Good Morning...Columbine

[Okla-homey]

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School Murders

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Ten years ago, on this day in 1999, two teenagers kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver.

At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 18, and Eric Harris, 17, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage.

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By 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded another 23 people. Shortly after noon, the two teenaged sociopaths turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide.

The crime was the worst school shooting in U.S. history (until 33 people, including the gunman, were killed in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007) and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the teen gunmen.

Investigations eventually determined that Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly. Their original plan was for two propane bombs to explode in the school's cafeteria, potentially killing hundreds of people and forcing the survivors outside and into the gunmen's line of fire. When the bombs didn't work, Harris and Klebold went into the school to carry out their murderous rampage.

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There was speculation that Harris and Klebold committed the killings because they were members of a group of social outcasts called the "Trenchcoat Mafia" that was fascinated by Goth culture. Violent video games and music were also blamed for influencing the killers. However, none of these theories was ever proven.

Columbine High School reopened in the fall of 1999, but the massacre left a scar on the Littleton community. Mark Manes, the man who sold a gun to Harris and bought him 100 rounds of ammunition the day before the murders, was sentenced to six years in prison.

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In the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, many schools enacted "zero tolerance" rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students.

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[sooner n houston]

And here in Texas the legislature is trying to pass a law to allow guns on college campus! :D

[TUSooner]

Too bad those little bitches killed themselves. They should have been skinned alive.

[StoopTroup]

Those two sure woke us all up.

That shame of it is that we still haven't done much to stop it.

The good point is glorifying their actions that day hasn't been done for the most part. Same for the Beltway Way Killers. Now if we could get people to stop stuffing kids in suitcases or going Home and killing their kids before committing suicide...:(

[OUMallen]

Too bad those little bitches killed themselves.


Exactly. If you think you're all gothy and hardcore and stuff, don't turn the gun on yourself.

[StoopTroup]

If you're truly gothy...wouldn't you just impale yourself on your sword?

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[Ardmore_Sooner]

Too bad those little bitches killed themselves. They should have been skinned alive.

You know I agree, but I look at Timothy McVeigh and how that whole thing went. Didn't he just smile as they are putting him down? Not any satisfaction out of that. They should've stuck him in a concrete room without anything in it and given the guy a slice of bread and bologna and a glass of water every and that's it.

[KC//CRIMSON]

10 years later, the real story behind Columbine

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Video from the Columbine High School surveillance camera shows Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold, carrying a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol in the cafeteria. They later killed themselves in the library.

They weren't goths or loners.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

Their rampage put schools on alert for "enemies lists" made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren't on antidepressant medication and didn't target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers' journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.

A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.

In fact, the pair's suicidal attack was planned as a grand — if badly implemented — terrorist bombing that quickly devolved into a 49-minute shooting rampage when the bombs Harris built fizzled.

"He was so bad at wiring those bombs, apparently they weren't even close to working," says Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, a new account of the attack.

So whom did they hope to kill?

Everyone — including friends.

What's left, after peeling away a decade of myths, is perhaps more comforting than the "good kids harassed into retaliation" narrative — or perhaps not.

It's a portrait of Harris and Klebold as a sort of In Cold Blood criminal duo — a deeply disturbed, suicidal pair who over more than a year psyched each other up for an Oklahoma City-style terrorist bombing, an apolitical, over-the-top revenge fantasy against years of snubs, slights and cruelties, real and imagined.

Along the way, they saved money from after-school jobs, took Advanced Placement classes, assembled a small arsenal and fooled everyone — friends, parents, teachers, psychologists, cops and judges.

"These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation," psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. "These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems."

Deceiving the adults

Harris, who conceived the attacks, was more than just troubled. He was, psychologists now say, a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath — a smart, charming liar with "a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control," Cullen writes.

Harris, a senior, read voraciously and got good grades when he tried, pleasing his teachers with dazzling prose — then writing in his journal about killing thousands.

"I referred to him — and I'm dating myself — as the Eddie Haskel of Columbine High School," says Principal Frank DeAngelis, referring to the deceptively polite teen on the 1950s and '60s sitcom Leave it to Beaver. "He was the type of kid who, when he was in front of adults, he'd tell you what you wanted to hear."

