columbine school shooting essay

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Columbine Shooting

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

A view from the parking lot at the rear of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, shows the cafeteria and library with windows missing on April 22, 1999, at the site where fourteen students and one teacher were killed on April 20, 1999 when two students opened fire on their classmates.

The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.

The Columbine shooting was, at the time, the worst high school shooting in U.S. history and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17. Subsequent school shootings, including at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, continue to raise questions about school safety and gun control in the United States.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in trench coats, began shooting fellow students outside Columbine High School, located in a suburb south of Denver. The pair then moved inside the school, where they gunned down many of their victims in the library.

By approximately 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 other people. Shortly after 12 p.m., the two teens turned their guns on themselves.

Investigators later learned Harris and Klebold had arrived in separate cars at Columbine around 11:10 on the morning of the massacre. The two then walked into the school cafeteria, where they placed two duffel bags each containing a 20-pound propane bomb set to explode at 11:17 a.m.

The teens then went back outside to their cars to wait for the bombs to go off. When the bombs failed to detonate, Harris and Klebold began their shooting spree.

columbine school shooting essay

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Columbine Shooting Victims

Victims of the Columbine shooting include Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

She Said 'Yes'

In the days immediately following the shootings, it was speculated that Harris and Klebold purposely chose athletes, minorities and Christians as their victims.

It initially was reported that one student, Cassie Bernall, was asked by one of the gunmen if she believed in God. When Bernall allegedly said, “Yes,” she was shot to death. Her parents later wrote a book titled She Said Yes , honoring their daughter.

However, it later was determined the question was not posed to Bernall but to another student who already had been wounded by a gunshot. When that victim replied, “Yes,” the shooter walked away.

Columbine Shooting Investigation

Subsequent investigations determined Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly, and the two teens originally had intended to bomb their school, potentially killing hundreds of people.

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. It also was speculated that Harris and Klebold had carried out the shootings as retaliation for being bullied.

Additionally, violent video games and music were blamed for influencing the killers. However, none of these theories was ever proven.

Through journals left behind by Harris and Klebold, investigators eventually discovered the teens had been planning for a year to bomb the school in an attack similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing .

Investigative journalist Dave Cullen, author of the 2009 book Columbine , described Harris as “the callously brutal mastermind,” while Klebold was a “quivering depressive who journaled obsessively about love and attended the Columbine prom three days before opening fire.”

Did you know? The deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Columbine Massacre Aftermath

In the aftermath of the shootings, many schools across America enacted “zero-tolerance” rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students. 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. Another man, Philip Duran, who introduced Harris and Klebold to Manes, also was sentenced to prison time.

Some victims and families of people killed or injured filed suit against the school and the police; most of these suits were later dismissed in court.

The list of school shootings in the United States grows longer every year, and includes the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, the Robb Elementary shooting in 2022, the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018 and the Umpqua Community College shooting in 2015, among others.

Gun control and disagreements over the interpretation of the Second Amendment continue to be a controversial issue in the United States, where 45,000 people die from gun-related injuries each year.

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Students flee the 1999 shooting at Columbine high school, where 12 students and one teacher were murdered.

Columbine at 20: how school shootings became 'part of the American psyche'

It was an attack that could have been exception. Instead, its brutality has been made routine

W hen the US’s glaring failure to respond to gun violence was spotlighted – again – after 50 people were killed and dozens wounded in mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, Tom Mauser looked on in pain.

Not only was the Christchurch attack a brutal reminder of the assault at Columbine high school that left his 15-year-old son, Daniel, dead, in 1999, but New Zealand’s decisive action to ban assault rifles threw into stark relief decades of US inaction.

“In America, we often see ourselves as this great model for the rest of the world in so many arenas, but this is not one of those arenas,” said Mauser. “… We do nothing, we just shake our heads and say our thoughts and prayers and wait for the next one to happen.”

Mauser spoke with the Guardian from Colorado, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine high school. The attack on 20 April 1999 saw two boys murder 12 students and one teacher before killing themselves.

It was an attack that could have been exceptional.

Instead, its brutality has been made routine. The series of mass killings that followed Columbine have failed to result in a dramatic change to US gun culture, unlike similar events in comparable countries.

“ It’s not so much the sheer numbers of voters who support the very extreme view of gun rights and are pro-gun, it is more that that group is incredibly mobilized politically,” said Philip Cook, the co-author of The Gun Debate.

“If you ask any of the pro-gun people: ‘have you written to your congressional representative, have you made a contribution, have you gone to a public meeting’ … the answer is more likely to be yes for somebody who is pro-gun.”

Columbine students in the aftermath of the shooting.

Columbine was not the first school shooting in the US, but it was the most deadly since 1966 . The media sprinted into the tempest of confusion and shock, firing out inaccurate reports about a “trenchcoat mafia” and how Marilyn Manson’s music influenced the shooters.

Eventually, the public learned other people bought the shooters’ guns and that their actual goal was to kill hundreds more people with poorly made bombs police found in the cafeteria and parking lot.

In its wake, mass shooter drills became a normal part of the education system. And the federal government froze.

From 1994 until February of this year, not a single gun restriction bill advanced in Congress. The drought ended with a bill to expand federal background checks to all gun buyers and most gun transfers, closing a loophole that allows unlicensed gun sellers to not run background checks. That bill is unlikely to be taken up by the Republican-held Senate, and the president has said he would veto it.

“ The USA is failing to protect individuals and communities most at risk of gun violence, in violation of international human rights law,” Amnesty International warned . “The right to live free from violence, discrimination and fear has been superseded by a sense of entitlement to own a practically unlimited array of deadly weapons.”

Public spaces: from sacred to killing grounds

School shootings are not the leading cause of gun deaths in the US. In 2017, there were 39,773 gun deaths in the US , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – about 60% of those deaths were suicide.

But the idea that public spaces such as schools, churches and music festivals can be turned so quickly into killing grounds is one of the many outliers in the US attitude towards guns.

Last month, a student at Columbine during the attack, Craig Scott, said at an anniversary event that he worried school shootings have become “a part of the American psyche”.

A Vote For Our Lives event in Littleton, Colorado, 2018.

When 10 students and teachers were killed in a shooting at Santa Fe high school in Texas in May 2018, a reporter asked a 17-year-old student, Paige Curry: “Was there a part of you that thought this isn’t real, this wouldn’t happen in my school?”

Curry answered, with chilling calm: “No, there wasn’t. It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”

Today’s teenagers were born after Columbine. They were children during Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook . They saw conservative politicians resist change after each attack, tightening the gun lobby’s grip on government, refusing to back even moderate gun reform.

And in 2018, they asked why an atrocity depicted in their textbooks continued to take place.

The February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school , ended the lives of 17 students and staff in Parkland, Florida.

Teenagers at the school broadcast their disgust on social media and to television cameras, spurring the most prominent movement against gun violence in decades.

The students delivered impassioned speeches and challenged critics, while also building up what would be one of the largest student demonstrations in US history – the March for Our Lives . Hundreds of thousands of people gathered at marches and walked out of class, including at Columbine high school, in March 2018 in support of stronger gun control measures.

March for Our Lives: five of the most powerful speeches – video

‘There is hope’

The groundswell of public support wasn’t just in the streets, but also represented in March for Our Lives’ demands, which included universal background checks for all gun sales and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines in the US, both of which are supported by a majority of Americans . In the 2018 midterm elections, Democratic candidates were more outspoken about guns, and won.

“There is hope on the part of folks that support reasonable regulation on guns and gun safety,” Cook said. “There has been some shift, maybe partly as the result of Parkland, and the remarkable effectiveness of those students in garnering attention and support.”

Mauser said the Parkland kids have had a “tremendous” impact, particularly in strengthening gun control in Florida. But Mauser has seen so many glimmers of promise before, that each one inspires a breath of caution.

“I really have to add, I’ve seen other things come up in the past. You think you are going to make some progress and it doesn’t sustain itself,” Mauser said. “I think these young people have the capability to keep it sustainable, but they have to keep working at it.”

Mauser knows better than most what it is like to tread through the muck of the gun control fight in the US.

Ten days after Daniel was killed, Mauser joined thousands of others to protest outside the National Rifle Association (NRA)’s annual convention in Denver, 15 miles from Columbine.

The NRA has for decades steered elections towards pro-gun candidates , despite being less financially powerful than other lobbies. It relies on a minority of impassioned individuals to block laws and regulations favored by most Americans.

Tom Mauser lost his 15-year-old son, Daniel, at Columbine.

Mauser for 20 years has come up against that dedicated minority while pushing for stronger gun control in Colorado. At the moment, he is supporting a “red flag” law that allows law enforcement or family to ask a judge to block someone considered to be in danger of harming themselves or someone else from purchasing a gun.

At key moments in these campaigns, Mauser wears the same shoes his son was wearing when he died in April 1999.

But the climate has changed since then, he said, with people who oppose gun restrictions more deeply entrenched than they were in the wake of Columbine, when he was able to speak with Republicans about possible gun restrictions.

“In the case of the red flag law, not a single Republican voted for the bill,” Mauser said. “The level of resistance and the intensity of the opposition has gone up significantly.”

No matter how badly Mauser wishes this all to change, the Columbine anniversary is simply another day without his son.

He and his family will steer clear of public events, instead privately remembering Daniel, a quiet, thoughtful boy who liked BBQ chicken and his dad’s homemade waffles .

