an exclusive interview with
Salon in September, Battan repeatedly
scoffed at the notion of any significant
association: “They were outcasts in
that!” she said.

Some families were left unsatisfied and
angry after the report’s release,
accusing the sheriff’s office of
continuing to withhold crucial
information. Brian Rohrbough, whose son
Dan was killed in the attack,
characterized the report as full of lies
and contradictions in an interview on
the local CBS affiliate. “They want to
show it to be much more confusing than
it was,” he said. “And they want to
build in a lot of excuses.”

“Certainly they’re not going to tell the
truth,” said Judy Brown at an
impromptu press conference when the
report was distributed. “People are
going to be so outraged when they hear
the truth.” The Browns alerted
officials to Harris’ death threats and
Web site months before the attack,
and play a key role in several of the
families’ lawsuits. They have begun
the process for a recall of Sheriff
John Stone. Brown’s son escaped unharmed from
the school the day of the assault.

“If you’re preparing for a lawsuit, one
of the most major lawsuits in the
United States, and you have all the
information, do you think you’re going
to give everything out?” Brown’s husband,
Randy, added. “I think you’re going to
release the best version of this that’s
going to do best for your lawsuit.”

The report reiterated several statements
repeated frequently by
investigators: It ruled out a third
gunman or conspirator, said Harris and
Klebold hoped to kill hundreds and
concluded that a failed bomb outside the
school was
intended to divert police longer. “The
failure of the cafeteria bombs to
detonate and the arrival of responding
officers apparently caused the gunmen
to reevaluate their planned attack,
since they had never listed the school
library as a destination point,” it
said.

It explained the third-gunman confusion
as coming both from Harris’ removing
his trench coat quickly and the sighting
of a “shooter” on the roof who
turned out to be an air-conditioning
repairman.

Sheriff’s officials refused to comment
on the report, citing the pending
litigation brought by several families.
Copies of the report will be available
to the public, beginning Tuesday, for
$12 plus tax and shipping. They can be
ordered by phone at (720) 317-1131, fax
at (720) 449-7553 or e-mail at
Columbine@wcox.com.

Love from prosecutors toward young offenders is scarce these days. It was in Michigan where Nathaniel Abraham was convicted as an adult in the murder, at age 11, of a stranger, sitting in the courtroom at a defense table where his feet couldn’t touch the floor. In Northern California, just four years ago, prosecutors in Richmond charged a 6-year-old with attempted murder in the nearly fatal beating of an infant neighbor. Ultimately, the D.A. dropped the charges on grounds that the disturbed boy could not stand trial, but he remains the youngest child ever charged with so serious a crime.

And on the California ballot next week is Proposition 21, a ballot initiative that would make sentences for juvenile offenders over the age of 14 harsher, by giving prosecutors the power to move cases classified as “violent” felonies (such as first degree murder and rape) into adult criminal court. It would also mandate life in prison for teens convicted of “gang-related” home invasion robberies, car-jackings and drive-by shootings.

The proposition reflects the national pendulum swing that has led to kids like Abraham being tried as adults, and many states routinely putting teens in prison with adult criminals. But the pendulum may be swinging back. Polls are showing Prop. 21 is in trouble with voters. In early February, 41 percent of state voters in a Field poll had decided against it, with only 24 percent in favor and 35 undecided.

A more recent poll found somewhat more support for the measure, but it varied enormously depending on how the pollster described the initiative. Even when pollsters used language that focused on stiff punishment for gangs, only 55 percent were in favor. The lack of support for Prop. 21 might indicate that voters are having second thoughts about the lock ‘em up approach to crime when applied to kids.

Prop. 21 certainly has a respectable pedigree. It is the brainchild of former California Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, and it has the endorsement of current Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and state law enforcement. Wilson was key in passing California’s famous “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law, which automatically sentenced third-time felons to 25-years-to-life in prison. A whopping 72 percent of voters approved the three-strikes law.

Compared to three strikes, support for Prop. 21 is relatively low. If it fails, it will be the first major anti-crime initiative to be rejected by California voters. And just as Prop. 13, the property-tax-cutting initiative of 1978 heralded a national tax revolt, it’s possible that voters’ indifference to Prop. 21 could reflect a weariness with expensive, get-tough solutions to crime — especially when applied to kids.

