Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two 18-year-olds from Columbine High School in Colorado, came to the school on April 20, 1999 to spread terror. The poor students and teachers at the school, on the other hand, were unaware of what was going to happen, and saw that day as one of their usual days.
However, that was not the case at all. In the background of this work, there was such a massacre planned, stitch by knot… You cannot help but wonder if people of this age weren’t supposed to do innocent activities such as going to the movies with their friends, playing football or studying. Then let’s dive deeper into this story together.
These two close friends actually intended to kill almost the entire school, not 13 people.
On the day of the massacre, these two friends brought dangerous ammunition such as bombs, guns and rifles to the school that no one would normally bring into a school. In this case, it is obvious what kind of negligence the school’s security caused by taking these devices inside. Actually, Dylan and Eric didn’t want to go and shoot people themselves. Youngsters placed duffel bags with explosive bombs in the school cafeteria, and interestingly, no one noticed their attempts. The bombs were set to explode at 11:17.
After these two psychopaths planted the bombs, they went to their vehicles and waited for the time of the explosion. However, since the expected explosion did not occur, these two violent proponents, who had to enter the school, shot everyone there as soon as they stepped into the school’s garden.
Afterwards, the psychopaths who went to the library continued to kill many people there. The attackers killed a total of 12 students and a teacher. In addition, 20 people were injured. After the incident, the police came to the school and the young people, who realized that they could not escape, committed suicide by shooting themselves in the head at 12:08.
Looking at the interesting theories about this incident, he said, most people Dylan and Eric set targets when choosing their victims, which consisted of athletes, minority individuals, or Christians. It is of course possible to come across conspiracy theories and baseless speculations frequently in such events.
Likewise, these claims of people were described as unfounded because they could not be proven. These children thought that people should be killed simply because they deserve to die, not because they have any specialty.
Among some surprising claims that we can tell, these children adopted the Goth culture, which is a subculture of Punk, and they were members of the Trenchcoat Mafia group that reflects this culture, and that’s why they committed the murders. It was also among the rumors that they were ostracized and bullied by other children in high school just for this reason.
Could these thugs really have made the mistake of responding to the exclusion, oppression, and violence they experienced by scanning the entire school? It was also said that Eric and Dylan recorded videos of them reacting to the bullying they experienced. On the other hand, none of these claims have been proven, and if they were, there would be no valid reason, of course.
Let’s take a break from this story and talk about “bullying”:
Studies show that one out of every five students (20.2%) experiences peer bullying. Especially when groups of friends who gang up in schools try to dominate children whom they consider weaker than themselves, oppressed children are put in the position of victims. Bullies can use psychological, physical and verbal forms of violence on their victims. This situation causes the victims to take their anger out on others after a while.
In even more advanced dimensions, the psychology of the victims is so deteriorated that they can carry tools such as knives with them when they come to school to defend themselves. Likewise, as we have seen in this example, it can lead to mass murders, vandalism, involvement in crime, and drug use. The emergence of bullying is usually through having a bullying circle of friends.
Now, back to the Columbine high school massacre, we need to ask the question, “Why didn’t their teachers, families, and social circles notice or notice and ignore the psychology they lived in before these children unleashed such atrocities?” Bullying is an ongoing condition, unless it is prevented and stopped by adults. That is why we must say that the neglect of adults is great in this case as well.
Maybe these young people were treated negatively by their friends, yes, but the reward should not have been to take the lives of people. Even the families of the victims were wondering how this vandalism could not be prevented by the school administration.
Because later, the relatives of the deceased sued the school and the police. Most of these cases, however, were dismissed by the tribunal. For example, even refusing these lawsuits and not punishing the school’s negligence can continue to feed this type of school bullying, and it has.
After this incident, school massacres began to increase exponentially in the USA. For example, on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech, a university in Virginia, Cho Seung-Hui took the lives of 32 people. Another sad event in more recent history occurred in May 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 students and 2 teachers in the school attack. Moreover, those who died were small children aged 6-7 years. There are many such atrocities in the past of the USA that we have not yet counted, and we can say that the basis of them lies in the inability to prevent the bullying that begins in schools.
Mark Manes, who sold guns to criminals, received a prison sentence in the court regarding the Columbine High School incident. Another man, Philip Duran, who introduced this person to the children, was also sentenced. Of course, these developments were pleasing. But to reiterate, it was a pretty bad decision that school security went unpunished for allowing dangerous and explosive devices to be brought into the school.
As we said at the beginning, there are a lot of rumors about this event. However, research after the incident revealed the truth: In fact, it turned out that these two youths had already planned a brutality similar to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, during the year before the incident. In other words, the fact that the psychological states of Dylan and Eric, who are the main actors of the murder, every moment of which they meticulously commit, were not seen by the adults around them, caused them to harm both themselves and innocent people.
In fact, The Elephant was inspired by the Columbine high school massacre. In short, this event turned into a black mark that all Americans could not shake off and mourn for a long time. What do you think is the reason for so many mass killings in schools in the USA? You can share your thoughts with us in the comments.
- Sources: History, Britannica, News Sky, Research Gate, DergiPark
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