Columbine

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two of the victims of the Columbine massacre, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, reportedly were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. Both supposedly answered 'Yes' and were killed. Within days of their death, Cassie and Rachel were being hailed as modern-day martyrs and are seen by many American evangelicals as the sparks of a religious revival among teenagers. Cassie and Rachel, as innocents martyred for faith, also became useful symbols for those seeking to advance a conservative political agenda and to lay the blame for Columbine at the feet of their liberal opponents. According to police investigators, however, Cassie and Rachel may never have been asked by their killers about God. They may have been simply victims of a senseless crime rather than martyrs to a cause. The Martyrs of Columbine provides a careful examination of the available evidence and attempts to discover what really occurred. Despite these questions the martyr-stories continued to be told and the religious and political use of Cassie and Rachel continues. The popular significance of the martyrs of Columbine persists, and may even be growing. How and why is this happening? The Martyrs of Columbine is a groundbreaking investigation of what this tragedy has come and will come to mean in American religion, politics, and culture.

The definitive book on the school massacre that shocked a nation.

Has attending school in America become dangerous? Some have asked this question as a result of the violent attacks that have taken place within our nation's schools. In The Columbine High School Massacre: Murder in the Classroom, explore the events of April 20, 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold began a shooting spree in their high school. Discover the varying perspectives related to what caused this tragic event and how its repetition can be avoided. Book jacket.

**THE GROUNDBREAKING BESTSELLER AND CLASSIC** 'Excellent . . . amazing how much still comes as a surprise' New York Times Book Review 'Like Capote's In Cold Blood, this tour de force gets below the who and the what of a horrifying incident to lay bare the devastating why' People 'A staggering work of journalism' Washington Post 'The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror...' So begins the epilogue, illustrating how Columbine has become the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It makes the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this flame more urgent than ever. What really happened on April 20th, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we thought we knew was wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths or the Trench Coast Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on the scene, and he spent ten years on this book, the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists , and the killers' own words and drawings - several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.

This title examines an important historic event - the shootings at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. Easy-to-read, compelling text explores the two gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, details of the shootings, the names of those injured and killed, the influence of the video game Doom and the movie Natural Born Killers on the gunmen, the men who helped the gunmen acquire their weapons, the Trench Coat Mafia, the memorial services for those killed, the return to school, a visit by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, graduation, and the effects of this event on society. Features include a table of contents, glossary, selected bibliography, Web links, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and essential facts. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

This powerful retrospective analysis of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting aftermath considers society's response to the attack, long-term implications of the shooting, and the ways in which research and related policy must continue to move forward. An indispensable resource for anyone interested in learning about the long-term impact of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, Columbine, 20 Years Later and Beyond provides a comprehensive look at how the event unfolded, what has changed since the attack, and how this information can be used to prevent future mass shootings. Authors Jaclyn Schildkraut and Glenn Muschert, both experts on mass shootings, share their broad understanding of this tragedy and its aftermath. Columbine became the measuring stick against which all other mass shootings would be compared, and this book details with great sensitivity the ensuing changes to school security, law enforcement's response to active shooter situations, threat assessment practices, legislative efforts, and media coverage of unfolding situations. With delicacy and tact, Schildkraut and Muschert help to answer the painful question raised by a stone on the wall of the Columbine Memorial: "What have we learned?".

This essential volume explores many aspects of the Columbine school shootings in April, 1999. Topics covered include the historical and cultural background leading up to and following the massacre. Readers will evaluate the issues surrounding Columbine, such as the role of bullying at the high school, the shootings as a symbol of a greater culture of violence, and the impact of gun laws on the accessibility of weapons for senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Personal narratives are also featured, including Columbine high school seniors writing about the impact of the event on their lives, and a journalist looking back at the event that he covered years earlier.

Fixing Columbine uses the 1999 school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, as a metaphor for a much larger, and largely silent, epidemic of childhood dysfunction that has swept the nation in the last thirty years, claiming as its victims approximately 15 to 25 million American children annually. The focus initially is on an examination from the standpoint of experts in child development of the original causes of that epidemic, which include relatively poor parenting and parent substitutes in the relevant period, as well as otherwise toxic exposures to media, equally dysfunctional peers, and an environment in the schools and elsewhere that is often violent and anti-social relative to other recent periods in the country's history. In this context, it compares both the epidemic rates of childhood dysfunction and these original causes to the circumstances of children in other western, industrialized countries, and concludes with ample supporting data that the United States is alone amongst its international counterparts in the extent to which its children suffer in these respects. The book then tackles the question of how to fix Columbine, and in the course of this discussion examines the obstacle that the law and its incorporation of classical liberal principles throws into the equation. Specifically, it argues that the constitutional doctrines of parental autonomy and free speech both enabled the epidemic and impede all obvious law-based solutions. It also argues that related calls for a cultural return to communitarian principles and to religion are likely also to fail as solutions because they are inherently voluntary engagements that already have been rejected as inconsistent with the very liberal principles that caused the epidemic in the first place. Finally, the book provides as a partial answer a return to an earlier vision of the public schools, which imagined them as special enclaves of mandatory communitarianism in this otherwise liberal democracy. Reforms that would have the schools provide children with the lessons and protections that they are otherwise missing are suggested. And the notion is proposed that the relevant portions of any reformed curriculum be federalized to assure that all the nation's children could benefit from their curative properties. In this context, the obstacle of "local control" of public education is addressed and dismissed as a policy dinosaur. Coleman concludes that the costs of fixing Columbine are likely to be less both in economic and cultural terms than are the costs of ignoring the epidemic entirely, or of committing to reductions in the relevant liberties. "Everyone talks about Columbine and offers seat-of-the-pants analyses. What is needed is an account of the matter grounded in a thorough knowledge of the many contexts it touches. Doriane Coleman has written that book. She is at once passionate and dispassionate, and when you finish reading Fixing Columbine you know not only that you should care but why you should care." -- Stanley Fish, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago

On April 20, 1999, two teen boys went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. They killed 13 people, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. Detailed here is an overview of the Columbine High School shootings and an exploration into the forensic casework involved in recreating the scene of the crimes. Includes sidebars containing first-person accounts of the incident.