When he wasn't, he mixed napalm in the kitchen .

According to Cullen, one of Harris' last journal entries read: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don't … say, 'Well that's your fault,' because it isn't, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no. No no no don't let the weird-looking Eric KID come along."

As he walked into the school the morning of April 20, Harris' T-shirt read: Natural Selection.

Klebold, on the other hand, was anxious and lovelorn, summing up his life at one point in his journal as "the most miserable existence in the history of time," Langman notes.

Harris drew swastikas in his journal; Klebold drew hearts.

As laid out in their writings, the contrast between the two was stark.

Harris seemed to feel superior to everyone — he once wrote, "I feel like God and I wish I was, having everyone being OFFICIALLY lower than me" — while Klebold was suicidally depressed and getting angrier all the time. "Me is a god, a god of sadness," he wrote in September 1997, around his 16th birthday.

Klebold also was paranoid. "I have always been hated, by everyone and everything," he wrote.

On the day of the attacks, his T-shirt read: Wrath.

Shooter profiles emerge

Columbine wasn't the first K-12 school shooting. But at the time it was by far the worst, and the first to play out largely on live television.

The U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Education Department soon began studying school shooters. In 2002, researchers presented their first findings: School shooters, they said, followed no set profile, but most were depressed and felt persecuted.

Princeton sociologist Katherine Newman, co-author of the 2004 book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, says young people such as Harris and Klebold are not loners — they're just not accepted by the kids who count. "Getting attention by becoming notorious is better than being a failure."

The Secret Service found that school shooters usually tell other kids about their plans.

"Other students often even egg them on," says Newman, who led a congressionally mandated study on school shootings. "Then they end up with this escalating commitment. It's not a sudden snapping."

Langman, whose book profiles 10 shooters, including Harris and Klebold, found that nine suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, a "potentially dangerous" combination, he says. "It is hard to prevent murder when killers do not care if they live or die. It is like trying to stop a suicide bomber."

At the time, Columbine became a kind of giant national Rorschach test. Observers saw its genesis in just about everything: lax parenting, lax gun laws, progressive schooling, repressive school culture, violent video games, antidepressant drugs and rock 'n' roll, for starters.

Many of the Columbine myths emerged before the shooting stopped, as rumors, misunderstandings and wishful thinking swirled in an echo chamber among witnesses, survivors, officials and the news media.

Police contributed to the mess by talking to reporters before they knew facts — a hastily called news conference by the Jefferson County sheriff that afternoon produced the first headline: "Twenty-five dead in Colorado."

A few inaccuracies took hours to clear up, but others took weeks or months — sometimes years — as authorities reluctantly set the record straight.

Former Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass, author of a new book, Columbine: A True Crime Story, says police played a game of "Open Records charades."

In one case, county officials took five years just to acknowledge that they had met in secret after the attacks to discuss a 1998 affidavit for a search warrant on Harris' home — it was the result of a complaint against him by the mother of a former friend. Harris had threatened her son on his website and bragged that he had been building bombs.

Police already had found a small bomb matching Harris' description near his home — but investigators never presented the affidavit to a judge.

They also apparently didn't know that Harris and Klebold were on probation after having been arrested in January 1998 for breaking into a van and stealing electronics.

The search finally took place, but only after the shootings.

Meticulous planning

What's now beyond dispute — largely from the killers' journals, which have been released over the past few years, is this: Harris and Klebold killed 13 and wounded 24, but they had hoped to kill thousands.

The pair planned the attacks for more than a year, building 100 bombs and persuading friends to buy them guns. Just after 11 a.m. on April 20, they lugged a pair of duffel bags containing propane-tank bombs into Columbine's crowded cafeteria and another into the kitchen, then stepped outside and waited.

Had the bombs exploded, they'd have killed virtually everyone eating lunch and brought the school's second-story library down atop the cafeteria, police say. Armed with a pistol, a rifle and two sawed-off shotguns, the pair planned to pick off survivors fleeing the carnage.

As a last terrorist act, a pair of gasoline bombs planted in Harris' Honda and Klebold's BMW had been rigged apparently to kill police, rescue teams, journalists and parents who rushed to the school — long after the pair expected they would be dead.

