Posted on 04/20/2009 10:07:03 AM PDT by Graybeard58
Ten years ago today, a shocking display of violence erupted in the affluent Denver suburb of Littleton. Two Columbine High School students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, set two powerful bombs to explode in the cafeteria. When the bombs failed to detonate, the two entered the school, heavily armed. They shot and killed a dozen students and a teacher, wounded 23 and finally took their own lives.
Americans have been trying to make sense out of what happened ever since. Sadly, they've had plenty of opportunities. No fewer than 80 such incidents have taken place since April 20, 1999, observes Denver author Dave Cullen, whose new book, "Columbine," examines the shootings and their fallout.
The nation remains poorly equipped to tamp down this hideous trend. Gun-control advocates make the most noise and offer the least helpful solutions: The degree of government intrusion, confiscation and incarceration required to keep guns away from people who want to do harm to others would render America unrecognizable. And the violence would continue. Keep in mind that the heart of the Harris-Klebold plot was not the guns but the propane bombs, which would have killed as many as 500 people instantly. The two teens intended to use their guns to pick off fleeing students and teachers after the explosions.
The point that seems to escape most people is the Columbine plot did not emerge fully formed. According FBI reports cited by Mr. Cullen, such attacks invariably follow an "evolutionary" path, "with signposts along the way." Might it have been possible to stop Harris and Klebold before their plot ever got started, simply by refusing to tolerate behaviors that preceded the massacre — the online rantings, the criminal acts, the bizarre dress and the manufacture of homemade pipe bombs, to name just a few?
In our April 22, 1999 editorial on Columbine, we singled out for praise a school administrator in Greenwich for standing up to students who, in 1997, asserted their "right" to wear vampire garb to school. The administrator, Eileen Petruzillo, said she had authority to require students "to dress within certain guidelines." She understood what many school officials still don't: that peremptorily shutting down extreme behavior can go a long way toward preventing more extreme behavior, up to and including violence.
The day Americans stop talking about chimeras such as gun control, and address the far more pressing problem of excessive tolerance for misbehaviors large and small in the schools, will be the day the frequency and probability of Columbine-style massacres will diminish.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
Oh the answers are clear:
1) Disturbed punks
2) Absentee, neglectful, or just plain oblivious parents
3) A system discouraging the discipline, identification and/or removal of said punks
You forgot to mention:
Cops too afraid to do their job, standing outside, waiting for who knows what.
4) A disarmed populace
5) A public wholly dependent on the government to come to its aid and protection
What answers?
Huh? A couple of punk kids who felt sorry for themselves killed and wounded a bunch of their classmates - thats the answer.
It's funny that the writer then goes on to emphasize the least relevant or predictive of these behaviors: wearing unusual clothes.
Thanks for the ping Graybeard.
Seems the Left is deeply involved by their philosophies, and their perspectives.
Their answers to matters of this nature always seem to lean towards the taking of rights from everybody in favor of tolerance for the actions of a few.
I believe it’s why people call them IDIOTS.
7. School systems that teach the “death” culture.
What’s not to understand?
Unpopular disaffected latchkey kids with too much money decided to get even with the world.
If THEIR mothers had had as many kids as you do, those two wouldn’t have had the chance to become crazed loners - their little brothers would have narked them out in a heartbeat.
Congratulations on the next chiclet! Another month?
Name ONR school shooting that didn't involve SSRI's. Each shooter was either on SSRI's or had just stopped taking their meds. As far as I have been able to find out, each shooter was on SSRI's.
Now discovering WHY they were on meds, well, they are taught there is no God, they get away with "murder" already, they are taught that they have "rights" they don't have, and most of them are pu$$ies" and use the guns to get back at their detractors instead of learning to take care of themselves. There is no fulfillment in video games, their parents leave them with day care since birth and allow total strangers to "love" them,.....there are a million more, but that is our culture today.
ONR+ONE
Weren’t they all on antidepressants?
Jeeze......ONR=ONE
Yes, it’s hard to hide your gun collection and bomb-making equipment in a room with four younger brothers! Of course, a highly-evolved disaffected evil genius could enlist all the brothers, somehow ...
But I’d notice what was going on when I went in there to clean, even if the whole family wasn’t complaining about the smell. The catz are very good at finding anything at all peculiar.
Month and a half. Pat, the evil genius, says the Brother will be born on June 2.
So Pat’s the one you’ve got to keep an eye on...
My husband was one of four brothers who shared two bedrooms - they’d change roommates every year or so and were all very tightly bonded as a result. Kids need fraternal bonding way more than they need privacy.
Kids with the mix of spoiled/ignored/medicated turn out the worst. Kids require parenting and discipline, and the schools as well need to be able to enforce discipline.
What is a SSRI?
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