“If it gets enough media attention, this could be the first beatable get-tough” proposition, says crime expert Franklin Zimring of the University of California at Berkeley. “The people who usually sit on the sidelines in these kinds of get-tough campaigns” — including teachers unions, the PTA and the League of Women Voters — have come out publicly against the initiative, he notes. “There are genuine limits to the gullibility of the California initiative voter that Prop. 21 seems to be ignoring.”

One explanation for Prop. 21′s troubles is the cost to taxpayers: $300 million a year, plus one-time costs of $750 million. The money would go toward court costs and the construction of more prisons.

The proposition covers a lot of ground. It unseals the records of minors who have committed certain crimes. It would restrict the authority of parole officials to decide whether juveniles should be held or released before a court hearing. Especially controversial is the new class of “gang-related” offenses. For instance, it would add years to offenses found to be gang-related, make gang recruitment a serious crime, expand the use of wiretaps against suspected gang members and force people convicted of gang-related offenses to register with local authorities. Some groups say the definition of gangs is too loose and unfairly targets minorities.

The California Youth Authority, California Juvenile Court Judges and Chief Probation Officers of California are against it. And the ambivalence of district attorneys suggests prosecutors might not even want the additional power. The state D.A.s’ association is sponsoring Prop. 21. But in Los Angeles, where the anti-gang provisions would be likely to have the most impact, D.A. Gil Garcetti has declined to take a position on it. According to a spokeswoman for his office, “There are things he likes about it and things he doesn’t like about it.” The D.A. of traditionally conservative San Diego has also declined to take a position, offering the same explanation.

Victims’ rights advocates are among the initiative’s strongest supporters. Maggie Elvey is the assistant director of Crime Victims United, and a major proponent of Prop. 21. (Elvey’s husband was murdered seven years ago, and she has publicly grieved that his teenage killer, who was convicted as a juvenile, will be out of jail with a sealed record at age 25.) In Elvey’s mind, Prop. 21 will act as a deterrent, teaching kids without a strong sense of right and wrong that there are real consequences for their actions.

She complains that groups such as the ACLU are using “scare tactics,” giving kids misinformation about the provisions of the bill and how it will be used. “We are not trying to put all of the young ones in prison with the big boys,” she says. Juveniles in adult facilities are housed separately from adult criminals, according to Wilson and other proponents. “They have all of these kids believing that we’re going to pick them up if there’s three in the crowd dressed strange. That’s a little unconstitutional. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Even Elvey admits, though, that the gang-related provisions of Prop. 21 are open to a lot of interpretation by police and prosecutors. “I don’t know how they’re going to tell if they’re gangs. There are parts of this thing that are a little crazy,” she says, “but that’s what happens when you can’t get the legislators to do good legislation and the public has to come along and write up this kind of thing.”

Juvenile judges have the ability to try kids 14 and older as adults, and in cases of rape and murder, frequently do. But Davis argues that Prop. 21 streamlines the system, mandating adult trials for certain offenses and enabling prosecutors to move the cases to adult court, without judicial review.

As of 1997, 15 states already had laws on the books that allowed prosecutors to file some cases directly to adult court. According to Justice Department statistics released this week, the number of people under 18 sent to adult state prisons more than doubled between 1985 and 1997, serving an average of five to eight years for such crimes as rape, robbery and drugs. The total number is still proportionally small — 7,400 teens in adult jails in 97.

But the increase comes at a time when the number of crimes committed by teens is going way down. The 1998 Justice Department report says the juvenile violent crime arrest rate is at its lowest since 1987. And it comes despite unanimous research that shows serving time in a state facility is much more likely to lead to repeat offenses than juvenile facilities. Wilson calls the juvenile system “outmoded,” but it remains the only correctional model that is geared heavily toward rehabilitation.

Even some conservatives are uncomfortable with the measure.

“Frankly, I don’t like this proposition,” says Michael Warder, vice president of the Claremont Institute, a conservative public policy research organization in Sacramento. “I’m generally a tough, law-and-order kind of guy. But I think this goes too far. For the full weight and force of the state of California to come down on a 14-year-old, I think that’s a little bit over the top.”