The pair had parked the cars about 100 yards apart in the student lot. The bombs didn't go off.

Looking for answers at home

Since 1999, many people have looked to the boys' parents for answers, but a transcript of their 2003 court-ordered deposition to the victims' parents remains sealed until 2027.

The Klebolds spoke to New York Times columnist David Brooks in 2004 and impressed Brooks as "a well-educated, reflective, highly intelligent couple" who spent plenty of time with their son. They said they had no clues about Dylan's mental state and regretted not seeing that he was suicidal.

Could the parents have prevented the massacre? The FBI special agent in charge of the investigation has gone on record as having "the utmost sympathy" for the Harris and Klebold families.

"They have been vilified without information," retired supervisory special agent Dwayne Fuselier tells Cullen.

Cullen, who has spent most of the past decade poring over the record, comes away with a bit of sympathy.

For one thing, he notes, Harris' parents "knew they had a problem — they thought they were dealing with it. What kind of parent is going to think, 'Well, maybe Eric's a mass murderer.' You just don't go there."

He got a good look at the boys' writings only in the past couple of years. Among the revelations: Eric Harris was financing what could well have been the biggest domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil on wages from a part-time job at a pizza parlor.

"One of the scary things is that money was one of the limiting factors here," Cullen says.

Had Harris, then 18, put off the attacks for a few years and landed a well-paying job, he says, "he could be much more like Tim McVeigh," mixing fertilizer bombs like those used in Oklahoma City in 1995. As it was, he says, the fact that Harris carried out the attack when he did probably saved hundreds of lives.

"His limited salary probably limited the number of people who died."

USA TODAY

[MR2-Sooner86]

Ten Years After Columbine, It's Easier to Bear Arms
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER TIME Magazine


Monday April 20 marks 10 years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold permanently etched the words Columbine High School into this nation's collective memory. What happened that day in 1999 also seemed to wake America up to the reality that it had become a nation of gun owners - and too often a nation of shooters.

The carnage in Littleton, Colorado - 12 classmates and a teacher before the killers offed themselves - and the ease with which the teenagers acquired their weapons (two sawed-off shotguns, a 9-mm semiautomatic carbine and a TEC-9 handgun) seemed to usher in a new era of, well if not gun control, then at least gun awareness. (See pictures of crime in middle America.)
In the decade since, massacres perpetrated by deranged gunmen have continued - including the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and wounded many others. But something odd has occurred. Whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out. (See pictures of America's gun culture.)
This spring, for example, **Texas** lawmakers are mulling a new law that would allow college students to carry firearms to campus (Utah already makes this legal). "I think people weren't concerned about it first," says University of **Texas** graduate student John Woods, who has emerged as a spokesman for campus efforts to defeat the bill. "They thought, 'It's a terrible idea. Why would the government consider something like this?'" But as the debate on campus has heated up, that complacency has vanished, Woods explains to TIME. Students opposed to the bill plan a big rally on Thursday at the Capitol, he says.

But efforts like Woods' are up against powerful headwinds - and not just because of the powerful gun lobby that often strangles gun-control laws. Americans in general have cooled significantly to the idea of restricting gun rights. A poll released last week by CNN showed that support for stricter gun laws was at an all-time low, with just 39% of respondents in favor. Eight years ago that number was 54%.

Woods concedes that getting help to the psychotic, would-be killers of the world would probably be an even better fix. But he has a personal reason to take the issues seriously. Two years ago, he was in his apartment in Blacksburg, Virginia, listening to sirens sounding across the campus outside his window. A half-dozen friends of his were in the classroom where Cho Seung-Hui opened fire, and the names of some of the dead belong to people he knew. "The idealist in me is shocked and angry," Woods says, that restrictions on guns have eased rather than tightened in the wake of tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech. "But the cynic in me is not surprised at all. I think if this was peanuts or pistachios causing all these deaths, then we'd be all over it. But there is no amendment about peanuts or pistachios in the Bill of Rights. People on both sides just simply won't compromise." (See pictures form the Virginia Tech massacre.)

