by Anne Marie Palazzolo

Created on: June 13, 2009   Last Updated: June 18, 2009

Extreme Violence

The Columbine Shooting, like other acts of extreme violence, is difficult to comprehend. The shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, shocked their families, teachers, peers, and the nation when they went on a shooting rampage in April of 1999. While numerous hypotheses surfaced soon after the incident, most of them proved to be incorrect. It is important to recall that the shooters did not target "jocks," or any other specific social group in their school. According to their journal entries and notes, as much as a year prior to April 20, 1999, the pair were planning a massacre that they hoped would put them in the history books. In October of 1998, Harris wrote in his journal, "I want to burn the world, I want to kill everyone except about 5 people..." Both boys wrote journal entries and notes describing depression, feelings of being alone, an outcast, and misunderstood as early as 1997. The parents and friends of both boys also reported that the boys were often alone and had few friends. From this and other elements from the Jefferson County, Colorado Sherriff's Department's official report of the Columbine High School shooting retrieved from CNN's website, there is significant evidence that both shooters may have quite possibly had mental health issues as well as SAS (Student Alienation Syndrome). Such extreme and violent actions may very well have been the emotional pain and frustration the shooters had been experiencing over the preceding two years coming to fruition in a manner that would finally let their community and the world experience the struggle these two deeply troubled boys had been living with.

As aforementioned, the families of both shooters reported that the boys had lived normal childhoods, with Klebold even being part of a gifted and talented program in elementary school. The boys spent a lot of time together because of their friendship, as well as being co-workers at a local pizza restaurant, and working together for their school news network doing video production. Both sets of parents reported that the boys were very shy, and tended to keep to themselves. An argument could be made that the boys' parents may have taken some of the signs of withdrawal, alienation from their peers, anger, depression, and the numerous other characteristics represented in the journals of the shooters, less seriously on account of the boys' history of being shy and "keeping to themselves" for the majority of their lives.

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