Warder is generally in favor of the “three-strikes” law because it puts away “incorrigible” repeat felons. And he believes that punishment is just as important a part of the justice system as deterrence and rehabilitation.

But Prop. 21 makes him uneasy, because it takes discretion over sentencing out of the hands of judges. “It gives the state greater and greater power and I don’t know what the checks would be on that power.” Warder also believes this power marks government interference in families. “This initiative, in a way, would put aside the obligations of the parents and have the state intervene directly in family relations.”

As for the gang provisions, even Warder acknowledges that Prop. 21 would disproportionately affect poor kids and ethnic minorities. “I don’t generally make this kind of argument, because personally I find it repugnant, but nonetheless … I think there is disparate impact on the basis of race and economic status. I’m not a big fan of gangs, but on the other hand you have to look at the consequences of this kind of law, and who does it seem to be targeting.”

National numbers reflect this as well: While there are few statistics on the class of juvenile offenders, according to the Department of Justice, 58 percent of teenagers entering state prisons were African-American, though they make up only 12 percent of the state’s population.

And not all victims rights groups are in favor of Prop. 21. Mark Klaas became one of California’s best known advocates of victims rights, after his 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was killed by a repeat offender. Klaas has supported measures to make sex offenders register with local officials after they’ve served their time. But he opposes Prop. 21 because “it does not have a prevention component to it. By completely focusing on trying young people as adults, for whatever crime, we’re just going to continue to fill up our prisons and throw away the youth of America.”

The national move to get tough on crime that Prop. 21 represents was spurred in part by the violence of the crack epidemic, and in part by simple demographics: A rising teenage population was expected to lead to rising teenage crime, along with a new generation of so-called superpredators, calloused by parental neglect, media violence and bad schools.

The problem was “the numbers were never there,” says Zimring, who has studied crime statistics for 30 years. In fact, Zimring says, while alarmists were testifying to Congress about superpredators, the juvenile crime rate was dropping by half. Statistics from the Justice Department and the non-partisan think tank RAND show juvenile arrests have gone down — both nationally and in California.

“What it indicates,” Zimring says, “is the aptitude for catastrophic error that we have when we project our fears on to future patterns of violent crime.”

“Juvenile crime is a success story,” says Peter Greenwood, a senior researcher at RAND. “The consensus for anybody who looks at the data is that crime has been going down much more for juveniles than it has for anybody else.”

While RAND does not take positions on political initiatives, Greenwood says he can’t make sense of Prop. 21 or the numbers being used to support it. “Prop. 21 is written as if we’re in some sort of wave of juvenile crime.” In fact, he says, the opposite is the case: “We had a wave of juvenile homicide and violence that peaked around 1991 and ’92 and it’s gone down dramatically.”

“A law that gives prosecutors more power just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that the current systems seem to have worked very well,” Greenwood says.

But it may be that the public understands its fears about superpredators were never well-founded. National surveys show that the get-tough-on-teens approach might be giving way to a growing concern for the welfare of teens. A poll conducted last July by Opinion Research Corporation International found that 90 percent of people believe America could reduce juvenile crime by investing in prevention, and 81 percent felt that prevention programs were equally as important as locking up young criminals in combating teen crime.

“People are really torn about these things,” says Michael Decorsey Hinds, a vice president of Public Agenda, a national public opinion think tank. Hinds has found in his research on crime and public opinion that “Americans support a blend of solutions that cross ideological lines. Some are conservative in saying that it’s more important for the government to be tough on crime than it is to protect the rights of the accused.”

Hinds still believes public opinion favors retribution — even when the criminal is a juvenile. “The whole attitude of ‘three strikes and throw away the key’ is creeping backwards in age,” he says. And while more people support prevention programs and gun control, they are more willing to spend money on building new prisons than on rehabilitation.

Zimring is more optimistic. “The folks who won the ‘war on crime’ now want to bring it to the juvenile court, and they’re having more trouble than they thought,” he says. “People are funny about kids — they’re ambivalent. The wells of public ambivalence and mixed feelings around make this issue extremely interesting.”

Our focus on the three R’s seems to have obscured the goal of
introducing the humanities to growing minds. Philosophy, where large
ideas are introduced and discussed, seems to be left until after a
disaster hits. Perhaps if the young men of Littleton could have spoken
their ideas in a classroom, where other kids could have responded in a
vigorous discussion, they might have heard how extreme their ideas were –
how disrespectful towards humanity, how disrespectful towards their own
lives and their own self-worth.

