Running Head: THE COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE 1

The Columbine High School Massacre

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The Columbine High School Massacre

One of the worst cases of mass shootings in the US at a school was the Columbine High

School Massacre. This was a shooting that happened on April 20, 1999 in Jefferson Country,

Colorado. The attack was highly planned, as the perpetrators had used as many as 99 explosive

devices, including firebombs as well as car bombs to divert the firefighters. The perpetrators

were later identified as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – both were high school seniors – and

they murdered 12 students and one teacher, while injuring 21 more people. It is unclear as to why

the pair of student decided to go on this rampage; however, many researchers believe that one of

the reasons could have been that they wanted to rival the Oklahoma City bombing as well as

other deadly incidents that happened in the US in the 1990s. After the massacre, there was a lot

of debate about gun control laws as well as the ideas of bullying and high school cliques. One of

the results of the massacre was that there was zero tolerance policy about guns that was

implemented in the schools. Other than that, there was also a lot of moral panic that was created

over various aspects of the American subcultures, including the goth culture, gun culture, as well

as the violence depicted in video games (Chen et al., 2015)

Looking at the two perpetrators, Eric Harris created a website in 1996 and this was

primarily done so that Dylan Klebold and him could play video games together. Harris also

started a blog on the same website and he started to share jokes as well as various journal entries.

By 1997, he started to show first signs of how he started to get angry about the society. Not many

people were viewing his site and no one was concerned until 1998. One of the mothers of the

students in the region saw the website and started to file various complaints against Harris, as she

believed that he was dangerous. Many death threats were present on the website as well. This

was something that depicted that the boys were dangerous and could do something drastic. Later
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on, in January of 1998, both Harris and Klebold started to steal various things, including

equipment from a van. They were arrested and had to attend mandated classes, also receiving

therapy classes as well. It has to be noted that the Harris had been taking medications for his

depression, as he had told his psychiatrist about his feelings of anger and suicidal thoughts

(Mears, Moon & Thielo, 2017).

After they were arrested, both Harris and Klebold starts to keep journals and they also

started to video tape the guns that they had started to collect. In the journals, it is depicted that

they wanted to do something on a much bigger scale than the Oklahoma City bombing and how

they had planned to escape to Mexico after they would hijack a plane. They wanted to detonate

their explosives in the school in hopes that they would kill hundreds of student and they would

shoot those that were fleeing. They also planned to set off the explosives that would kill the

emergency responders when they came to help. Thankfully, none of that happened, as their

explosives did not detonate.

The boys were able to amass such a large cache of guns and ammunition illegally.

However, they did document them all and hid them at home. They had videos of them doing

target practice in the hills nearby. They also made a video half an hour before the attack as their

final goodbye and they also apologized to their friends and family members. Before the

massacre, they placed a fire bomb in a field that was about three miles away from the school.

The bomb was supposed to explode at 11:14am and it was placed so that they fire department as

well as the other emergency personnel would be diverted to that site instead. This was not very

successful, as the bomb only partially exploded causing a small fire that was promptly put out.

Both Harris and Klebold arrived at the school separately at 11:10am and parked in

different parking lots. They concealed bombs in their cars that were supposed to detonate at
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noon. They also placed bombs that were supposed to detonate at 11:17am in the cafeteria. Then

they went to wait near their cars so that they would shoot students running out. Fortunately, these

bombs did not explode, as they would have killed or severely injured all the nearly 500 students

inside the school at the time. When the bombs did not explore, the two walked towards the

school with their guns and started to shoot in the cafeteria. They had several guns and they

continued to shoot, killing indiscriminately (Schildkraut & Muschert, 2014).

The police arrived and there was a shootout that took place between the two boys and the

police. The boy continued to shoot inside the school as well and they would shoot anyone they

found. Other police officers started to go inside the school so that they could rescue some of the

students. Many of the students had been evacuated from the school by one of their teachers. After

that, the two entered the library and killed and injured many more students, some of them

brutally by shooting them with a shotgun in the head. After they left the library, the two boys

continued to roam around in the school and they ended up committing suicide together. Harris

fired his shotgun through the roof of his mouth while Klebold shot himself in the left temple with

a handgun.

Several documentaries were later made of the massacre and there were several

investigations into how the two young teenagers were able to procure so many weapons of this

caliber, as the guns that the boys used included shotguns, long-range rifles, as well as semi-

automatic weapons, as well as how they were able to get so accurate with the guns. Moreover,

there were also various questions that were asked in terms of ideas of gun control. Furthermore,

it has to be noted that a lot of conversations were also started in terms of how the students at high

schools could be driven to this point to which they would do something as heinous as killing

their fellow students. Many of the themes that were discussed in terms of how the boys felt
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included the goth culture, as well as the idea of bullying. The sad thing to note is that even

though all these things were discussed, they did not make much of a difference in terms of mass

shootings, including at schools in the US. It is 2018 now, almost 20 years after the Columbine

High School massacre and several other mass shootings, including school shootings, such as the

Virginia Tech Shootings, Sandy Hook shootings, and as recently as last week, a shooting in

Kentucky, have continued to occur. This is something that can be said to be so alarming as there

have been no clear policies enacted over the past many years to avoid and prevent such kind of

violence.

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References

Chen, C. Y., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Phelan, J. C., Yu, G., & Yang, L. H. (2015). Racial and

mental illness stereotypes and discrimination: An identity-based analysis of the Virginia

Tech and Columbine shootings. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology,

21(2), 279.

Mears, D. P., Moon, M. M., & Thielo, A. J. (2017). Columbine Revisited: Myths and

Realities About the Bullying–School Shootings Connection. Victims & Offenders, 12(6),

939-955.

Schildkraut, J., & Muschert, G. W. (2014). Media salience and the framing of mass

murder in schools: A comparison of the Columbine and Sandy Hook massacres.

Homicide studies, 18(1), 23-43.