“He was extremely shy and yet he chose to join the debate team at Columbine, where he had to get up and talk in front of people,” Mauser said. “That’s been the inspiration for me – if Daniel can do it, as tough as it is to do what I do and to talk about it, he took it on so I can take it on too.”

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The lasting legacy of the columbine massacre.

It’s been 24 years since two teenagers opened fire at a high school in Littleton, Colorado.

Go beyond the headlines.

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Twenty-four years ago today, two teenagers opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and killed 12 students and one teacher. The massacre shocked a nation that has now grown accustomed to violence at schools: Since 1999, according to a Washington Post tracker, there have been 377 campus shootings, and more than 349,000 students have experienced gun violence at school. 

Many of those attacks were directly influenced by the “Columbine effect.” Four years ago, Mother Jones reported that at least 100 mass shooting plots and attacks since 1999, including the Sandy Hook and Parkland massacres, were directly influenced by Columbine; that number, which relied on public records, was likely an undercount. But Columbine wasn’t America’s first school attack. Why has it inspired so many mass shooters?

According to criminal justice researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley, Columbine’s potent legacy can be attributed to the dawn of contemporary mass media: It took place during the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle and the “year of the net.” “This was the dawn of the digital age of perfect remembering,” Peterson and Densley wrote for The Conversation , “where words and deeds live online forever.”

“At the time, Columbine was considered a once-in-a-generation type of tragedy — one that few other people in our country would ever have to contend with,” wrote survivor Craig Nason in an essay for NBC Think last year. He continued: “I think about how we vowed to ‘never forget’ Columbine. How we would make sure the next generation would be safer. The opposite has happened. … It is a burden too heavy.”

What to Know Today

ICYMI: As more politicians lose friends and family to gun violence, will it change how they govern? [ The Trace ]

How can Chicago prevent outbreaks of violence among young people? Public safety experts and youth advocates have some ideas — and most of them don’t involve policing. [ WBEZ ] Context: Last summer, teenagers talked to The Trace’s Justin Agrelo about their experience of Chicago’s gun violence crisis, and how they think the city should address it.

Two Texas cheerleaders were shot outside an Austin-area grocery store after one of them mistakenly entered the wrong car. The incident follows two similar high-profile shootings that occurred in the past week: Homeowners shot Ralph Yarl, in Kansas City, Missouri, and killed Kaylin Gillis, in upstate New York, after each victim mistakenly approached a house. [ NBC ]

Seven mass shootings — defined as an incident in which four or more people were injured or killed, excluding the shooter — took place on April 15, the most of any day so far this year. The U.S. has already seen more than 160 mass shootings in 2023, with attacks taking place in almost every type of public and private space. [ CNN / Stacker ]

Gun reform proponents in Congress plan to again push for tougher firearm laws, but they aren’t optimistic that the fight will yield any results. [ The Hill ]

Tennessee lawmakers gave final approval to a bill that would further shield gun companies from civil liability lawsuits; the legislation now heads to Governor Bill Lee. The bill comes as Lee’s administration has been urging the General Assembly to pass a red flag law . In a letter, dozens of Nashville musicians — including Sheryl Crow, Kacey Musgraves, and Jason Isbell — joined the governor in calling for an extreme risk protection order law. [ Associated Press / The Tennessean ]

In Michigan, the Democratic-controlled Legislature sent a red flag bill to Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s desk. Whitmer signed legislation expanding background checks and mandating safe firearm storage into law last week. [ Detroit Free Press ]

Family members of children killed in the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde waited more than 12 hours to testify before a Texas House committee on a bill to raise the age to purchase some semiautomatic rifles to 21. [ The Texas Tribune ] Context: Uvalde families have rallied around the push for a raise-the-age law . They view it as a compromise, grounded in the reality that Texas is a gun state.

An Ohio grand jury decided that eight Akron police officers involved in last summer’s killing of Jayland Walker, whom the officers shot 46 times, will not face criminal charges. In response to the decision, Democratic U.S. Representative Emilia Strong Sykes, of Akron, said she will request a Justice Department investigation into the Police Department. [ Akron Beacon Journal ]

Three people, including two teenagers, were arrested and charged with murder in connection to the mass shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Dadeville, Alabama. Per the local district attorney, the teens will be tried as adults. [ USA TODAY ]

A Shooting Survivor Who Refuses to Let a Massacre Define Her : Anne Marie Hochhalter was a Columbine High School junior eating lunch with her friends when two gunmen stormed the lawn. (February 2016)

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New York’s Imperfect Attempt to Unlock Resources for Survivors of Mass Shootings

Lawmakers wanted to help more victims by defining “mass shootings,” but they came up short.

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Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?

By Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson

It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother Abel’s brains in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks, and we have just taken that for granted all our lives. Is it a symbol of hope or hopelessness? The world’s most famous murder-suicide was also the birth of the death icon – the blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately, for all of their inspiring morality, nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue.

A lot of people forget or never realize that I started my band as a criticism of these very issues of despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn Manson has never celebrated the sad fact that America puts killers on the cover of Time magazine, giving them as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars. From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes. They just created two new ones when they plastered those dip-shits Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris’ pictures on the front of every newspaper. Don’t be surprised if every kid who gets pushed around has two new idols.

We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole purpose is to destroy all of mankind, and we grow up watching our president’s brains splattered all over Texas. Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised. Does anyone think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If television had existed, you could be sure they would have been there to cover it, or maybe even participate in it, like their violent car chase of Princess Di. Disgusting vultures looking for corpses, exploiting, fucking, filming and serving it up for our hungry appetites in a gluttonous display of endless human stupidity.

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When it comes down to who’s to blame for the high school murders in Littleton, Colorado, throw a rock and you’ll hit someone who’s guilty. We’re the people who sit back and tolerate children owning guns, and we’re the ones who tune in and watch the up-to-the-minute details of what they do with them. I think it’s terrible when anyone dies, especially if it is someone you know and love. But what is more offensive is that when these tragedies happen, most people don’t really care any more than they Would about the season finale of Friends or The Real World. I was dumbfounded as I watched the media snake right in, not missing a teardrop, interviewing the parents of dead children, televising the funerals. Then came the witch hunt.

Man’s greatest fear is chaos. It was unthinkable that these kids did not have a simple black-and-white reason for their actions. And so a scapegoat was needed. I remember hearing the initial reports from Littleton, that Harris and Klebold were wearing makeup and were dressed like Marilyn Manson , whom they obviously must worship, since they were dressed in black. Of course, speculation snowballed into making me the poster boy for everything that is bad in the world. These two idiots weren’t wearing makeup, and they weren’t dressed like me or like goths. Since Middle America has not heard of the music they did listen to (KMFDM and Rammstein, among others), the media picked something they thought was similar.

Responsible journalists have reported with less publicity that Harris and Klebold were not Marilyn Manson fans – that they even disliked my music. Even if they were fans, that gives them no excuse, nor does it mean that music is to blame. Did we look for James Huberty’s inspiration when he gunned down people at McDonald’s? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch? What about David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel, or should we blame the fact that his father bought him the guns he used in the Springfield, Oregon, murders? What inspires Bill Clinton to blow people up in Kosovo? Was it something that Monica Lewinsky said to him? Isn’t killing just killing, regardless if it’s in Vietnam or Jonesboro, Arkansas? Why do we justify one, just because it seems to be for the right reasons? Should there ever be a right reason? If a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn’t he old enough to be held personally responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he’s a teenager, should someone else be blamed because he isn’t as enlightened as an eighteen-year-old?

If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too

America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality, and people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity. Deep down, most adults hate people who go against the grain. It’s comical that people are naive enough to have forgotten Elvis , Jim Morrison and Ozzy so quickly. All of them were subjected to the same age-old arguments, scrutiny and prejudice. I wrote a song called “Lunchbox,” and some journalists have interpreted it as a song about guns. Ironically, the song is about being picked on and fighting back with my Kiss lunch box, which I used as a weapon on the playground. In 1979, metal lunch boxes were banned because they were considered dangerous weapons in the hands of delinquents. I also wrote a song called “Get Your Gunn.” The title is spelled with two n’s because the song was a reaction to the murder of Dr. David Gunn, who was killed in Florida by pro-life activists while I was living there. That was the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people killed someone in the name of being “prolife.” The somewhat positive messages of these songs are usually the ones that sensationalists misinterpret as promoting the very things I am decrying.

Right now, everyone is thinking of how they can prevent things like Littleton. How do you prevent AIDS, world war, depression, car crashes? We live in a free country, but with that freedom there is a burden of personal responsibility. Rather than teaching a child what is moral and immoral, right and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the laws that govern us are. You can always escape hell by not believing in it, but you cannot escape death and you cannot escape prison.

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It is no wonder that kids are growing up more cynical; they have a lot of information in front of them. They can see that they are living in a world that’s made of bullshit. In the past, there was always the idea that you could turn and run and start something better. But now America has become one big mall, and because of the Internet and all of the technology we have, there’s nowhere to run. People are the same everywhere. Sometimes music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like someone else feels like we do. I’ve always tried to let people know it’s OK, or better, if you don’t fit into the program. Use your imagination – if some geck from Ohio can become something, why can’t anyone else with the willpower and creativity?

