Columbine Shooting Essay

Columbine high school was built in 1973 on a dirt road off a larger dirt road way out in horse country. It was named after the flower that blankets section of the Rockies. Hardly anybody lived near the school, but soon enough there were about 100,000 new arrivals that filled one continuous suburb with no town center: no main street, no town hall, town library, or town name. Littleton is what they called this quiet suburb where columbine lied several miles west from. Eric and Dylan called it Judgment Day. Monday, April 19th was the day columbine would erupt with an explosion killing hundreds of students and faculty. Eric read instructions to create bombs from the internet called The Anarchist Cookbook. The first step was to plant a bomb near Eric’s house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy that would rock the neighborhood and divert police. There plan was separated in three acts. The first act would start with a massive explosion by using two bombs in the commons, which would have about six hundred students killed. The bombs would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze. The bombs would be set out for maximum killing radius and would be planted near two thick columns supporting the second floor which would collapse after exploding. After the explosion, Eric and Dylan would start firing their weapons at whoever they see in sight. Each had a backpack and duffle bag to carry more weapons and explosives. There next step was to have bombs planted in their own cars in the school parking lot near the school exits that would detonate forty five minutes after the initial blast. The cars were placed near the ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging, and news vans. The maximum body count they were planning on would be: nearly 2,000 students, plus 150 faculty and staff, plus who knows how many police, paramedics, and journalists. The bombs Eric and Dylan planted in the school had failed to explode, but that didn’t stop them from going in and opening fire. They took pipe bombs and threw them wherever they saw a big crowed and opened fire to anyone they saw. They both had trench coats on and Eric discarded his trench coat at the top of the stairs almost as soon as he began shooting. Dylan kept his on until he got to the library. Each costume change created another shooter that would confuse the students and faculty. Nate was a friend of Eric’s and seen something peculiar. He saw Eric walk into the building from the wrong parking lot at the wrong time, when he should have been walking out. Nate figured Eric and Dylan were up to something since he knew they had both been missing that morning. At this point students were running for their lives and finding classrooms they could hide in. no one really knew who the shooters were and didn’t know why they were doing such an attack. Even though Eric and Dylan were shooting whoever they find in sight, they were mainly looking for people with white hats on. People who wore the white hats at school were the jocks. Eric and Dylan had committed suicide once they saw empty halls and when the school looked abandoned. Before they shot themselves, the officers had discovered files on the boys. The cops had twelve pages from Eric’s website, spewing hate and threatening to kill. Dylan Bennet Klebold was born brilliant. He started school a year early, and by third grade he was enrolled in the CHIPS program which stood for Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students. Even among the brains, Dylan stood out as math prodigy. Tom and Sue were Dylan’s parents. His father couldn’t see his boy as the killer, saying â€Å"this was not my son. † Dylan’s service was done quietly with just fifteen people including, friends, family and clergy. The Klebolds were afraid to bury Dylan because his grave would be defaced. It would become and anit-shrine, so they cremated his body and kept the ashes in the house. Eric Dutro was evolving inside and the changes began to show in his sophomore year. Social status was important to Eric as he always made friends. People described Eric as nice, polite, preppy and a dork, but in sophomore year, he tried an edgier look with combat boots and all black outfits. He was breaking out of his shell and grew boisterous, moody, and aggressive. Eric was neither normal nor insane, he was a psychopath. He killed for two reasons: to demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it. â€Å"Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first. It’s the deception that makes them so dangerous. You never see him coming (it’s usually a him – more than 80 percent are male. ) Don’t look for the oddball creeping you out. Psychopaths don’t act like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates. They come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role. † (Cullen, 240) Psychopaths take great personal pride in their deceptions and extract tremendous joy from them. Lies become the psychopath’s occupation. The truth does work, but they lie for fun. I have read stories about columbine before but reading this book has really enlightened me on such details that actually happened in this event. I didn’t know that there were bombs involved in this massacre until I read the book. Columbine was organized and well planned by high school students. Eric and Dylan planned this for nearly a year and half so they knew what they were doing. They made home video tapes saying their good-byes to their parents and apologizing to them about the trouble the columbine shooting might cause them. So they knew at some point they were going to either be killed or commit suicide. This impacted me because as it said in the book, the people who do these devastating events can be friends of mine and I wouldn’t even know it. They are people who act good to the public eye, but also have hidden secrets behind closed doors. I can’t imagine someone that is close to me going through this kind of tragedy. The question that was brought to mind was: why would someone do this? Why would two kids want to kill hundreds of people? What was the reason? Was it video games? Was it depression? Was it because they were being bullied and wanted payback? Was it because they were psychotic? I believe they had all of these problems. They were psychotic, Eric did have depression and was taking depression pills for it, and they might have been aiming for jocks because they were bullied by them.