Echoes of Columbine

If you came to Echoes of Columbine in search of a way to 100% positively identify a school shooter before the fact, you've come to the wrong place. Any group or person who clams they have any single identifier is just plain wrong. Currently, the only way to find them is to wait for them to hurt someone and then try to intervene as quickly as possible. That method is costing America dearly. Everyone has their pet cause of course. Many have blamed bullying, while just as many say it is easy access to guns. Others blame it on mental health issues. Violence in movies, music, and video games are favorite targets as well. Some say it is the media fascination with blood and anti-heroes. The copycat effect. Lack of parenting and failure to disciple. Weak school structures. Overcrowded classrooms. A godless society. Latchkey kids. Nobody seems to agree where the blame should go, and all of this finger pointing is wasting valuable time. They not only keep happening, but have increas...

It is troubling that many of the solutions to mass shootings choose to focus on arming people to stop the shooter, or preventing the shooter from getting to people once they are already firing their weapon. As of February 2018, the vast majority ( 90% - Quinnipac , ) of Americans are in favor of background checks to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people with violent potential. It is a simple, common sense suggestion, but how do we determine who has violent potential and who doesn't before they actually at on their urges? Mental illness is a very broad category. Suffering from depression does not make one a danger to society, and having a personality disorder does not equal violent intent by any means. In 1966, the Texas University shooter had seen a psychiatrist, and reported feelings of rage and a desire to harm people. No actions were taken to evaluate him, or prevent him from harming others. Often so subtle or inconclusive the red flags were overlooked...

A little less publicized about mass shootings is the fact that nearly all of these school shooters were on psychiatric medications now known to aggravate violent behaviors. At some point these drugs were prescribed, and often changed somewhere near the shooting (Red Lake, Columbine, New Life Church) but for some reason their medical providers were only treating the symptoms. While the dangers of antidepressants and other mood altering drugs are known, they are still being prescribed without the necessary psychiatric follow-up. Medication is far cheaper than therapy, and easier too. In 2003 doctors were warned not to give most common antidepressants to under 18s, because of fears that the risks outweighed the benefits. In 2004 the FDA issued a Public Health Advisory warning that “anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia [severe restlessness], hypomania [abnormal excitement] and mania [psychosis characterized by exalted feelings, ...

There is only one single ingredient that every mass shooting has had in common, the gun. This is also the one topic guaranteed to bring out the highest emotions. Mass shootings are not uniquely American, but 31% of the worlds mass shootings take place in America, while accounting for only 5% of the worlds population. America is a gun culture, there is no debating that fact. 320 million Americans own around 350 million guns. The United States can now arm nearly every man, woman and child from shore to shore and still have guns left over. With numbers like that it might seem that every American owns a gun, but only about 40% of the population owns guns. while 3% of the country owns one half of all of the guns. By far the most common guns used in massacres are those that can do the most damage in the least amount of time. Semi-automatic handguns are the chosen weapon in over 70% of mass shootings. Semi-automatic rifles are a second choice, followed by shotguns and then revolvers. ...

If a part of the fantasy was the sheer violence they fed on, another factor was the hero worship. They didn't want to just go out, they wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. If they were nobodies who wanted to become somebodies, the fastest way to do so was to do something so shocking that the media could not ignore it. The media in their own way, turned them into heroes. When one reads these books, watches these movies, or listens to the music that inspired mass shooters, one strong theme runs through all of them. In each case the hero of the is the killer, students cheer them, crowds gather to spur them on, and the media worships them. While I was researching I was appalled at the sheer number of tributes there were not to the victims, but to the shooters. A quick tour of Youtube reveals that for many, these mass shooters kids were not perpetrators but victims. The media in most cases played right into it. While it was happening, and then for weeks after, the media hand f...

The United States has very complicated privacy laws. Often those in authority are not allowed to share information with one another. The court might not be allowed to notify the school of a problem with a student, nor can the school notify law enforcement about a problem if it is outside of the scope of the law. The teachers and staff aren't always allowed to talk among themselves about a student or compare notes to see if the other teachers have seen similar behavior. Even if a principal is aware of a problem, he can't always warn the other teachers. Studies have been done where teachers have been fed information about a particular students performance ahead of time. In some cases they were told that students performed well above average on tests, when they were actually poor performers. On the other hand a child that was presented to a teacher as a "problem child" could be in every other case a model student, but this specific teacher saw them exactly as they we...

In every mass shooting case you will find what professionals refer to as "leakage". The perpetrators leaked plans before the attack. It was as if they boiled over, or perhaps were testing the reaction. These kids told at least one other personally, usually more than one ahead of time. In some cases dozens of students knew about the plot beforehand, they even gathered to watch that morning just to see if it would really happen. Almost a year before Columbine, local law enforcement officers were handed death threats, detailed bomb making instructions, and even details on the bomb tests. This information was all housed on a personal website run by one of the perpetrators. Law enforcement even went as far as obtaining a search warrant... but failed to execute it. After the criminal investigation began, that information disappeared for a time, only to be retrieved by a reporter. Up to that point law enforcement denied it existed at all. Many of the witnesses questioned after...

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...

When the line between fantasy and reality blurs One of the first issues to get resurrected shortly after a new shooting is the topic of violence in the media. We can't deny that movies and video games have grown increasingly violent, it is becoming more and more difficult to locate a true family movie. Yet hundreds of thousands of people play the same games, watch the same movies, and read the same books and none of them committed such horrific acts. Mass shooters were all attracted to violent media in some form. Early on they cited Richard Bachman's short story "Rage" as an influence. "Rage" was the story of a frustrated by taking his classroom hostage, and emerging the hero among his classmates. After it copies of his book were found in the possession of several of the first school shooters, not only highlighted copies but very well worn. Bachman's creator Stephen King pulled the book from print, stating "The ------- incident was enough for ...

When does a boy become a man? We are one of the very few societies without a rite of passage. There is no clear line between childhood and adulthood for most American youth. In most societies a boy was introduced to manhood around the age of 12 or 13. Here 18 is old enough to go to war and die for your country, but not old enough to legally drink a beer. As modern Americans our culture is one of few that does not offer a clear cut line to define where childhood ends, and where manhood begins. We have several stepping stones. Turning 13, turning 16, getting their drivers license, turning 18, going off to college, turning 21. Is it any wonder our American boys are confused? We live in a society that places a great deal of emphasis on the image of masculinity with no clear but lines on what that actually means. As far as school shooters, almost none of these boys fit into the traditional male image. They were small for their age, often thin, they were not ladies men, and in many...

Why a Recipe? There are so many questions after a mass shootings, most remain unanswered. It is easy to get lost trying to wrap your head around the where, and the who, and the whys of such a deep tragedy. What could go so wrong in a persons life that they would choose to kill random people for no reason? Everybody wants to find that one thing that has the power to stop this cycle, but it isn't that simple. When you make a cake, you don't just get out a the sugar. Likewise if you leave a bowl of flour and milk on the counter you will end up with a cake no longer how long you wait. A few cups of flour, some sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and a little bit of baking powder are the basic ingredients. Then, after some heat is applied and some chemical reactions take place if all goes right, you will be having dessert. There are many different kinds of cake, each with their own unique recipe. Most cakes do have similar base ingredients though, and when you think about it so d...