Indeed, the debate seems to be almost one-sided nowadays, with an ongoing backlash against gun control. Another law up for debate in **Texas**, for example, would prohibit most companies from barring employees from keeping guns in their cars in company parking lots. In Montana, only last-minute dealmaking between the House and Senate stripped a new law of language that would have given residents the right to carry concealed weapons with or without a permit.

Since 2003, at least eight states have either passed new laws giving most residents the right to carry concealed handguns or changed existing laws to make it harder for state officials to deny those permits, according to a 2008 study in the Yale Law & Policy Review. In the past couple of years, another trend has taken root, too: the expansion of the so-called Castle Doctrine, a legal theory enshrined in common law. It is used to justify deadly force in the defense of one's home, although it's usually interpreted to include a duty to try to avoid confrontation if one can. But in the past three years, the National Rifle Association has encouraged states to write the doctrine into statute, without imposing the attendant obligation to flee for safety. Many have done so, including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Dakota. In 2007, **Texas** took things a step farther, and expanded its law to protect shooters who act in self-defense or act to stop certain crimes anywhere the shooter has a legal right to be - such as at work, in his car or the like.

Other legal responses have been more creative still. A year after Columbine, Kentucky lawmakers agreed to repeal a law that two years before had given every preacher, priest or minister a special legal right to carry arms to the pulpit, with a handgun in the holster underneath the frock. Still, lawmakers refused to ban pistols completely from the pews. Instead, they left it up to churches to decide for themselves whether anybody, preacher or layman, can go to church carrying a piece.

The biggest change of all came last year at the Supreme Court, when the justices struck down what had been the strictest gun-control ordinance in the country - the ban on handguns in murder-plagued Washington, D.C. Taking only its second gun-rights case in 70 years, the court established for the first time that the Second Amendment, like the First, enshrines fundamental rights that belong to each citizen, not just the community as a whole. The implications for state and local gun-control laws haven't yet been fully understood - and probably won't for years to come as lower-court cases work out how to interpret the ruling.

[SicEmBaylor]

And here in *Texas* the legislature is trying to pass a law to allow guns on college campus! :D

On college campuses...

I'm actually helping lobby on behalf of that bill.

[starclassic tama]

what's your genius rationale behind that one?

[King Crimson]

what's your genius rationale behind that one?

I'd wager that:

1. it's a 2nd Amendment freedom.

2. in incidents like Columbine or Va Tech the perpetrator/gunman could be brought down by local fire/students carrying for self-protection more rapidly and thus cause less loss of life...instead of waiting for much slower, off-site official means (campus police, municipal police, etc,) to arrive.

personally, as a college teacher, i think it would be like putting a target on the teacher's chest. also, i don't know what the age to carry is in Texas but if it's 21....that leaves 60% of the undergraduate student body unable to bear arms. so, in junior and senior level classes, the kids are strapped. freshmen, soph level classes....only the perp. it doesn't really add up as a comprehensive strategy or policy in that sense.

understanding that the rejoinder is the teacher is allowed to carry/self-defend or act as a "peacemaker"...but, i personally don't want to have being the Sheriff as part of my unofficial classroom responsibility. if i wanted to be in law enforcement or the military, i would have chosen those as a career path.

i don't see this as a popular or efficacious solution despite it's libertarian "zing" and thrills.

[fadada1]

first point - my freshman english instructor (at OU) said he carried a pistol with him to class after his vietnam experiences - was paranoid about being ambushed. does that mean we should let guns on campus??? don't know.

second point - whether you believe in heaven and hell or not, there is a special place for them in the afterlife. most religions teach forgiveness, but this was senseless murder. i feel for those killed and their families.

[Curly Bill]

what's your genius rationale behind that one?

Gee, how about letting the good guys be armed?

...or we could leave things like they are so anyone sitting in a classroom is a defenseless sheep.

[starclassic tama]

so the key to less violence on campuses is more guns?

[Curly Bill]

so the key to less violence on campuses is more guns?

The key to homicidal maniacs not running amok on campus is the possibility that one of the sheep might shoot back.

[royalfan5]

The key to homicidal maniacs not running amok on campus is the possibility that one of the sheep might shoot back.
Considering that most these maniacs tend to be suicidal, I don't think it would deter them all that much.

