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From everything I’ve read on them they feel like the first “incel” type shooter. Like far-right, reactionary, violent, blaming everyone else until it builds up and explodes. The media handled it terribly and muddied the waters on motivations, but I think they’d fit into a similar category to most recent mass shooters
They were both very ideologically inconsistent - Eric Harris was more right wing (but also wrote negative things about Nazis) and had a very chud family whereas Klebold was wearing a hammer and sickle pin when he died (his mother was Jewish). Both had had girlfriends although Harris’s girlfriend broke up with him after he pretended to kill himself.
I’d pin it on capitalist alienation, stupid kids and a martial US culture more than the very clear ideological motivations of many recent mass shooters.
I mean yeah, it wasn’t a politically/ideologically motivated shooting, but at the same time both of them were the types that are targeted and recruited by far-right groups every day. It wasn’t comparable to, say, the Christchurch shooting, more like Aurora/VT/Sandy Hook, but they could have easily gone down a more ideological path if their aggression was manipulated and pointed at a target. But maybe I’m wrong
I still remember being in middle school the year Columbine happened
Still remember them installing the metal detectors, showing us videos encouraging us to turn in anyone who we think might “erupt” and just the total transformation of my school into something that was basically maximum security prison. It was really great being the small and quiet kid that everyone joked about being the next shooter. Hell, for a time, I even thought about getting my hands on a gun myself and making them all pay.
We learned all the wrong lessons from Columbine and it’s not surprising that school shootings keep happening
My group was deemed to be the mythical “trench coat mafia” because we were the goths and artsy weirdos and the only openly gay kid in the school.
It wasn’t as bad as what I’ve heard happened in the bible belt, but it was still scary to have everyone around you half convinced you were going to shoot up the place.
HAHAH…
That was the year that I got into some college AP classes with tons of books.
That was also the year that the school banned backpacks because… reasons? I guess.
That was also the year that I almost got arrested for bringing my backpack full of college text books to school, putting it in my locker, and refusing to open it for the principal… I eventually chickened out and opened the locker for them but I didn’t immediately chicken out.
My school banned backpacks, baggy pants (you could hide a shotgun in baggy pants!), “”“Gang Colors”“” and the Super S (you know the angular one we all drew as kids)
It was all just security theater, of course, but gotta keep the brown kids in line!
yeahhh after Columbine my POC brother got suspended because some white kids turned him in for saying he hated the school. Of course he had no plans to do any sort of violence, he was just expressing an opinion about some shitty teachers. But since it’s a racist area and he’s brown… yeah he was suspended for over a month.
Meanwhile i had some kids call in ACTUAL bomb threats to my high school multiple times and like… no one got punished or even caught as far as i know.
Nazis, they were fucking Nazis. Cannot stress this enough, they were indoctrinated into death-cult fascism just like every other major mass shooter in the west. Of course capitalist, neoliberal atomization makes people more susceptible to awful ideology but its no more a cause than ‘bullying’ or some shit. Everyone gets bullied, everyone has a shit time in school, 99.99% of us don’t fucking shoot anyone over it and the common denominator is we aren’t Nazis.
School shootings in general probably have a highly detrimental affect on schoolkids’ mental health, and it seems like all the responses to it were designed in a lab to make it worse. An intersection of this particular societal ill and criminal justice was the placing of police on campuses, who’ve stopped 0 school shootings, but locked up thousands of kids–very cool–and the ghost of columbine was an enormous justification for militarization. The most militarized responses were mysteriously limited to “certain” schools though, I’d actually be shocked if Columbine itself had metal detectors & armed security🤔 I wonder why…
What’s your take on the columbine school shooting?
Not good folks, not good.
The Columbine shooters weren’t being bullied for one. They did suffer from mental health issues, and I think until we have a justice system built around providing aid for troubled people instead of punishing them we are never going to see much done about this.
I got bullied and I still bullied other kids. There’s no such thing as a strict hiearchy, just sets of cliques with different standings.