Can we afford to leave civics to the last semester option of a senior’s
curriculum? Can we afford to eliminate “liberal” from our children’s
education?

– Metis Black

Colorado Springs, Colo.

The violence in Littleton raises one question with me: When are you guys going to do something about your gun laws?
How can kids have access to the kind of guns that can create this havoc?
Is the money behind the National Rifle Association more important than the lives of innocent
men, women and children?

Wake up America, your children need you!

– Sue Moran

Oak Flats, Australia

Among the many disturbing things about this massacre is the
overwhelming and unspoken complicity between parents, students and
the media to deflect all responsibility for the attack onto the
killers, their families and gun lobbyists. By no means do I support
what these boys did, but it is frustrating to see interviews with
precisely the kind of kids the killers were supposed to be targeting
claiming that the killers were “freaks,” “weird,” etc., basically
reinforcing the kind of exclusionary attitudes the killers were
striking out against. I think it’s foolish and dangerous to be so
blinded by the criminality of the so-called Trench Coat Mafia’s
actions that we ignore what role students, or even faculty and staff,
at Columbine High School may have had in pushing these kids over the
edge.

As I watched the almost continuous coverage last night, I kept
wondering when we were going to hear an objective evaluation of what
these kids were like on every other day, what kind of students they
were. It turns out they weren’t a discipline problem and that they
were smart and computer savvy. They played fantasy baseball. They
were depressed. They kept to themselves. By several accounts they
felt they had been treated badly and used this as an excuse for their
rampage. But I never heard any student asked about what the
killers had (or hadn’t) suffered in terms of taunting, bullying, etc.
Before we train our students to be watchdogs, to report anyone who
doesn’t wear a Gap uniform or who doesn’t otherwise fit in, let’s
teach children to practice some self-restraint and to curb their
childish impulse to deride and denigrate their peers.

– Michael Mejia

I just read the piece on the shooting — it is tragic. And while my
complaint is not nearly as important as what those people are going
through, I am enraged by the use of the term “right-wing beliefs” in
your article. Though I do understand that those were words uttered by a small-town sheriff, Salon’s reporting it — twice — in its short article
was an outrage.

I consider myself a conservative Republican, on the right end of “right-wing
beliefs.” I am probably more moderate than some but I take serious
offense to the statement that these monsters who committed this crime,
were of the same beliefs as myself and many others.

What is “right-wing” about being armed to the teeth and murdering
innocent people? Your article felt compelled to mention it, but
failed to ever explain what was meant by it.

– Kristi Burgess

One of the distressing things about Tuesday’s school killings, as well
as in previous incidents, is that fellow students knew about the
perpetrators’ behaviors beforehand, but ignored the troubled youths and
went about their own business until those troubled students “snapped.”
As parents and concerned adults, we wonder why they didn’t say
something to somebody; maybe this could have been
prevented.

We can all point fingers at who or
what in society is at fault for making kids act out this way. Yes, it
is most likely a mixture: lack of parenting, violence in film and
television, Gothic influences in music, drugs, child abuse — the
list goes on. But what can be done right now to help our children?

I’m a safety officer for a hospital in Palm Springs, Calif. The state mandates
that all employers with more than 250 employees create and implement a written safety program; one of the stipulations is that businesses must create a means of anonymous
communication for their employees to use without fear of reprisal. In my
hospital, we meet that by having a safety hot line, where employees can
report problems anonymously 24 hours a day.

Why doesn’t the federal government create emergency legislation
mandating that a 24-hour telephone hot line be installed in every junior
high and high school throughout the country, with which children can call
and report things anonymously? School administrators could monitor the
hot lines each day, so they can investigate these problems before they become another
tragedy. It’s time we did something constructive besides analyze.

– Debbie Miller

“We called it ‘Littlefun’”
BY JEFF STARK

(04/21/99)

The mainstream television talking heads act like they’ve never been to
high school. Geeky and awkward kids have always been tormented by their
more popular classmates. I know because I was one of them. Though I had easy access to my parent’s firearms, I never
once thought of using them to kill my tormentors. As with Jeff’s friends
who listened to German metal, dressed weird and floated outside the
mainstream, something called a moral center was present inside of me to
prevent such a thing. The two kids in Colorado lacked that moral
center. All the laws against guns, video games, violent movies and the
Internet will ever fill that void.