[starclassic tama]

they would just make sure they had bigger automatic weapons or just go to bombs. look at the crimerates of countries like holland where basically nobody has guns, i don't know the exact figures but their murder rates are basically non-existant.

[Curly Bill]

Considering that most these maniacs tend to be suicidal, I don't think it would deter them all that much.

They're also cowards, if there's the possibility they might get shot before they carry out their messed-up plans many of them would think twice.

[Curly Bill]

look at the crimerates of countries like holland where basically nobody has guns, i don't know the exact figures but their murder rates are basically non-existant.

Just like Switzerland where almost every home has a gun it it. ;)

Soooooooooo......???

[King Crimson]

what % of college students do think are old enough to carry a gun?

[Curly Bill]

what % of college students do think are old enough to carry a gun?

Probably a fairly small % are either old enough, properly qualified, or willing to carry, but I think it could help serve as a deterrent.

...and let me add: I don't want large numbers of college students packing guns, I want those that are properly qualified to be packing guns.

I just don't think it's acceptable to continue putting kids in classrooms where they are largely defenseless, and where any psycho knows that if they want to get on the evening news, all they have to do is head down to a local school and start shootin sheep.

[King Crimson]

Probably a fairly small % are either old enough, properly qualified, or willing to carry, but I think it could help serve as a deterrent.

...and let me add: I don't want large numbers of college students packing guns, I want those that are properly qualified to be packing guns.

I just don't think it's acceptable to continue putting kids in classrooms where they are largely defenseless, and where any psycho knows that if they want to get on the evening news, all they have to do is head down to local school and start shootin sheep.

well, sure, but if 65-70% of the student body aren't old enough to legally carry a gun....then psycho simply goes to ECON 101 in the big lecture hall and has the sheep scenario with freshmen and sophs (who are not old enough to defend themselves). that's not hard to figure out.

like i said in my first post, it's not a comprehensive solution since it doesn't affect the entire student body--in fact, it enhances the danger to the underage. and therefore, really doesn't fill the boat as far as a "policy" change that offsets the existing ban on campuses, IMO.

[Curly Bill]

well, sure, but if 65-70% of the student body aren't old enough to legally carry a gun....then psycho simply goes to ECON 101 in the big lecture hall and has the sheep scenario with freshmen and sophs (who are not old enough to defend themselves). that's not hard to figure out.

like i said in my first post, it's not a comprehensive solution since it doesn't affect the entire student body--in fact, it enhances the danger to the underage. and therefore, really doesn't fill the boat as far as a "policy" change that offsets the existing ban on campuses, IMO.

I see what you're saying, but why not allow those old enough and qualified enough to at least defend themselves? I still say that the possibility that these school shooters might encounter someone who is armed would deter at least some of them.

...and security guards and police are nice, but as has often been proven in these situations it usually takes them a while to respond.

[King Crimson]

i can see the rationale and i think deterrence is probably a better argument than the conceal and carry student who sniper-style makes a clean solution of a would-be mass school shooting in the Physics lecture hall. a college or university in an area of the country with an active and educated gun owning populace, like Texas A&M or something, I could see what you say happening.

most university administrators (outside of being over-paid, well-tanned and lobotomized) are not going to see the risk of "allowing" guns on campus as worth the risk (however you want to define risk, as insurance, bad PR, or humane).

if something happens, like a "you slept with my gf" student on student dorm shooting, then the campus has no deniability since it "allowed" guns on campus....and all kinds of attending legal vulnerabilities. if guns are "banned", then the school is out of the legal picture except maybe for negligence/lack of oversight or something.

[Curly Bill]

i can see the rationale and i think deterrence is probably a better argument than the conceal and carry student who sniper-style makes a clean solution of a would-be mass school shooting in the Physics lecture hall. a college or university in an area of the country with an active and educated gun owning populace, like *Texas* A&M or something, I could see what you say happening.

most university administrators (outside of being over-paid, well-tanned and lobotomized) are not going to see the risk of "allowing" guns on campus as worth the risk (however you want to define risk, as insurance, bad PR, or humane).

if something happens, like a "you slept with my gf" student on student dorm shooting, then the campus has no deniability since it "allowed" guns on campus....and all kinds of attending legal vulnerabilities. if guns are "banned", then the school is out of the legal picture except maybe for negligence/lack of oversight or something.

