Echoes of Columbine

One thing that holds true of every single mass shooter out there, they were consumed by hate. The targets of that hate vary greatly, some mass shooters have cited feminism as the source of their fury, others have targeted religion, some seemed to blame social problems for their ills, while others pointed the finger at society as a whole. If you take the source of the trigger out of the equation you will be left with hate. Pure, unbridled, red hot, passion and fire, hate. Those that left writings behind were often full of anger and fury, reaching out for anyone and everyone who could be to blame.  If you go down even deeper, you will find a deep hatred of their situation, of their life, of their very self. They got kicked out of school, lost their job, or their girlfriend, or got grounded, or humiliated. Whatever the trigger event may have been, their life had hit a dead end.  Freud described suicide as "murder of self," but theorized that those who are depressed...

When studying these boys one sees a certain superiority complex over and over. On the surface it appears to be narcissism, but I do not to believe it to be so. Mass shooters often held a vision of themselves as being higher than others, some even referring to themselves as godlike. In the public writings they referenced natural selection, and a feeling of being above normal human beings. They had become so cynical about life that they saw their lack of emotion or feeling towards their fellow human beings as a sort of a gift. They had freed themselves of a conscience, but when I read their more private writings it was clear they really hadn't. Were they trying to convince us they were god, or were they trying to convince themselves? Over and over these boys wrote about being godlike. It was almost a mantra. Jeffery Weiss was self professed Native American Nazi on a white supremacy board, who professed hatred as a mantra. He turned around on supernatural board and said that he...

According to the Secret Service study, 71% of school shooters reported feeling "persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked or injured by others," with some of the bullying classified as "long-standing and severe." Many of those who committed school shootings also targeted females to a large degree. Some were girls that did not return their affections, many whom they described as snotty and stuck-up. Columbine shooters journal entries specifically called some of these girls "Christian snobs." Real or not, it seems they felt rejected by these girls for one reason or another - socially, romantically, and even religiously. The Columbine school shooters planned what they considered their revenge for two years. They had started with desired "kill lists" but most of the people on the list had graduated the year before. It's clear that these boys did not "just snap." Their rage did not weaken or dissipate, and they continued with the...