Echoes of Columbine

I am a mother of 3, from Colorado, USA. I am also a writer, researcher, and Colorado certified victim’s advocate. I began researching school shootings in 2007, just after the Virginia Tech Shooting. At first, I was just toying with the idea of writing a book about a school shooter. Seeking realism I spent what would become the next ten years digging into these massacres. Though I vowed to keep an open mind and put all preconceived notions about my research into school shootings aside, I was shocked to find my views on many things challenged with each new case I studied.  I had to change what the “typical” school shooter looked like in my head. I had to look at the role of parents, schools, courts, and even the media in a new way. Why were the shooters overwhelmingly male? Why were the shooters mostly American? How big of a role did guns really play? And most of all where there holes in the system that could be plugged?  What I learned in a nutshell, is that crea...

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. ...

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...

A common thread in most school shootings is that many of the boys responsible specifically mentioned a lack of equality in the school hierarchy. They spoke of specific incidents where the "right" kids were able to get away with serious violations of school code. If they were punished at all, they were punished lightly. In the same situation, kids who had a lesser position in the school were dealt with harshly. Specific cases were cited where harassment was brought to the attention of or even witnessed by staff, but not dealt with accordingly. If you are interested in the personal perspective of the subject, you will find a great deal of information by reading "No Easy Answers" by Brooks Brown. Brooks was a friend of one of the Columbine High School shooters, though he did not get along with the other. Brooks seems to agree that, at least as far as Columbine went, there was some reason for perceptions of favoritism within the system. There is no way to really...

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...