I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, though I was begged to be on every single TV show in existence. I didn’t want to contribute to these fameseeking journalists and opportunists looking to fill their churches or to get elected because of their self-righteous finger-pointing. They want to blame entertainment? Isn’t religion the first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, sing songs and dedicate themselves in eternal fandom. Everyone will agree that nothing was more entertaining than Clinton shooting off his prick and then his bombs in true political form. And the news – that’s obvious. So is entertainment to blame? I’d like media commentators to ask themselves, because their coverage of the event was some of the most gruesome entertainment any of us have seen. I think that the National Rifle Association is far too powerful to take on, so most people choose Doom , The Basketball Diaries or yours truly. This kind of controversy does not help me sell records or tickets, and I wouldn’t want it to. I’m a controversial artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people’s ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we live in, and I’ve always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don’t expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue – it’s been happening every day for a long time.

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Retro Report

20 Years After Columbine, What Have We Learned?

A horrifying mass shooting that unfolded onscreen in real time has become a recurring nightmare with a well-worn script.

columbine school shooting essay

By Clyde Haberman

Columbine wasn’t the first. There had been other mass shootings at American schools. One in 1997 killed three students and wounded five others at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. A 1998 massacre at a middle school in Jonesboro, Ark., left five dead and 10 wounded.

But no earlier burst of gun insanity shattered the national psyche like the carnage on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., outside Denver. The very name Columbine — rooted in the Latin word for dove, an enduring symbol of peace — was instantly transmogrified into a metaphor for a nation gone haywire in its embrace of devastating weaponry. Twenty years later, the attack remains as vivid as yesterday for many Americans, and not only because of its appalling casualty count: 13 killed and 21 wounded, excluding the heavily armed shooters, teenage students who took their own lives.

Columbine was more than the deadliest assault till then on a high school in the United States. It was a defining horror of the nascent digital age. Much of it unfolded onscreen in real time. Cowering students used cellphones to report what they had seen or heard. The possible impact that violent video games and internet trawling had on adolescent minds came wrenchingly to the forefront of debate.

In line with its mission of examining the past to try making sense of the present, the Retro Report series of video documentaries recalls Littleton’s nightmare on its 20th anniversary to explore what we have learned about school shootings across the years — and have yet to learn.

Among the unknowns is just how severe the threat is to America’s vulnerable young and their teachers. Some analyses show an increase in Columbine-like episodes, others a decline. Researchers disagree even on methodology. Do you include gang fights in the tally of misery? How about incidents that take place near school grounds but not on them?

But the knowns are self-evident, and unspeakable. From their writings, we know that Columbine became a touchstone for some of this country’s most unhinged. It inspired the armed young men who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 and 26 first graders and their instructors at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Less clear was its influence on the shooter who took 17 lives last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Still, the madness spoke for itself.

The derangement extends beyond schools to other venues once considered sanctuaries against a raging world. Concertgoers at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas came under fire in 2017, with 58 of them killed. Houses of worship are no longer havens. Witness the 9 shooting deaths in 2015 at a black church in Charleston, S.C. , the 11 deaths last year at a synagogue in Pittsburgh , the 6 at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. , in 2012, and the periodic assaults on mosques, even if none in this country have approached the carnage last month in Christchurch, New Zealand , where 50 Muslims were gunned down at prayer.

For people fearful of falling victim themselves someday, the question is no longer “Why me?” but, rather, “When me?”

Gun Violence Archive , which tracks the mayhem online, defines a mass shooting as one with four or more casualties. Through April 10, the archive had recorded 80 incidents in the United States this year, with at least 103 people killed and 284 wounded. Last year’s numbers were 340 mass shootings — an average of nearly one a day — with at least 373 deaths and 1,347 wounded. The Washington Post calculated earlier this month that in schools alone, in the years since Columbine, more than 223,000 children have been exposed to gun violence during classroom hours. Over the last 50 years, more Americans have been killed by guns (about 1.6 million through homicide or suicide) than in all United States wars combined (about 1.4 million).

By now, mass shootings are so ingrained in the national character that they come with their own well-worn script. Political and religious leaders dutifully send “thoughts and prayers.” News organizations deconstruct the killers’ lives, investigations that invariably boil down to the painfully obvious: these people had come unglued. Television anchors debate whether the shooters should be publicly identified. And the National Rifle Association stays calculatedly quiet for a day or two, then truculently reasserts its absolutist opposition to any form of gun regulation.

There was a time when federal lawmakers were sufficiently sickened by the violence to act. In 1994, Congress passed a law banning assault weapons. But that statute expired 10 years later. Since then, the government has done nothing but gladden the N.R.A.’s heart. Federal law now largely protects the firearms industry from lawsuits, though Sandy Hook families are trying to test the extent and depth of that shield. For its part, the United States Supreme Court has strengthened gun owners’ rights under the Second Amendment.

And through it all, death keeps calling. Last month, two teenage Parkland survivors psychically scarred by their ordeal took their own lives , as did the father of a Sandy Hook first-grader who was killed. “He was a brokenhearted person,” said another father who lost a child in the massacre. “As we all are.”

The video with this article is part of a documentary series presented by The New York Times. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report, led by Kyra Darnton, is a nonprofit media organization examining the history and context behind today’s news. To watch more, subscribe to the Retro Report newsletter , and follow Retro Report on YouTube and Twitter .

Gun Violence in America

A Historic Case: On Feb. 6, an American jury convicted a parent for a mass shooting carried out by their child for the first time. Lisa Miller, a reporter who has been following the case since its beginning, explains what the verdict really means .

Pushing for Action: A group of parents reeling from a mass shooting at their children’s private Christian school in Nashville believed they could persuade the Republican Party to enact limited gun control. The Tennessee legislature proved more hostile than they imagined .

Echoing Through School Grounds: In a Rhode Island city, gunshots from AR-15-style weapons have become the daily soundtrack for a school within 500 yards of a police shooting range. Parents are terrified, and children have grown accustomed to the threat of violence .

The Emotional Toll: We asked Times readers how the threat of gun violence has affected the way they lead their lives. Here’s what they told us .

Gun Control: U.S. gun laws are at the center of heated exchanges between those in favor and against tougher regulations. Here’s what to know about that debate .

columbine school shooting essay

My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story

Talk details, about the speaker.

Sue Klebold

Sue Klebold's resource list

I survived Columbine 23 years ago. Is America finally tired of all this death?

Image: Columbine High School Shooting

In April 1999, I survived the Columbine shooting . At just 17 years old, I was forced to process the murder of my friends, the trauma of my community, and the unique attention the world paid to my experience. At the time, Columbine was considered a once-in-a-generation type of tragedy — one that few other people in our country would ever have to contend with. 

If only that were true.

At the time, Columbine was considered a once-in-a-generation type of tragedy.

The phrase “mass shooting” (most often defined as four or more firearm deaths in one incident) was barely a part of our vocabulary 23 years ago. When I hid with dozens of classmates in a choir teacher’s office at Columbine High School, I would never have dreamed my nightmare would become America’s new normal. But now mass gun violence in the United States happens with breathtaking frequency. 

According to the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, the U.S. has experienced 274 mass shootings since 2009 alone. Thousands of survivors are now part of a club that nobody wants to join . Many are plagued with anxiety that they or their loved ones will become part of it next. As a father of four kids, the eldest of whom just finished his first year of college, I share those fears. Why assume “it won’t happen to me” when guns are now the No. 1 killer of children and adolescents in the United States ? It very well could happen to you. 

I think about how we vowed to “never forget” Columbine. How we would make sure the next generation would be safer. The opposite has happened. Virginia Tech. Aurora . Newtown . Orlando . Las Vegas . Parkland . El Paso . Buffalo . Uvalde . It is a burden too heavy. 

You likely have memories associated with some of these shootings. What you were doing when you heard. Who you were with. How it affected you. When the headlines break, I often hear from friends, family, and colleagues: “I’m so sorry you have to relive this again.” The truth is, we are all reliving it again on some level. The steady cadence of shock, grief and pain is our collective story.

This is America: According to one recent study, 71 percent of us view gun violence as a major issue facing the country, and 45 percent believe it is at a crisis level . Nearly half of our nation today is in a posture of crisis response. 

So now that the “thoughts and prayers” have been shared, what can we do together? 

So now that the “thoughts and prayers” have been shared, what can we do together?

First, politicize it. Politicians love to tell us not to “politicize these tragedies” following mass shootings. But that statement itself is a political demand — one that protects the status quo. We should expect political solutions from our leaders immediately. We should demand that evidence-based policies are heard. We should march for our lives. 

Not getting political on mass gun violence only risks more of the same. Ask a parent who lost a child to gun violence a simple question: Would you care if an earlier tragedy was politicized if it meant getting your son or daughter back? Of course not. Grief doesn’t have a political affiliation. 

Survivors like me are interested in the possibility of politics (or more accurately, policy ) to change the narrative. So let’s make it our expectation. In a country where more than 110 people reportedly die of gun violence every day, it’s time to contact your elected officials. Ask them what they’re doing to prevent and end gun violence in your community. And demand answers.

Craig Nason graduated from Columbine High School in 2000.

Then, change the culture. It’s impossible to ignore the role white supremacy , misogyny and extremism plays in so many mass gun violence events. In many mass shootings, the shooter has exhibited dangerous warning signs before the shooting. These known risk factors for shooters have found plenty of space to take root and flourish in our democracy. It’s a reality we must acknowledge and then challenge. 

