Final Response to "Columbine"

Ever since watching Bowling for Columbine I have always been interested in the topic of the Columbine shooting. I knew a good amount of background information about the two boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Kleboid, but this book provided the most in-depth look at Columbine that I have ever seen. It took the reader into the life of the two crazy high school teenagers. The book too you into the minds of these two kids and you could then see why they wanted to kill people. Dylan and Eric were mentally unstable and depressed. They hated a lot of different groups of kids and came up with the wrong way to deal with it, and that was to try to get rid of them. The Columbine massacre could have been much worse than it originally was if Eric and Dylan were successful in exploding the pipe bombs they had put in the cafeteria, and other places around the school. It was estimated that hundreds more students could have died if these bombs had been successful. This could have been the one of the worst disasters in America's history. A majority of the beginning of the book, Cullen goes into excruciating detail of what was going on at the school during the shooting. This section of the book was one of the hardest and most depressing things that I have ever read. To go into the mind of a teacher with a wife and kids, and have to learn about him get shot for trying to help students escape is an extremely difficult thing to read. One of the reasons why this was such a hard book was the fact that our school has received numerous bomb threats and that these kids that were killing and being killed are our age. It is all too real to even imagine.

How We Can Prevent More Shootings

Recently on Saturday, six people were killed and seven people were wounded. There have also been other shootings since the Columbine shooting like the Virginia Tech shooting. The trend that I have noticed over the course of researching some of the other shootings is that the shooters are people who are mentally unstable and do not know how to deal with their problems. There are people out there who feel like because they live in America they are allowed to think whatever they want no matter what. This leads to thinking that this certain group should not be around anymore. When you have ideas like that, combined with an mentally unstable person, it can then lead to terrible things such as the Columbine shooting. I am not trying to say that people should be limited to what they want to think or believe because that goes against the foundation of America's beliefs, but I do think that when there is a shooting after shooting after shooting, something needs to be done. Our school is very good about thinking about the well being of the students. Making sure that there is very limited bullying and that kids are doing well mentally in school. However, not every school is privileged like Deerfield. Not every school ensures that every student is safe when they go to school, physically and mentally. Which is why I believe that what should be done to at least limit shootings in America would be not to limit peoples' ideas, but to limit peoples' destructive actions. This can be done by, as I have said before, limiting the right to bear arms. America is obviously not responsible enough to have that law because of the countless number of murders due to guns every year.

In this case, the only thing that could have prevented this shooting would have been if guns were harder to obtain. These kids did not kill the students because of music, bullying, bad parents, etc. They killed because they were emotionally unstable. And when someone who is not stable has a gun it is just a recipe for disaster. There is not much the school or anyone could have done to help these kids. And after reading this book and watching Bowling for Columbine, I am sick of hearing how easy it is to obtain a gun and use it. Something has to be done and quick because the number of murders with guns is not going to go down unless something is changed.

Remorse for Parents

Cullen talks a lot about what the families of the murder victims were doing and how they were dealing with the deaths, and then he goes into a short chapter of how Eric and Dylan's parents dealt with their son's death. While the whole country was mourning the death of all the students and teachers that died, it seemed like it was only the parents of Eric and Dylan who cared about their deaths. They were basically forgotten and frowned upon, which is not too unpredictable, however these were still someone's children. One would think that the killers' parents would be ruthless, abusive, and terrible parents, however they were the opposite. Dylan's parents preached peace to their two sons and never allowed so much as a BB gun in the house. They never knew about any of the violent things that Dylan was into. They did know that he had depression issues, but to only an extant of how extreme his depression was. The Klebolds were unable to have a proper ceremony and burial because of the circumstances of the death. Cullen goes on to say that, "The Klebolds were afraid to bury Dylan. His grave would be defaced. It would become an anti-shrime. They cremated his body and kept the ashes in the house." This chapter was extremely hard for me to read because I know how much my parents care about me and if anything, G-d forbid happened to me or anyone else in my family, words could not even describe how devastated they would be. But it was even worse for the Klebolds and Harris because not only did they lose their child, but they lost their sons in such a horrific way that it was such a worse experience for them. It was hard for anyone to show any remorse for them because what their kids had done, but now I am trying to show some remorse for them because what happened to them, no parent should ever have to deal with.

Tighter Gun Control in U.S.

Before reading this book I had seen the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine. In the movie Moore focuses a lot on gun control in America and how guns have negatively affected America's culture. In a previous assignment I talked about how Americans have taken advantage of the Second Amendment, which has caused the most deaths by guns out of all the other countries in the world. The country with the second most gun related deaths has no where near as much as America does. One of the things that shocked me the most about the book was how easy it was for Eric and Dylan to get guns and ammunition. Eric and Dylan went to the Tanner Gun Show with their friend Robyn Anderson. She was eighteen at the time so she was able to supply them with the guns, however when they went she was not even I.D.ed. Guns should not be that easy to receive because you never know what kind of people are buying the guns. Anderson did not know the boys intentions, but in the end what she did was clearly wrong. The boys got their ammunition from from another kid in high school who was dealing them tons of ammunition. It just amazes me how easy it is to get a gun in the United States. Even though "the Right to Bear Arms" is one of the original laws of America, people need to realize that times are different. Things may have applied hundreds of years ago, but when there is a problem so bad, such as the gun control problem, it is important to make changes. Make new restrictions that will make it harder to own a gun. Even though it will be restricting Americans' rights, it will be making their lives much safer.

The Media's interpretation of Columbine

One of the big things about the Columbine shooting was the media confusion. During the actual shooting no one knew who it was, how many people were shooting, and why. Because so many students were saying such different things about what they had saw while in the school, it was nearly impossible to piece everything together of what had happened. For a while people thought that the killers were part of the gang the Trench Coat Mafia because Eric and Dylan were wearing trench coats at the time, but that was later proven false. The main goal of the media was to say that it was goth kids who were out to kill jocks who had bullied them before. The media was also trying to figure out what was to blame for Eric and Dylan's actions. They blamed the violent video games and movies, the crazy music, bad parenting, etc. Like the move we watched in class, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," the media is making on side look worse than the other. In the movie Spike Lee showed how poorly the news portrayed the black victims compared to the white victims. The black victims of Hurricane Katrina were viewed as looters and were always shown on top of houses without any help. This is because they were not the ones who were being saved. The white people were. And unlike the blacks who were "looting," the white victims were stealing to survive. Before ever reading this book, I had always thought that the Columbine shooters were simply loners who had no friends and were bullied all the time, but this was not true. And that is what makes this event so much scarier. Yes these kids were definitely not mentally stable, however they did have friends and were not psychopaths like the media cut them out to be. I am not trying to say these kids are angels, I just feel like the media wanted them to look like another pair of psychopaths. Dylan and Eric had always had depression issues and never liked associating with the mainstream crowds. It wasn't bad parents, video games, music, etc. Eric and Dylan were two kids who were not mentally stable and were unable to deal with the problems in the right way. In both the Hurricane and the Columbine shootings, the media tries to twist sides of the story so that as the viewer you only see it from one perspective. Both Spike Lee and Dave Cullen (author of Columbine) show different sides of the tragedy that are not shown in the mainstream media.