Columbine High School Massacre Research Paper

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold changed the way schools handle threat precautions. The secrets they left us; the boys being outcasts, bullies, and the trench coat mafia, leave us with a horrible tragedy to deal with. Which are just some of the proven myths in the shooting of Columbine.

It was 11:19 am when the first set of gunshots pierced through the walls of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In 49 short minutes, two high school seniors, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and 1 teacher, and then killed themselves. Months prior, the pair planned out the attacks in a series of journal entries and video diaries. The attack at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 raised many questions; the biggest one being, why did they do it? While the common media misconception is that the Columbine shooting was a war against jocks and outcasts, the shooting was actually perpetuated by psychopathy and depression in the shooters.

day two seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris carried out a full blown assault on the school during school hours with hundreds of kids and teachers present” (Levy, 1999). These two had a plan to kill as many people as they possibly could. They had multiple guns and explosives as they patrolled the halls looking for their victims. By the time the situation was resolved they had murdered 12 students and 1 teacher before they killed themselves.

Eric and Dylan honed their shooting skills at a make shift firing range in the mountains. They practiced shooting their weapons there away from the public and used the schools video equipment to record their actions. They talked about the damage that the bullets would cause to the person that they hit. Their intentions were to kill and injure as many people as possible putting a hit on everyone that they saw.

On a Tuesday in 1999, two armed teenagers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, entered their high-school and began shooting classmates. They shot and killed 13 and injured 21 before taking their own lives. The Columbine High School massacre made history. They acquired their guns by purchasing them from acquaintances.

Dylan Klebold seemed to be more calm and held together than Eric. No one would of expected Dylan to be a cold-blood killer because he had such great parents and seemingly great life. Dylan was a gifted student in school, but very shy and did not have many friends at Columbine High (“Dylan Klebold Biography”, 2016). Dylan held a job at a pizza shop, a love for violent video games, and a love for baseball

“Eric was not a depressive, like Dylan, that was for sure.” (196) Eric Harris was a psychopath. Eric found joy out of violence and didn't care who he hurt. He had no regrets over hurting people. Eric was sweet-faced and well spoken, like many other manipulative psychopaths. Adults, and even most kids would describe Harris as “nice.” Harris was actually cold, calculating, and homicidal. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, but psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath. Harris has a private journal, it opened with “I hate the f***ing world.” Harris’s hatred supposedly led him to revenge. This all make look like hate in Eric’s eyes, but really it was more about demanding other people.

The link between school violence and bullying has increased in attraction exponentially after the Columbine shooting. “The shooters were classified as gifted children who had allegedly been victims of bullying for four years.” Many of those who are close to them regarded them as “the losers of the losers (Ball)”. Klebold has also made remarks to his father about his hatred toward the jock culture in his high school. He added that Harris had been victimized by the jocks by stating to his father “They sure give Eric hell.” There is no doubt this helped drive them to the decision they made.

Eric Harris born on April 9, 1981 in Wichita, Kansas. His father Wayne Harris was a U.S. Air force transport pilot and his mother Katherine Ann Poole was a homemaker. His family would relocate often cause of his father but when his father retired they moved from Plattsburg, New York to Littleton, Colorado where he met Dylan Klebold. Dylan Klebold born September 11, 1981 in Lakewood, Colorado. His father Thomas Klebold and mother Susan Yassenoff were pacifists and would make Dylan and his older brother attend the Lutheran church. At home they would obey some rituals keeping with Klebold's maternal grandfather's Jewish heritage. In school Eric and Dylan were not very popular and were mostly bullied. In one of Dylan’s journal’s entries he wrote “ 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 number, and I asked and all, but no. No no no don't let the weird-looking Eric KID come along. Some of the past crimes of Eric and Dylan were stealing computers from a

His psychopathic ways showed through the tragedy of the shooting at Columbine. Eric is easily percepted as the mastermind of the Columbine shooting. In chapter forty-eight, it explains how we can infer this by his planner. “Each killer left hundreds of pages of writings and drawings and schedules in their day planners, and Eric’s are riddled with plans, logs, and results of experiments; Dylan shows virtually no effort. Eric acquired the guns, the ammo, and apparently the material for the bombs, and did the planning and the construction.” (page 305) Eric was taken as a psychopath for his violent ways and how he wrote in his journal. He detailed the murders out vividly and talked aggressively throughout his