How do we do it? Dismantling complex systems like racism and toxic masculinity is long-term work. But we all have a role to play right now. Seek out successful violence prevention programs in your city and volunteer. Look for established leaders who are setting the pace and ask how you can get involved. Consider supporting youth programs that mentor boys or young men in under-resourced communities. Donate to community-led organizations that are leading the charge on these parallel issues. 

Because it’s about the guns. The United States has roughly 5 percent of the world’s population and over 30 percent of the world’s mass shootings . We are the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than people. The data make it clear: Our longtime love affair with firearms plays a leading role in our gun violence epidemic. We’ve largely ignored that factor and it has only perpetuated the problem.

Want more articles like this? Follow THINK on Instagram to get updates on the week’s most important political analysis  

And while politicians love to act like this is an impossibly polarizing issue, perhaps we’re not as divided as we think. The majority of Americans actually believe Congress should pass more extensive gun legislation. According to a 2015 Public Policy Polling survey , 83 percent of gun owners support expanded background checks. In a nation where an estimated 4.6 million children live in a home with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked, secure storage requirements would be a game changer. Let’s promote and advocate for these consensus positions and save lives together.

A new generation has grown up since Columbine ; 310,000 more students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence since that day in 1999 when I escaped with my life. They deserved better. But it’s not too late to change the story for the next generation. No American should have to experience the trauma I went through. This time can be different, but it takes the participation of us all. Will we as a society be complicit? Or will we say, finally, enough death. The time for action is now.

  • The racist Catch-22 of the Uvalde shooting aftermath
  • After 40 years in law enforcement, this is my message to the GOP about gun rights
  • China and Russia mock the U.S. over gun violence

Craig Nason is a school shooting survivor who graduated from Columbine High School in 2000. He still lives in Littleton, Colorado, with his wife and four children. He works with the Denver-based nonprofit organization the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking .

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What We've Learned From School Shootings

When school shootings happen, experts work backwards to connect the dots. After the tragedies at Columbine High School and Virgina Tech, a number of studies have been conducted to identify potential threats. The disclaimer is always the same: every case is different.

Dr. Park Dietz, forensic psychiatrist and criminologist Roger Depue, former chief of the FBI's Behavior Science Unit

Related NPR Stories

Around the nation, districts train teachers for school shootings, among schools with shootings, a 'tragic fraternity', shootings in newtown, conn., schools re-examine security after newtown shooting.

CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Celeste Headlee in Washington. Neal Conan is away. After the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last month, is there anything that can be learned about predicting this type of violence? There are many studies that look at how to identify potential threats, but the disclaimer is always the same: Every case is different.

Not every loner is angry. Not every angry young man is violent. So today we'll look at where the research currently stands and what's being done in schools to act on threats once they've been identified. If you work in a school, we're wondering: How has your school's approach to security changed? Our number is 800-989-8255. The email address is [email protected]. And you can join the conversation at our website as well. Just go to npr.org, and then click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later on the program, NPR's Mike Pesca will talk about the blown knee heard round the NFL, but first what we've learned from past school shootings. Joining us now from member station KUCI is Dr. Paul Dietz. He's a forensic psychiatrist and president of Park Dietz and Associates. He was brought on as a consultant after the Columbine shooting. Welcome.

PARK DIETZ: Thank you. Good to be with you, Celeste, despite the terrible topic.

HEADLEE: Absolutely. You know, I read that you were actually brought in to do a psychological autopsy after Columbine. What exactly is that?

DIETZ: Well, that consists of an effort to understand the motivation and mental state of people who are no longer available to be interviewed. And we did that by interviewing 50 other people who knew the shooters, by reviewing enormous numbers of documents and by studying everything made available to be studied.

HEADLEE: Well, I wonder, you know, we hear all the time, as I said, every case is different, every shooter is different, every motivation is different. So what do we learn from a psychological autopsy? How does that help us predict the next shooter, the next person who might do something like this?

DIETZ: Well, in that instance it was very confirmatory of what I had been able to learn from studying prior incidents. By 1993 it was crystal clear that there were about 10 features that mass murderers had in common, and that's proved to be true regardless of whether they act in schools, in workplaces, or in the public arena, at restaurants and movie theaters and so on.

So we know very well what these people have in common, but that's a different issue from prediction. And the main thing we've learned does not really come from research, it comes from long experience, managing cases in which someone has had the good sense to bring to the attention of careful decision-makers their concerns about someone that they know.

And what we've learned over the years is that threats, when they're actually uttered, are a very late-stage warning sign, preceded universally by many other warning signs. Now, those other warning signs, the early indicators, are quite non-specific, and so what becomes necessary is a good system for receiving reports of the early warning signs and then thoughtfully gathering additional information to see which ones require any intervention at all.

HEADLEE: Let me interrupt you for just one second, Doctor. We're speaking with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz. It sounds like you're saying we learn more that's useful in prevention from attacks that don't happen than from those that do. Is that correct?

DIETZ: Well, we have to look at both, but if you only look at the attacks that do happen, you'll miss the big picture. By looking at thousands of cases of threats that were managed successfully, we see that it's quite easy in the vast majority of cases to interrupt a progression that could result in a mass murder, in a suicide, in sabotage or in other lesser forms of harm.

HEADLEE: Well, that's really interesting. As I said, we're talking to Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, president of Park Dietz and Associates. And I want to reiterate a question to you. If you work in a school, we wonder how your school's approach to security has changed. The number is 1-800-989-8255. Our email address is [email protected]. And join the conversation as well by going to our website, npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Here on the line with us is James in Rock Island, Illinois. James, what has changed? You work in a school, I assume?

JAMES: Yeah, I actually teach at a community college here in Illinois, and yesterday we did our in-service. And I was just wondering if your guest has heard of this. It's a program, the acronym is called ALICE, and this was given to us yesterday. We started school again, and obviously this was because of what happened with the school shooting right before the Christmas break.

But some of the things that it recommended were telling your students not to hide and telling your students that if an active shooter comes into a classroom, one of the things they should do is throw all their books and laptops or whatever they have, basically, at the shooter and then try to tackle the shooter.

And a lot of us were, I think, frankly pretty surprised by this advice.

HEADLEE: All right, that's James. Thanks very much. That's James in Rock Island, Illinois. Doctor, had you heard of this particular program?

DIETZ: I haven't, and it sounds absurd if that's actually what was promoted. The - first of all, what we're talking about here is secondary prevention once an attack's in progress, and far more important is primary prevention so it never gets to that point, and that's been the focus of my life's work. Now...

HEADLEE: Well, let's bring in someone else who is also involved in that. Roger Depue is also with us, founder of the Academy Group, Inc., former chief of the FBI's Behavior Science Unit. He also served on the Virginia Tech review panel. And he's joining us today from member station WVTF in Charlottesville, Virginia. Roger, thanks for being with us.

ROGER DEPUE: It's a pleasure to be here, Celeste.

HEADLEE: And you are also involved in the things that Dr. Dietz is talking about, which is in terms of kind of putting together a profile, correct, of a possible shooter?

DEPUE: Yes. First, hello to my good friend Park Dietz.

DIETZ: Hi, Roger.

DEPUE: We have also been studying these situations for many years. The Academy Group has been in existence for nearly 25 years now. And we've looked at literally hundreds and even thousands of violence in public institutions, as well as in public places.

And basically we have put together a list of predictors, you might say. More accurately it would be indicators or red flags, similar probably to what Dr. Dietz has done. These indicators are based on a theory that we have, which we talk about as fantasy. The fantasy exists first, and then...

HEADLEE: The fantasy of harming people.

DEPUE: The fantasy of harming people, yes. And Einstein said the thought is father to the action. So first there exists a fantasy, and that's a valuable thing for us to know because a fantasy frequently has what I call leakage, and that is the more intense the fantasy, the more likely that it will leak out of the person in either voluntary or involuntary ways.

HEADLEE: But this is - this is the issue, isn't it, Roger? We're speaking with Roger Depue of the Academy Group. Because, you know, we had reports this week of a fifth-grader, I think, a young kid who was suspended because he was playing with his friend and made the gesture of a gun. Is that what you're calling leakage?

DEPUE: Well, you're talking about in that case zero tolerance, and when I talk about zero tolerance, I mean that it doesn't mean that you expel someone from school, it just means that you will pay attention to that behavior. And in that case the gesture of holding your finger like a gun, it would be rather extreme to just expel someone from school.

However, gestures are very important. They're a part of human behavior, and when you take gestures into account with other warning signs or indicators or flags, then there may appear a psychological predisposition toward violence.

HEADLEE: All right, well, let's go to another call here. This is Carrie(ph) in Buffalo, Wyoming. Our question was: If you work in a school, how has your school's approach to security changed? Carrie, how has your school's approach changed?

CARRIE: Actually, I used to be a police liaison officer in a small northern Minnesota Indian reservation. And when I was working with them, the superintendent wanted me to lock my sidearm in the trunk of my squad prior to entering the school. We had metal detectors. When I left law enforcement in that area, they had - security guards were unarmed, but on March 21 of 2005 we had school shootings there where 10 people were killed.

And the first one to be killed was an unarmed security guard.

