American Shame: Columbine

Dave Cullen’s Columbine is difficult to read without getting angry, extremely angry, even twenty years later, even after public shootings are more prevalent and have higher death counts.  Cullen is relentless in his pursuit of details, and there are many, and most were lost opportunities documented in this book.

The killers told many people of their plans, or part of their plans; the police even had a search warrant (that was never executed) for the house of killer number 1, a record of his harassment and threats to another student, all of which they illegally suppressed after the massacre.  

Back then it was SOP for officers to secure the site of a shooting, and wait for the SWAT team.  A community officer assigned to Columbine engaged killer number 1, fired shots, and then failed to follow him into the school.  What armed public safety officer would fail to follow a shooter into a school?  Who would essentially condemn children to die by following procedures? He followed procedures, by made a cowardly moral choice.

And it goes on and on. The killer’s parents, in the dark as their own children planned mass murder.  The  SWAT team’s sluggish entry into the building.  The media circus, with its accompanying valorization of the killers by giving them free air time, creating a myth, showing images of the event on an endless loop.

Columbine created a model for mass murder and its despicable wake of moral, political and social failings.  It modeled an ugly legacy we still live today.