– Brian Bingham

Like Jeff Stark, I spent many a day wandering the hills and fields
around the Columbine area in Colorado. I probably passed him several
times in Columbine’s halls before he graduated.

But unlike Stark, I stayed in Littleton. I married a 1994
Columbine graduate, and bought a house less than two miles from
Columbine to raise my two kids. While I would never call Columbine an
exciting place, I never felt the wanderlust that many people do. I
stayed precisely because of the quiet atmosphere and nearby amenities.
“Littlefun” maybe, but safe.

That safety was an illusion; the quiet atmosphere was shattered
Tuesday morning. I had no abstract feeling about “Wow, that’s my old
high school. Finally something has happened there.” My first thought
was “What do you mean that there’s shooting at the high school? That
can’t be happening.” While Stark may not care to call it home, for
thousands of families it is. I would have preferred
that the nation never know about Littleton and Columbine.

Maybe for Stark and the rest of the world this is a sad but
ultimately unimportant bit of news trivia, but for this community we
have to live with the scars for years to come. Every time I drive past
the school and my 4-year-old smiles and says, “That’s Mommy and
Daddy’s school,” I will remember the deaths of 12
young students, an extraordinary teacher and two boys who fell through
the cracks. Stark is probably right about us never knowing why it
happened, but that won’t stop me from trying to teach my kids that
violence is never the way to turn. They will know that even in a boring
suburban stain like Columbine, you can still learn something. The key
difference is they will learn about it from a killing ground — not through
smoked glass from 50 stories up.

– Dustin Duncan

Kneejerk Mafia
BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK

(04/22/99)

I share Poniewozik’s belief that mainstream media have clumsily speculated on what
the Internet might have had to do with these killings. But there’s a
similar kneejerkism to his column. Every time the Internet
is mentioned in connection with anything evil, the online press (of which
I’m a part, as a longtime editor and contributor at Wired News) are quick
to mock their unsavvy brethren, noting that the Internet is “just another
communications medium,” or some such. But of course for years now the
online press has trumpeted the wonders of this mere medium, and not just
its commercial possibilities. We’ve talked endlessly about how it gives us
access to information previously unavailable or difficult to find; and about
what a glorious community-builder it is, how it allows people of like
interests to find each other — particularly people who are outside the
mainstream. Gays, geeks, goofs, nobody’s alone when they’ve got the Net.

But as wonderful as this development is — and I’ve shared in its wonders
– there may in fact be dangers that come along with it. The Internet isn’t
responsible for evil and never will be. But with the Internet, it probably
is easier for disturbed people — including troubled teens — to find
allies in evil, to find kinship in whatever thinking leads to this sort of
tragedy. And it probably is easier to find out how to find a gun, or make a
bomb. Can or will laws protect us from these dangers? I doubt it. But
denying the truth about the Internet sure won’t, either.

– Pete Danko

Applegate Valley, Ore.

Poniewozik’s thesis that reports are targeting the Internet as a
principal cause of this event is not supported even by the evidence he
cites. He is much more on target when he describes the “bizarre
potpourri of signifiers” the press has experimented with in its search
for an explanation. This time, at least, the Internet is pretty far
down the list.

Thanks to NBC we can now add the killers’ alleged obsession with the
computer game Doom. That hypothesis was used Wednesday evening to
justify showing Doom demons being blown to bits by automatic weapons,
all seen disturbingly from the shooter’s point of view.

What strikes me is the lack of superficial similarities between the
boys accused of the Colorado killings and the boys in Arkansas last
year (no Goths they), or the Kentucky boy before that. A search for
meaning to be found in dress or ideology or musical taste seems silly
when the details change so much from case to case.

Of course, the one true common thread that runs through all the school
rampage cases is the use of firearms. The arsenal in Littleton
included sawed-off shotguns and a semiautomatic rifle. The easy
availability of weapons to everyone, including children, is a
necessary condition for these killings. We should be worrying less about
the supposed deeper causes and do something about the obvious one.

– Paul Turner

Chicago