Between the comings and goings of an average day in America there are momentous events that fall across the globe and stain history for better or for worse. These world-changing occurrences are often wrought with tragedy, and cling to the mind with the sharp talons of loss. More often than not, unfortunate events have a way of establishing a camaraderie among humanity, setting in motion a gentle shift in people 's disdain for others- if only for a moment- and allowing them to move together and reinvent the rules and techniques; readjusting and shifting until something that works is sealed into standard procedure. From turmoil and hurt, humanity corrects itself and grows. Of these events, the Columbine High School shooting comes to many as one that completely morphed America 's culture and sense of security. The assault was carried out by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students of the school and close friends. They had nourished the idea, feeding it hours of attention and deep consideration. Then, they went forward with it on April 20, 1999. The boys took the event seriously, setting up decoy bombs and then positioning their vehicles in the school parking lot with an arsenal and military methods of execution prepared to put in motion. They ending thirteen lives, including their own. The ruin caused by the shooting would have been greater, had the plan prevailed. Their actions had a severe impact on the way many people live and think. When one sifts through the information

In the book Columbine, written by Dave Cullen, is about two boys from Columbine High School who committed a huge crime. A fire bomb was placed in a cafeteria to kill everybody in the school. They wanted to beat the record and kill as many students and teachers as they possible could.They was known as the “worst school shooting in America.” Although the plan did not go as Eric, and Dylan had planned. Dylan is a sociopath and he has let his mind set on doing something he would feel bad for. Dylan’s parents had said,” He seemed an unlikely killer.” Dylan would talk before he would shoot, and make jokes as if it was hard for him to do. He felt as he needed to be a good friend to Eric, who has had a rough time at school as in

Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, James Eagan Holmes, Stephen Paddock. You may ask yourself what these names have in common. I’ll tell you. They’re the names of just few of several individuals who’ve perpetrated mass shootings in the United States, and another trait they share? None other than mental illness.

The first misconception is that the social cliques that occur in high schools across the nation has a role in this tragedy. Columbine is not simply a school shooting but is rather a shooting that the gunmen chose the school as their tool. School shooters tend to act impulsively and attack the targets of their rage mainly the students and faculty. Harris and Klebold planned for a year and dreamed much bigger. The school served as a means to a grander end, to terrorize the entire nation by attacking a symbol of American life. The shooters talk in numerous video tapes about their act being bigger than the Oklahoma city bombings. They boasted about making sure there bloody performance was bigger and more memorable. Klebold is particular was quoted as bragging about inflicting “the most deaths in U.S. history. Columbine was

One of the most notable and gruesome high school shootings have been that of the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999 and the Heath High School shooting on December 1, 1997. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen people at columbine high school and later shot themselves before the SWAT teams were able to reach the school. Prior to the attack, the two teenagers had made home videos apologizing to their parents and stating what they were planning to do. According to them, what drove them to commit this gruesome act was due to being bullied throughout school. These two had also been arrested before for stealing items and had been reported to the sheriff’s office for threatening to kill a fellow student in the past. Michael Carneal, a fourteen year old boy, was responsible for the deaths of three people and several others wounded at Heath High School. After the shooting, Carneal claimed he had been inspired by the movie “Natural Born Killers” and the video game “Doom”. He was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and pleaded mentally ill in the courtroom. Despite having different causes, Eric and Dylan lashing out their rage at students who had bullied them and Michael being heavily influenced by violent media, the effect was the same in both cases where many innocent people lost their lives. Their parents also played a huge role as there was no noticeable effort made by them to seek out help for the two teenagers despite having a troubled past before or for Michael who had been displaying signs of mental illness prior to the shootings. School shootings are mostly carried out by children with violent pasts or abuse, but children who may not act on their rage at an early age may still be subject to later on lash out during adulthood, which introduces several other threats towards the people around