HEADLEE: All right, Carrie, thank you very much for your call. Carrie is calling from Buffalo, Wyoming. So let me go back to you, Dr. Park Dietz, forensic psychiatrist. How does this come down? All of the research that you do in terms of identifying these indicators, as Roger Depue mentioned, how does that work in the school itself? How do you train teachers and administrators in what to recognize and what to do about it?

DIETZ: Well, we ruled out training for all of the school districts in the state of Tennessee through threat assessment group in the last two years. And I'll use that as an example. Each school district sent decision-makers to a two-and-a-half day training so that they would learn how to function as a team, how to investigate reports that were made about behaviors of concern, and how to manage the most common behaviors that arise in school settings, whether it be threats or stalking or problems with parents.

And that provided each district with a basis for handling cases reasonably well when they received reports, and they have the ability to call for outside help on cases that are outside the norm or that they're particularly worried about.

Then we also provide training that the Department of Education can provide for any school that wishes it that teaches all the indicators...

HEADLEE: OK, Doctor, hold that thought, we're going to come back in just a second. Dr. Park Dietz and Roger Depue, former chief of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, are my guests. We're talking about what we've learned about school shootings. If you work in a school, we want to hear from you. How has your school's approach to security changed? The number is 800-989-8255. Or send us an email to [email protected]. Stay with us. I'm Celeste Headlee, and this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HEADLEE: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Celeste Headlee. After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, President Obama asked Vic President Biden to head up a task force to draft concrete proposals to reduce gun violence. Today the vice president met with representatives from victims groups and gun safety organizations who shared personal stories of gun violence.

Tomorrow he will meet with the National Rifle Association. The NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has said previously that, quote, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That group has proposed a national School Shield Program to help make schools safer.

And so if you work in a school, how has your school's approach to security changed? Give us a call and let us know at 800-989-8255. The email address is [email protected]. You can join the conversation at our website, as well. Go to npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.

With us now, Dr. Park Dietz, who consulted after the Columbine shooting; and Roger Depue, who served on the Virginia Tech review panel, are talking about this issue. And I wanted to go back to you, Dr. Park Dietz, because we were talking about how teachers and administrators can be trained to distinguish between, you know, sort of an offhand remark or just somebody drawing a picture of a gun, as opposed to a real threat.

DIETZ: Well, the first key is that they have to hear about all of it, whether it's going to turn out to be a false alarm or not. In fact we encourage that there be great over-reporting with plenty of false alarms, also known as false positives. When the information comes in that there's been a sighting of something of concern, now it's time to thoughtfully and without disruption learn more about the situation.

Who are the people involved? What's the source of this behavior? Are there other problems of concern? Is the involved student or adult thought to have a substance abuse problem? Have they been violent before? Once all the information's assembled, then one can make a very good judgment as to what, if anything, needs to be done.

But none of that will happen unless people are trained on what they should report and unless there's someone they report it to who knows what to do with the information.

HEADLEE: Well, let me go to Craig here, calling from Sacramento, California, because Craig, it sounds like you have the same question I have. What's your question?

CRAIG: Well, I was very intrigued by Dr. Dietz's comment earlier, very early in the conversation, when he said that there were about 10 attributes of these known mass killers, and it would - I thought it would be very interesting if he could explain or list what those are so folks can understand what to look for.

HEADLEE: Thanks very much. That's Craig in Sacramento, California. That's something that you talked about, as well, Roger Depue. What are these 10 indicators, as you say?

DEPUE: Well, I actually have more than 10 in our scheme. I'd like to mention, too, at this point, because of what Park was talking about, we advocate that schools put together a threat assessment team. That team is made up of people from the administration, from law enforcement or security, from behavioral science, mental health, and from legal, law.

You put that team together, and then you have a team that can assess the threat from several disciplines and make informed decisions. Now, as far as the - some of the actual indicators, we talked about anger problems, but one is a fascination with weapons and the accoutrements of weapons, in others words not - we're not talking about hunting weapons or target practice weapons, we're talking about here weapons that are specifically designed to kill human beings, war-type weapons.

And sometimes the fascination with those weapons is a good indicator because it not only gives the individual the indicator, but it also causes or gives them the capacity, if they have the weapons or access to the weapons, to carry out the violent behavior.

And then other things are being a loner, suicidal ideation. About 60 percent of these situations end in suicide. So you have both homicidal and suicidal ideation, and so there are more indicators that accompany each of those things. Certainly stalkings, interest in previous shooting situations.

HEADLEE: Stalkings, you're talking about someone who is a stalker, has stalked another person.

DEPUE: That's correct, yes. As you know, Cho, for instance, was making...

HEADLEE: The shooter at Virginia Tech.

DEPUE: That's correct, yes, had made some advances toward girls. He scared the girls. The girls reported it to police, and he didn't stop, he just chose another victim and pursued her. So those are the kinds of things that we're talking about.

And I mentioned fantasy and the fact that there are many ways to express fantasy, and so you'll often see writings or drawings that these people make, stories, essays, compositions, even poetry and artwork and music that also would depict now a fantasy. Now, one of these things would be of no value, but once you have a cluster of these warning signs, then you'd better have someone take a look at it.

HEADLEE: All right, let's go to a call here. This is Amanda(ph) calling in from Fredericksburg, Virginia. Amanda, what have you seen change?

AMANDA: Hi, actually in addition to all of our doors now being locked, our resource officer, our police officer, is now actively walking the halls, where prior to the shooting in Connecticut he was a bit more stationary, in an office area. But now he is actively walking the halls, and there's more of a presence...

HEADLEE: And that makes you feel safer, Amanda?

AMANDA: I was - you know, to be honest, no, not really. I was a little taken aback at first. I thought, oh, wow, there actually - something is changing. But I'm still, you know, a little wary when I walk through, you know, the halls.

HEADLEE: Yeah, I can imagine.

AMANDA: And in addition to that, my daughter is a first-grader, and her elementary school sent home a letter letting all parents know that they would also have a heightened police presence at the school. So they have a police officer at the entrance of the school in the morning, and they have a police officer patrol car at the driving entrance of the school at all times.

HEADLEE: Right.

AMANDA: So that is something that absolutely changed immediately after the shooting.

HEADLEE: OK, thanks so much, Amanda in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Again, she's talking about things that would occur at the very tail end of what the two of you have talked about. And we have Ken here from San Francisco. He has a question for you, Dr. Park Dietz. Ken, your question?

KEN: Hi, good morning. So my question is, I'm part of a threat management team at my high school, and one of the things I'm advocating for but can't seem to get consensus on is rather than these reactionary efforts or basically scaring kids with police that we have or enhance the role of the school guidance counseling office, where these kids are checking in every month to talk about their career plans post-high school.

And that gives also a mental health check. So they can talk about any of their problems before it devolves into a situation where they're doing something violent and there's a law enforcement response. The thing that our management team - everyone is concerned about but we don't have hard data on is: What is the effect on the would-be criminal of foreseeing the images and faces of these shooters splashed across the media for weeks at a time?

If these folks want to go out in a big way, certainly getting their face plastered around the nation like Jesse James is the way to do it. Any comment about that?

HEADLEE: And we're going to have - I'm going to have the doctor answer that, but can I ask you, Ken: How recent is this threat assessment team? Is this a new development?

KEN: It's been in place about a year and a half, but it was enhanced significantly in the wake of the shootings.

HEADLEE: Enhanced in terms of your reach?

KEN: Enhanced in terms of more often meetings about planning and concerns.

HEADLEE: OK, thank you very much, and now we'll get your answer to that question from Ken in San Francisco. So Dr. Park Dietz, what is the effect, is there any effect of seeing other shooters on the news?

DIETZ: Well, I've been an outspoken critic of the way the news has covered this for the past 20 years. It's my belief that each time there is saturation-level coverage of a mass murder, we should expect another one within one to two weeks. Now, this only applies to a type of mass murder known as pseudo-commandos, who often use multiple weapons, have some element of military clothing or gear, and have fantasized themselves as carrying out a mission.

I think the more important point I can make in response to that question is that the key issue for threat assessment teams, which is something that we invented with 3M Company collaboratively in the 1980s, is that they be properly trained.

Training for those teams doesn't just happen by reading stuff on the Internet. They need to understand the whole range of things they might go through, how to investigate cases, how to manage cases, how not to overreact, how not to do harm. And that takes some time, and most...

HEADLEE: Yeah.

DIETZ: ...schools have been reluctant to do that.

HEADLEE: Possibly, I would imagine, because of funding. You're listening to Dr. Park Dietz there, a forensic psychiatrist, president of Park Dietz & Associates. Also with us, Roger Depue, founder of The Academy Group and former chief of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit.

And here's a question for you, Roger. Jerry Newman(ph) in California has this question: What, if any, differences are there between persons who act alone, say at Virginia Tech, or act together, as in the case of Columbine?

DEPUE: I think one of the differences, of course, is the - is this concept of the loner characteristic, and the individual at Virginia Tech, for instance, Seung-Hui Cho, was a loner, kind of a social isolate. And when you're a loner, you don't get feedback. I mean, people do not correct your behavior or - because they don't know what you're thinking.

In the case of Columbine, I was an expert witness in that case as well. And in that case, you had more than one. You had two individuals, and I would characterize that case as not a case of a mentally ill shooter or shooters. These were two bad guys, in my opinion, and evil existed there as opposed to Cho and many of the other single individuals where you have mental illness as playing a part.