You're right about the university administrators of course. Could we not take their culpability out of the picture through legislation that would allow students (meeting proper qualifications) to carry guns, in other words taking the ability to allow or not allow firearms totally our of their hands? Thus if something did go wrong it wouldn't be the campus administration who was to blame, but the legislators who made the law?

...all that being said: I recognize most campus officials would fight any attempt to allow qualified students or employees to arm themselves, since most campus officials are of the "guns are icky" crowd.

[King Crimson]

You're right about the university administrators of course. Could we not take their culpability out of the picture through legislation that would allow students (meeting proper qualifications) to carry guns, in other words taking the ability to allow or not allow firearms totally our of their hands? Thus if something did go wrong it wouldn't be the campus administration who was to blame, but the legislators who made the law?

what kind of legislators are going to make that law? that makes THEM culpable. though, I'd be curious to see what the legal literature is that makes guns illegal on a campus.



...all that being said: I recognize most campus officials would fight any attempt to allow qualified students or employees to arm themselves, since most campus officials are of the "guns are icky" crowd.

well, my point is less the perceived "politics" of university admins....you'd be surprised, most of these people these days come from at least some experience in the private sector, as corporate chiefs of some kind, "leadership types" or ex-politicos who look good in a suit and take a good picture and know how to fund raise. or: have advanced degrees in disciplines like "Public Affairs" or "Public Administration"....these aren't really "academics" proper in the sense that they've never trained to produce scholarly work or teach courses. they are more economists and PR type people. It's not the Ivy League image you see in the movies of the old, stern but venerated poetry or history professor who's moved up to the big office with an oak paneled office in a building with gargoyles and ivy. today's university is a big business....the people that do these jobs are people who negotiate athletic contracts with Nike more than ruminate on Keats, Homer, or ex-hippies from Berkeley....as far as the popular image goes.

the real issues are legal, insurance, PR, that sort of thing. economics.

[MR2-Sooner86]

so the key to less violence on campuses is more guns?

Yes. I mean we all know less guns equals less violence. Just ask Washington D.C. or Chicago! I mean it's not like right-to-carry states have their crime rates go down.


they would just make sure they had bigger automatic weapons or just go to bombs. look at the crimerates of countries like holland where basically nobody has guns, i don't know the exact figures but their murder rates are basically non-existant.

Why don't you look at Switzerland where nearly every male is required by law to own a gun. Also, nearly 25% of the population has a fully automatic weapon. Their gun crime is almost the lowest in the entire world.


well, sure, but if 65-70% of the student body aren't old enough to legally carry a gun....then psycho simply goes to ECON 101 in the big lecture hall and has the sheep scenario with freshmen and sophs (who are not old enough to defend themselves). that's not hard to figure out.

And that's the final mistake they make. I figured it was obvious more and more people are going back to school and freshmen courses have non-traditional students in them. Ah, the glory of right to carry, you never know who is packing. Like the old man in Tulsa who took out the thieves at Homeland with a 357.


if something happens, like a "you slept with my gf" student on student dorm shooting, then the campus has no deniability since it "allowed" guns on campus....and all kinds of attending legal vulnerabilities. if guns are "banned", then the school is out of the legal picture except maybe for negligence/lack of oversight or something.

I've heard the same argument from people who are against right-to-carry that there will be an increase in "anger" shootings. Guess what, it doesn't happen. Besides, if a guy really wants to shoot somebody, a license isn't going to change anything. Most guys I know in college own a gun and/or rifle and if they really wanted to shoot somebody they would go get it and do it.

[Vaevictis]

Why don't you look at Switzerland where nearly every male is required by law to own a gun. Also, nearly 25% of the population has a fully automatic weapon. Their gun crime is almost the lowest in the entire world.

Or look at Afghanistan where everyone has an AK-47.

You might look to poverty statistics as a clue. Looking at 2005 statistics regarding population living in poverty, for example, you find that Switzerland has 5.8% under the poverty line; the US 13.3%, and Washington DC 19.1%.

IMO, culture and economic situation have more to do with it than anything. People are just less likely to do something inappropriate with a weapon when their economic situation is good.

[Okla-homey]

Or look at Afghanistan where everyone has an AK-47.

