Columbine

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold started arguably the beginning of what has become known as the “school shooting generation”. I was newly eighteen years old and one month and one day from graduating from my tiny West Georgia high school. At roughly 1:30 PM, our tiny high school was placed on its very first lock down as Eric and Dylan had begun to terrorize Columbine High School with bombs and a shooting rampage. 1,444.8 miles away from where my fellow classmates and I sat, terrified, paralyzed with fear of the unknown, another student body was being held, terrorized, paralyzed with fear as they watch their fellow classmates and teachers dying in front of them. We were released from school at 3:15 PM, only five minutes later than our usual time, but the terror was only beginning.

The next day, our school brought in metal detectors. We waited in line to get in the front door of the school (which none of us used unless it was a school event like an honors banquet or a play). Our book bags were confiscated and searched. We were not allowed to have them in school any more. A few guys who had been wearing trench coats, like Harris and Klebold had been, were taken to the side and searched more thoroughly. After that day, we were required to carry clear book bags. No trench coats were allowed. All of the doors stayed locked except for the front doors. No one was allowed to leave campus for lunch.(Although we did it anyway. Where there is a will there is a way.) Little creature comforts that the class of 1999 had enjoyed since the beginning of our tenure at high school were taken away in one fell swoop. School had become a miserable prison instead of a fun place to hang with your friends overnight.

In the 19 years that has passed since the Columbine shooting, our world has dramatically changed. From 9/11 to the war in the Middle East to our nation being completely divided, the crap’s been rolling downhill for almost two decades now. In those 19 years, we’ve had 122 students that were murdered at 10 major school shootings (qualified as four or more people having been killed, according to data from Axios), with the most recent being at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. There have been debates on gun control, on student privacy, on bullying, on video game violence. People feel very strongly that their opinions are right and they dare you to change their mind.

Columbine was not the first school shooting by any means. The first reported school shooting in the soon-to-be United States was the Pontiac’s Rebellion school massacre on July 26, 1764, where four members of the Lenape tribe walked in to a schoolhouse in what is now Greencastle, Pennsylvania. There they shot and killed the teacher and nine or ten (reports are varying on the amount of children present at the time). Only two children survived this first mass shooting. (According to data from k12academics.com.)

School shootings didn’t start with Columbine. In fact, the late 80’s and early 90’s saw more students shot in schools than have been reported in recent times according to data from Statistica. From 1992-1999 alone there were 466 homicides and deaths from school shootings. The deadliest mass murder at a school in United States history occurred in 1927 when on May 18, 1927, a Bath, Michigan School treasurer named Andrew Kehoe blew up the Bath Consolidated School by detonating dynamite in the basement of the school. He was responsible for killing 38 people, mostly children. Only one shot was fired in order to detonate dynamite in the car.

Naturally, everyone wants to debate why these mass murders occur. A great number of people blame the guns. This is just illogical. Maybe I have the world’s laziest guns, but they have never shot anyone or anything without someone pulling their trigger. Some people want to blame music or video games or bullying or any number of other things. Why can’t we just blame the person responsible? The shooter. Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris or Nikolas Cruz or Brenda Spencer? A sick, sad person was responsible for the murders, nothing else.

It seems that it has become physically impossible for our nation to agree on anything. If one side says the sky is blue, the other side will swear that it is orange. Suddenly opinions have become facts. We have Hollywood actresses pretending to be experts or politicians citing one-side statistics or reporters putting out false stories or reporting on events that have not even occurred yet.

Rest in peace Barbara Bush, who actually passed away a day after this article was published.

On November 29,1990, President George HW Bush signed the Crime Control Act of 1990 in to law, effectively making schools a gun-free zone. As already stated above, gun violence in schools hit an all-time high in the late 80’s and the passage of this bill in 1990 did little to curb this trend. What the Gun-Free School Zone act did was to effectually remove armed protection from our nation’s most precious resources: children.

Arguing about gun control is not helping protect our children. The only way to protect them is the same way that we protect politicians or celebrities: armed security. Apparently we as a nation value money more than we do our children. After all, when is the last time you walked past an armored truck with a gun free zone sign on it? Airplane tickets are more carefully vetted than someone picking your child up from school.

I understand where the Parkland students who are outspoken on gun control are coming from. They’re scared. I remember that feeling. I remember Columbine. These kids, however, are just that: scared kids. They haven’t lived long enough to understand the implications of what they are walking out of school, protesting for. The Second amendment was developed by our Forefathers to defend the very freedoms that they are willing to give up so freely. Guns can be used for protection of life and property and yes, they can also take away life and property if placed in the wrong hands. You can’t walk around afraid all of the time though. That’s no way to live this one magical life that you have been given.

What changes need to made? I’m not sure. I don’t know all of the answers. I don’t think any one person is that powerful. A meaningful discussion, not a heated debate, needs to take place with citizens of all opinions. We need to evaluate the facts and see which methods work and which methods don’t. On March 20, 2018, a mere month and six days after the Parkland shooting, an armed school resource officer stopped a shooting at a school in Maryland. Here we have seen actions that displayed favorable results. Yet this event didn’t spark a meaningful conversation about how to protect our students when it should have. Egos have become so enlarged that they are blocking the focus of the issue. Protecting our children.

People are so fearful of guns that they literally don’t use common sense. This statement from Jennifer just shows a lack of comprehension. A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. You wouldn’t call in a police officer with a baseball bat to defend you against a crook with a 9mm. We shouldn’t expect our children to protected by anything less than the best.

On this 19th anniversary of Columbine, we must start to put aside our differences and start working together to enact legislature that protects not only our children but our rights. Terrorism and tyranny have no place in America, for what else was the American Revolution fought for? History teaches us that we should not give in. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We are Americans. We should be proud to be Americans, producing the next generation of great Patriots to live without fear. We were not meant to cower in the corner in shame and fear. We were meant to go out in the storm, gun blazing, and say, “Come and get it!” This is our country and our legacy and if we do not protect its future, the United States of America will go the way of Rome.