HEADLEE: All right. Let's - oh, go ahead, doctor.

DIETZ: I have a slightly different view of this. Cho was certainly far more seriously mentally ill than Klebold or Harris, but what we found is that Klebold had some significant depression, and Harris had some significant anger perhaps bordering on paranoia. And the common factor we've seen among mass murderers is that they're depressed, often suicidally so, and paranoid. And neither of those boys had both those features...

DIETZ: ...but together they had what it took to do this.

HEADLEE: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's take another call here. This is Jeanne(ph) in Kokomo, Indiana. Hi, Jeanne.

JEANNE: Hi.

HEADLEE: So what's changed for you at your school since...

JEANNE: I work at several different schools. I'm an itinerant. But one of the schools that I go to, the superintendent called a meeting before we returned to, of course, from winter break and had different members of the community come in, a sheriff from the sheriff's department, the director of the 911 and a member of a SWAT team come in to talk to the staff about what to expect if there is a active shooter in your building. And he also, the superintendent, has also said that there are going to be more liaison officers in the building.

JEANNE: One of the things that I found informative to us was that we need to know where we are in our building because if there is a shooting that happened, say, in a gymnasium, you need to know which gymnasium you're in. So he taught - the officers were talking about we need to know what door numbers are everywhere, like...

HEADLEE: Oh, that's interesting. Right.

JEANNE: ...throughout the whole building and, like, if we know if we're on, like, the north, east, south or west part of the building.

JEANNE: So I thought that was really good information. That's information you could use anywhere you're at.

HEADLEE: Absolutely. That's Jeanne in Kokomo, Indiana. Thank you very much. And I wanted to read this question here, Dr. Park Dietz. We had Cindy(ph) writing in and says: The focus right now at the elementary level is on keeping young students from becoming anxious or fearful and reassuring them they're safe and cared for. I'm curious about your guests' take on why school and public shootings are committed by males. Why does it seem to be a male problem in our society?

What do you think?

DIETZ: Well, first, it isn't only males. Sylvia Seegrist was the first pseudo-commando female in America, and there have been others since then. But it is mostly males, and the reason it's mostly males is no doubt the same as the reason that most violence is done by males. And that has both biological and cultural explanations.

HEADLEE: Meaning - it sounds like you're saying that males tend to be more violent.

DIETZ: Well, they do, yes.

HEADLEE: OK. Let me take a call here from Stacy(ph) in New Orleans. Hi, Stacy. I keep putting Stacy on hold. Sorry about that, Stacy. Go ahead.

STACY: That's OK. I work in an elementary school, and I work with several. And, I mean, I feel like we take measures to be secure. There's always extra steps that, you know, we put into place and things like this happen. But I - my first thought when I saw the Newtown issue was that school did everything. I mean, the - I guess for me from a - I mean, my question is, from a psychiatry standpoint, when you have people with mental illness and we're not thinking in the line, that someone would bombard themselves and not follow the guidelines, knocking on the door or pushing the buzzer.

STACY: You know, we have parents who push through security even though they're supposed to show their ID. So...

HEADLEE: Really good - let me - real quickly. Stacy, thank you so much, calling from New Orleans. Roger, let me give you a chance to answer that. She sounds like she's saying that you can't predict or prevent these things.

DEPUE: Well, there's always a tradeoff between freedom and security. You can make your school so secure that there is no freedom but it's very safe. In this case, I would work backwards and I would say that parents have a responsibility to pick up on these warning signs in their own children. When I make presentations before groups, often after the presentation someone will come up and say Dr. Depue, my son or my nephew looks like this, what do you think?

DEPUE: And I say, you know, it's excellent that you came up to talk me. Let's sit down and talk about it and let me give you some advice about where you should go and what you might do with someone who's - excuse me - showing these characteristics. So parents - we have a couple of instances now where parents are coming forward ahead of time and soon this is done.

HEADLEE: Although that takes a great deal of courage. We'll have to leave there. Roger Depue, founder of The Academy Group. Former chief of FBI's behavioral science unit. He also served in the Virginia Tech review panel. He spoke with us today from member station WVTF in Charlottesville, Virginia. And Dr. Park Dietz, forensic psychiatrist, president of Park Dietz and Associates, joined us from member station KUCI in Irvine, California. Thanks to both of you. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Newspaper Article Analysis

A Community ‘Surrounded by love’: With poems and prayers, Denver residents give support after Columbine High shooting:

The article, from The Christian Science Monitor published on April 23, 1999, serves to illustrate the community response following the Columbine High School shooting. It further sheds light on the strength and resilience present within the community. The article begins by highlighting a note someone wrote, reading “‘You have been shattered by their hate. But you are surrounded by our love.”’ This emphasizes the strong sense of community felt by those in Littleton following the disaster. The article states how thousands of Coloradans are gathered on a lawn adjacent to Columbine High School, all sharing “the compelling need to be present here, to help in any way they can”. Further, residents from suburbs on the opposite side of the Denver area came to show their support, showing how the strong sense of community extends beyond Littleton and into neighboring communities. 

columbine school shooting essay

Further, the article emphasizes the impact of personal connections within the community response. This is seen through Columbine High School Alumni Sarah Tomicih, whose younger brother was a student at the school at the time of the shooting. Tomicih drove home from her school immediately after hearing the news, and though her brother was safe, she wanted to stay home to be able to help in any way she could. Tomicih emphasized that she wanted to be able to be there and ‘“just listen to anyone who needs to talk about this.”’ This personal connection reflects the strong presence of empathy and solidarity within the community. 

Columbine Tragedy Claims Another Victim

The article ‘Columbine Tragedy Claims Another Victim’ from the Washington Post serves to illustrate the lasting effects of Columbine not only on the survivor’s themselves, but additionally the survivor’s family members, shedding light on the impact the events have had on individuals mental health. The article focuses on Carla Hochhalter, the mother of survivor Anne Marie Hochhlater, who was severely injured in the shooting. Carla Hochhalter committed suicide six months following the shooting, and was “declared dead at the same hospital where her daughter was saved by the heroic work of emergency room doctors.” 

According to friend Connie Michalik regarding Hochhlater’s suicide, “First you’re devastated, then you’re angry, and then you move on to deal with it. She never really left the devastation stage. She was just stuck there.” This illustrates the indirect impacts of Columbine. As Hochhlater’s daughter Anne Marie was severely injured in the shooting and was paralyzed in both her legs, it took an immense toll on Hochhalter, with her constantly worrying about Anne Marie. Michalik further stated “She was just so worried about Anne Marie. How she was going to get around school, how she was going to be able to go to college, how she would be able to drive. She was just so focused on Anne Marie.” 

columbine school shooting essay

Hochhlater’s anxiety regarding Anne Marie is representative of the harshly distorted realities many survivors and their families had to face, suggesting how the most difficult aspect of disasters is not the survival of the events, but living and coping with the aftermath of it. Hochhlater’s suicide is just one example of the importance of recognizing and prioritizing mental health awareness and treatment in this disaster. The article does not explicitly mention anything regarding mental health or mental illness, though in an interview done several years later, Anne Marie stated her mother had been struggling with depression prior to Columbine, and that the shooting was not the sole cause of her suicide. The article’s lack of explicit discussion of mental illness serves to illustrate the underlying stigma surrounding mental health, further exhibiting the need for awareness and education surrounding mental health and illness.

Columbine parents praise essay by mom of shooter

FILE -This 1998 file yearbook photo from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. shows Dylan Klebold. The mother of the Columbine killer says she has been studying suicide in the decade since the high school massacre but had no idea her son was suicidal until she read his journals after his death. Susan Klebold's essay in next month's issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, is the most detailed response yet from any of the parents of Columbine killers Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris. (AP Photo/File)

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Parents and survivors of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School are saying good things about an essay released Tuesday by the mother of shooter Dylan Klebold.

Susan Klebold made the most detailed public remarks by any parent of the two Columbine killers in an essay published in O, The Oprah Magazine. She said in the essay she had “no inkling” her son was suicidal or depressed.

The essay sparked strong emotions for Connie Michalik, whose son, Richard Castaldo, was shot and partially paralyzed in the rampage. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before killing themselves.

The shooters’ parents have said little in public since the massacre. They gave depositions in a lawsuit filed by victims’ families, but a judge in 2007 ordered those depositions sealed for 20 years after the case was settled out of court.

Survivors and their families have been left wondering about the boys’ parents in the decade since the shootings.

“You know, I always wondered how she felt and what she went through. ‘Cause I know I went through a living hell, and I was always sure she did, too,” Michalik told The Associated Press.

Michalik, who has never met Susan Klebold, said reading the essay answered some of her questions about the Klebold family.

“I applaud her for the courage to talk about this,” Michalik said Tuesday.

In the essay, Susan Klebold described the day of the shooting. She at first feared Dylan had been shot at school, not that he was one of the perpetrators.

Susan Klebold said the family was evacuated from their home the afternoon of the massacre because authorities feared even Dylan’s residence may have been rigged to explode. Still, she said, it took months for relatives to accept that the quiet boy who loved origami and Legos was to blame for the violence.

“We didn’t know that he and Eric had assembled an arsenal of explosives and guns,” Susan Klebold wrote. “We believed his participation in the massacre was accidental or that he had been coerced. We believed that he did not intend to hurt anyone.”

The magazine released excerpts from the essay last week and published the full text Tuesday.