IMO, culture and economic situation have more to do with it than anything. People are just less likely to do something inappropriate with a weapon when their economic situation is good.

By Jove, I think you may be onto something. Let's ban gun ownership by anyone who doesn't earn enough to pay taxes!

[King Crimson]

I've heard the same argument from people who are against right-to-carry that there will be an increase in "anger" shootings. Guess what, it doesn't happen. Besides, if a guy really wants to shoot somebody, a license isn't going to change anything. Most guys I know in college own a gun and/or rifle and if they really wanted to shoot somebody they would go get it and do it.

my argument you quote isn't about an increase in anger shootings, it's about how an example of one such thing would play out within a campus setting and the attending variables that cause the current status quo to likely remain.

before you steamroll through people's posts, read them first. and even better, in the context of previous posts. it's clear you are a gun's rights person, above all. i'm trying to think the issue in it's particulars, not paste the veneer of an existing belief into disagreement with others.

[picasso]

well it's obvious those two weren't going after bullies or jocks or some high falutin social group of kids. Just by looking at the pics of the victims, with all due respect.
they could have just lit up gym class.

[Pricetag]

I don't believe concealed carriers on campus will help much with shootings because no one has any idea of how they're going to react under fire.

Did anyone catch the "If I Only Had a Gun" documentary news show a couple of weeks back? They put the whole thing together under the guise of training college kids to carry, and then staged a surprise shooting during one of their courses. None of the kids managed to get the gun out of the holster before being shot.

It's easy to say that it wouldn't happen to me, but in the end, there are a very select few of us who really know. Too few to make a real difference, I think.

[KC//CRIMSON]

I don't believe concealed carriers on campus will help much with shootings because no one has any idea of how they're going to react under fire.

Did anyone catch the "If I Only Had a Gun" documentary news show a couple of weeks back? They put the whole thing together under the guise of training college kids to carry, and then staged a surprise shooting during one of their courses. None of the kids managed to get the gun out of the holster before being shot.

It's easy to say that it wouldn't happen to me, but in the end, there are a very select few of us who really know. Too few to make a real difference, I think.

+1

Tough talk doesn't necessarily equal being mentally capable of pulling out a gun and taking someone else's life either.

[jkjsooner]

Yes. I mean we all know less guns equals less violence. Just ask Washington D.C. or Chicago! I mean it's not like right-to-carry states have their crime rates go down.



That's a simplistic analysis. Both DC and Chicago have large inner city populations with a myriad of social issues. Any comparison to these cities and a rural area of Texas is meaningless.

In a way I agree that making guns illegal in DC is pointless considering Maryland and Virginia are so accessible to DC.

I would love to have tougher gun laws nationwide (gasp!) but if that isn't possible I think various state initiatives are useless.

[olevetonahill]

Whether Or Not Guns are ever allowed in a School .
Heres My 2cents
1st Point. I dont know anyone who has a CCP who was not pretty much raised around weapons , or who has very limited experience in handling them .
.
My 2nd point
If I had a 19 year old Daughter say, In School then Id much rather her be sittin in a Classroom , with some person who Had and knew how to use a weapon , if some idjit came burstin in the room shootin .

[Pricetag]

I figured it was obvious more and more people are going back to school and freshmen courses have non-traditional students in them.
Here's the solution right here. More non-traditional students! They could direct their stream of inane questions away from the professor and toward the gunman, boring him into submission.

[Dio]

they would just make sure they had bigger automatic weapons or just go to bombs. look at the crimerates of countries like holland where basically nobody has guns, i don't know the exact figures but their murder rates are basically non-existant.

What's the murder rate at gun shows?

[starclassic tama]

i would say the % of murder weapons purchased at gun shows would be pretty high

[Okla-homey]

Here's the solution right here. More non-traditional students! They could direct their stream of inane questions away from the professor and toward the gunman, boring him into submission.

I was a non-trad once. I resemble that remark. I might add, that were it not for for non-trads, there wouldn't be anyone in the classroom who had ever had a real job. Including the prof.

[Crucifax Autumn]

I really dunno about this one. I'm not a big fan of extremely drunk and high people running around with guns and sorry, but that's what college aged kids do! lol