A magazine spokeswoman said Susan Klebold has turned down several interview requests over the years but agreed several months ago to share an essay. There were no plans for her to appear on the show.

In an introduction to the essay, Oprah Winfrey told readers, “Since the day her son participated in the most devastating high school shooting America has ever seen, I have wanted to sit down with Susan Klebold to ask her the questions we’ve all wanted to ask – starting with, ‘How did you not see it coming?’ and ending with ‘How did you survive?’”

A spokeswoman for Susan Klebold has said there would be no further comment.

One of the shooting’s survivors, Krystal Miller, said Tuesday she has long had questions for the Klebolds but understood their silence.

“Over the years I would’ve loved to hear something,” said Miller, whose maiden name was Krystal Woodman. “But it sounds like she is still just reeling from it and processing it. So how is someone supposed to come out and give answers when they’re still trying to figure it out themselves?”

The 11 mass deadly school shootings that happened since Columbine

There have been many more shootings, but 11 with four or more victims.

The images of teenagers running from their school with their hands up – as seen on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School -- has become a hauntingly familiar sight at subsequent school shootings.

And for many, including eventual school shooters, there was something about the Columbine shooting that drew their interest.

John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official who led efforts to combat mass shootings, said that Columbine “absolutely” influenced subsequent shootings.

“As law enforcement has studied the individuals who have committed school shootings and other mass casualty attacks, one of the common characteristics they’ve observed is these individuals tend to study past mass shootings,” said Cohen, who is now an ABC News contributor.

PHOTO: Deadly Mass School Shootings Since Columbine

“As it relates specifically to school shootings, we find that columbine seems to be the one incident hat school shooters look at. It seems to resonate with individuals that have the behavioral characteristics consistent with this type of attacker,” he said.

(MORE: 20 years after Columbine, what's changed -- and what hasn't -- for school shootings in America)

“The people who conduct school shootings tend to be disaffected mentally unwell individuals searching for a sense of social connection and life meaning. They go online, they look at past attacks and in a perverse way, they connect with not only past incidents but also past attackers,” Cohen said, adding that “the story of the Columbine shooters is a story that resonates with a group of kids that are experiencing similar situations.”

(MORE: Columbine survivor still battling invisible wounds 20 years on has a quest to help others)

While there are hundreds of shootings that have taken place at schools across the U.S. in the past 20 years, leaving broken homes and broken childhoods in their wake, there have been 11 which can be classified as mass shootings. The FBI defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more victims, not including the suspect, are killed.

1. Virginia Tech – April 16, 2007 – 32 victims

PHOTO: Virginia State Police stand guard outside Norris Hall, where 31 people were shot and killed a day earlier on the campus of Virginia Tech, April 17, 2007 in Blacksburg, Va.

The deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly known as Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg.

At the time of the shooting, the 32 shooting victims made it the deadliest shooting incident in U.S., though that grisly title would later be overtaken by the shootings at Pulse nightclub in 2016 and later the shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.

The shooting took place almost exactly eight years after the Columbine shooting, when a 23-year-old student opened fire at two locations on campus – first in a dorm room and then in an academic building across campus.

In total, he killed 32 victims and injured 23 others before turning the gun on himself.

2. Sandy Hook Elementary School – Dec. 14, 2012 – 26 victims

PHOTO: Officials are on the scene outside of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where authorities say a gunman opened fire inside an elementary school in a shooting that left 27 people dead, including 20 children, Dec. 14, 2012.

A half a decade later, another young man devastated a community when, after first killing his mother, he drove to a nearby elementary school and opened fire, killing 20 children and six school administrators before killing himself.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the sleepy town of Newtown, Connecticut, prompted a national outpouring of grief. Emotions ran high when then-President Barack Obama made a statement about the shooting, pausing at one point to wipe away a tear.

“The majority of those who died today were children -- beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old," he said in the White House briefing room . "They had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers -- men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. So our hearts are broken today.”

The outrage over the shooting led to a push for federal changes to gun laws, but the bill did not pass. Instead, in the years since the Sandy Hook shooting, a number of states have changed their local laws.

3. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – Feb. 14, 2018 – 17 victims

PHOTO: Students hold their hands in the air as they are evacuated by police from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Feb. 14, 2018, after a shooter opened fire on the campus.

While the response of “thoughts and prayers” offered after mass shootings was once again decried by many as inadequate, the reaction after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School differed from others.

Almost immediately after the shooting, the teens who survived stepped into action, launching what would be a national push for gun control, culminating in the March For Our Lives.

New gun laws were passed in Florida a little over three weeks after the shooting, when 14 high school students and three school administrators were killed.

4. Santa Fe High School – May 18, 2018 – 10 victims

Mourners embrace the family of Christian Riley Garcia during his funeral at Crosby Church on May 25, 2018, in Houston. The 15-year-old student was one of 10 people killed on May 18, 2018, during a mass shooting at Santa Fe High School.

Just three months after the Parkland shooting , another high school was the scene of a mass shooting, this time in Texas.

In total, eight students and two teachers were killed by a 17-year-old gunman. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that the shooter allegedly wrote in journals that he wanted to carry out the shooting and then commit suicide, but on the day of the shooting, he gave himself up to authorities.

5. Umpqua Community College – Oct. 1, 2015 – 9 victims

PHOTO: Students, staff and faculty are evacuated from Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. after a deadly shooting Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015.

A student in one of the writing classes offered at the Roseburg, Oregon, school started shooting victims, reportedly one-by-one .

The 26-year-old shooter fatally shot himself at the scene.

“Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” then-President Obama said on the day of the shooting. "It's not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel and it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted in someplace else in America."

6. Red Lake Senior High School – March 21, 2005 – 7 victims at the school

PHOTO: Robert Cook from the Red Lake Indian Reservation, performs a traditional ceremony at St. Phillip Church during a memorial service to mourn the victims killed at Red Lake High School, March 23, 2005, in Bemidji, Minn.

The deadly shooting spree on Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, started before it unfolded at the local high school.

First the 16-year-old shooter killed his grandfather and the grandfather's girlfriend before driving to Red Lake Senior High School, which he used to attend, and opening fire.

The shooter killed seven people at the school, including students, a teacher and a security guard, and injured five others. The shooter was injured by responding officers but then reportedly retreated and fatally shot himself.

7. Oikos University – April 2, 2012 – 7 victims

PHOTO: Police secure the scene at Oikos University after a shooting that killed multiple people, April 2, 2012, in Oakland, Calif.

A Korean Christian college was the site of a deadly shooting in 2013, when a 43-year-old former student returned to the campus of Oikos University and opened fire.

There were seven victims killed and three others injured before the shooter was taken into custody. The suspect reportedly went looking for a female administrator that he was angry with, but when he realized she wasn’t there, he asked students to line up.

When they didn’t comply, he started shooting .

At the time of this shooting, which happened in Oakland, California, it was the fourth-deadliest shooting on an American college campus.

8. West Nickel Mines School – Oct. 2, 2006 – 5 victims

PHOTO: Amish men speak with a police officer on a road leading to the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, Oct. 3, 2006, in the town of Nickel Mines, Penn. a day after a shooting at the school left three girls dead.

A 32-year-old local milk delivery man drove a pickup truck to the one-room Amish schoolhouse after dropping off his own children at their school bus.

The shooter, who was not Amish, had a handgun in his hand when he entered the school. A police officer later said that it appears that the suspect went to the school with the intention of killing young girls, after he purposefully let the young boys and adults out of the schoolhouse.

A police official said that the girls were lined up against the chalkboard and "he had taken wire and bound their legs together." The suspect's wife found notes that the suspect had left for their children, and thinking that something was wrong, she called his cell phone.

"He made some statement about revenge for something in his life 20 years ago," the police official told ABC News at the time .

The shooter called 911 and gave a warning before he started shooting, eventually killing five girls and injuring three others. The suspect also fatally shot himself.

9. Northern Illinois University – Feb. 14, 2008 – 5 victims

PHOTO:Roses rest in the snow outside the student center on the campus of Northern Illinois University following a shooting at Cole Hall, Feb. 15, 2008, in DeKalb, Ill.

A former graduate student who opened fire after walking into an auditorium during an oceanography class reportedly left a Valentine's Day note for his girlfriend before leaving for the shooting.

The shooting at Northern Illinois University, where five people were killed and at least 16 others were injured, was reportedly influenced by Columbine -- as the 27-year-old suspect "examined the methods" of the Colorado shooting and was "fascinated" by Columbine , according to a police report on the case.

The shooting took place a decade to the day before the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

10. Santa Monica College – June 7, 2013 – 5 victims

PHOTO:Students rush to safety after shots were fired near the Santa Monica College, June 7, 2013, in Santa Monica, Calif.

While the shooting at Santa Monica College would not be considered a mass deadly shooting itself since there were three people killed there and not four, there were two others that the shooter at the school killed before arriving on the scene.

The suspect reportedly fatally shot his father and brother, set their house on fire, and then made his way towards the college campus.

Police said the suspect was wearing a protective vest and carrying so much weaponry he was, in the words of one official , "ready for battle."

11. Marysville Pilchuck High School – Oct. 24, 2014 – 4 victims

PHOTO:Students from Marysville-Pilchuck High School hold candles during a vigil, Oct. 24, 2014, in Marysville, Wash.

The 15-year-old shooter who fatally shot four students before killing himself reportedly lured his victims to his lunch table via text before the shooting.

"The only pre-planning of the event that detectives are able to confirm is that [the shooter] had arranged for a meeting of friends during lunch in the cafeteria. A witness confirms that the five victims were seated at the table when the shooter opened fire, striking the victims before turning the gun on himself," police said in a statement after the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting.

Not all of the victims died on the scene, but some died later in the hospital, changing the death counts in the immediate aftermath.

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Rachel’s Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting Essay

Introduction, the killings, rachel’s experiences, rachel’s challenge, benefits of rachel’s challenge.

The incident which occurred on Tuesday 20 th April 1999 has been simply referred to as the Columbine High School Massacre. At the center of the killing were two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. The two went on a killing spree; killing twelve students and a teacher and injuring twenty-four others before turning the gun on themselves and committing suicide. The incident was ranked fourth-deadliest in the history of United States after the Bath school case in 1927, Virginia Technical College disaster of 2007 and the University of Texas, 1966 Massacre (Cullen, p.214). The incident elicited a heated debate on the law on gun control and gun violence, among the youth. Also included in the debates were the high school cultures and subcultures, cliques as well as bullying; the role played by violent movies available to everyone in the movie stores were also discussed. This essay paper will look at the case of the Columbine Massacre and draw emphasis on Rachel’s challenges, a program that was established to address the above-highlighted problems impacting the youth regarding the overall security of schools, morals, gun culture, teenage internet use and effects of violent games and movies.

According to a witness statement, the first victims of the gun-wielding duo were Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo, who they found taking lunch on a grassy loan at the Western Entrance. Rachel died on the spot while Castaldo was critically injured. Some reports hold that the rampage targeted Christians, and that the gunmen first asked Rachel if she believed in God, and when she replied affirmatively, the shooting began…she received four deadly shots at a point-blank range and her friend got eight. A lot has been said about the experiences of Rachel Scott, but none could be satisfying were she around to give her own account of the real ordeal.

The best next character though to fill her shoes was therefore her father, Darrel Scott. Darrel gave a powerful speech, which was deeply personal and quite penetrating worth being listened to by parents, sociologists, psychologists, educational experts and all professionals at every level. The challenges faced by Rachel during her life were just a manifestation of the existence of evil and good forces in the society, and while the good can not be differentiated or rather be appreciated in the absence of bad, it should be eliminated by any means possible. The resultant of what happed was more of a spiritual force, something which Rachel alone could not counter, but called for the intervention of the whole society to address (Brown and Rob, p.3).

Rachel’s kindness and compassion could never be marched, through an organization started by her parents–Rachel’s Challenge, individuals have learned to make the best out of their lives and create a positive environment for themselves. By bringing back the memories of Rachel to the scene, it helps teens as well as parents to realize the benefit drawn from returning good for evil and how important is to treat others the way one wants to be treated. Such will help the school administration in addressing bullying and oppressive related incidences that were blamed on the Columbine Massacre. Some Americans upon hearing of the massacre rushed to a quick conclusion that the “Trench Coat Mafia Outcasts” were on a revenge mission against the bullying and the unbearable treatments that the school administration had on them. They therefore resorted to such a horrific violence to send a strong message to the society which they believed was wholly against them (Brown and Rob, p.4).

The challenges that Rachel had to endure are made public so that the number of people who will be moved to a point of striving to live in a society of peace and stability would increase. If told in the right context, tone and by a person who really understands the predicament, Rachel’s challenges are bound to have a profound effect on students and inspire them to spread the dream that Rachel held all her life; that was to ” create a chain reaction of kindness” (Cullen, p.222). The experiences and challenges Rachel are the best place for this course. It has helped students dispel any fear that they have and overcome shyness as well as pride. Self-confidence has been made a priority and above all, the students will come to realize their needs and worth in the society. Even the society takes pride in the youth, the youths therefore will strive to make a difference and by so doing, Rachel’s Challenge will be averting any incident like the Columbine Tragedy. The publication is a practical proof that all was not lost by slaying the good-hearted Rachel, but all the remaining students, including the survivors, the teachers and parents can carry the message of good hope to greater heights. It doesn’t need a saint or a perfect being; only a kind heart is required for one to be good.

It is a great value to always have a positive influence on the people that surround you; and never take anyone for granted. The Rachel’s Challenge, which is composed of five Columbine students is making its rounds around America’s middle and high schools talking to an audience of students, teachers and parents on how to forge a way forward against all odds. Even though life may deal you a blow, it is better to pick up your pieces and start all over again. When such goodwill messages are spread to pupils from a lower educational level, there is no doubt that such acts of violence will never be witnessed again. The streamlining of students should never be left to teachers alone; but parents, community leaders and law enforcers need to put together their might and help in shaping the youth. The problem however presents itself when the whole responsibility is left to the school administration. The youths get exposed to a lot of stuff that contributes to violent behavior. The violent packed video games, movies and sex explicit magazines are attributed to the latest character development in the teens. The tragedy could not be solely blamed on gun control, but on the latest rot in the society; thus putting all stakeholders on the spot and not only the parents, police or the teachers (Brown and Rob, p.4).

The memories of Rachel for over ten years now are being used to inspire students the nation over to realize the best character in them, thanks to the Rachel Challenges foundation. On the day of her death, Rachel was carrying a notebook in which she had written “I won’t be labeled as average” and surely just had she had stated, the foundation has ensured that her short-lived life has had positive impacts in the lives on many teens, parents and teachers. Rachel’s Challenge is driven by her family and friends who are geared to make the world a more compassionate place. The organization’s objective is to reach as many schools as possible. For the period that it has been in operation, Rachel’s Challenge has managed to initiate programs that encourage students in middle and high school to recognize their purpose in life and see the best there is in others in the society. The simple writings of Rachel have become a spring of consolation to many. The organization has sparked hope and encouragement and made a difference in the lives of many individuals; young and adults alike.

The foundation has made the entire American society look positively at the tragic event…so it is true that something this good can come out of such an evil act. It ha has been received positively world over. The K-12 is even making a proposal to have it accessible in colleges to spread the great kindness and compassion there. Tragedy does exist everywhere and it is never known when it would finally strike, Rachel’s smiling picture and soothing words have managed to help people understand senseless tragedy that befalls them. To Darrel, Rachel was a daughter who had time for everyone and friends to all; very soul was important to her. Much about her and her programs are presented on her website which also features more news that brings hope to the downtrodden. The movement has so far touched the lives of millions of people and presented Rachel’s real philosophy, just the way she could have done it were she alive. She was denied life beyond teenage, but her legacy and dream continue to live despite the odds. To show how much she loved to help people, the Scott family made public a discovery in Rachel’s dresser drawer her drawing (trace hand) and writings “these are Rachel’s hands, someday; they will touch millions of hearts”. She surely did, but not with her hands, but her good heart (Cullen, p.219).

All said and done, the facts represented in this essay paper holds it that, it is the responsibility of all the members of the society; parents, leaders, adults, teachers, police and the youths themselves to ensure that any evil act is routed out, or rather made public before it develops into a monster. There should be collective responsibility and the community should ever try to support one another rather than commit felonies against one another. But until then, peace will still be a far off dream and the younger generation would never live to appreciate one another. The challenges and the life that Rachel lived should be like an inspiration to every living soul, which needs to lift the spirits of the faint-hearted and give hope to the hopeless. Limitations and restrictions should be put on what the youth get their hands on; be it the video games, movies, internet, guns and anything that might prove dangerous to the developing minds, lest they get corrupted. Repots in (www.acolumbinesite.com/ericpage.html) revealed that it is through the internet that Harris and Klebold got the recipe for making explosives. But despite all these, Rachel’s dream of having a society that serves the public interest will surely come to pass, thanks to the publication of her challenges.

Such kinds of tragedy related to the Columbine clearly show that there is need to capture the life of every individual before they are finally punctuated by death, we should make the best of whatever we have in life. In a nutshell, Rachel’s Challenges have reinforced positive behavior in many social systems.

Brown Brooks and Rob Merritt. No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine . New York, NY: Lantern Books. (2002). pp. 3–4.

Cullen, Dave. Columbine . Grand Central Publishing. (2009). pp. 214-226.

Harris, Eric. Eric Harris web pages. 2009.

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IvyPanda. (2021, November 3). Rachel's Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting. https://ivypanda.com/essays/rachels-challenges-and-it-benefits-to-the-youth-columbine-school-shooting/

"Rachel's Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting." IvyPanda , 3 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/rachels-challenges-and-it-benefits-to-the-youth-columbine-school-shooting/.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "Rachel's Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/rachels-challenges-and-it-benefits-to-the-youth-columbine-school-shooting/.

1. IvyPanda . "Rachel's Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/rachels-challenges-and-it-benefits-to-the-youth-columbine-school-shooting/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Rachel's Challenges and Its Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School Shooting." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/rachels-challenges-and-it-benefits-to-the-youth-columbine-school-shooting/.

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  • Marilyn Manson's "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?": Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
  • Juvenile Delinquency: The Columbine Shootings
  • Sue Klebold: My Son Was a Columbine Shooter
  • "Let Teenagers Try Adulthood" by Leon Botstein - Youth Issues
  • Consequence Management and Terrorist Attacks Analysis
  • Nonverbal Analysis: Ross and Rachel From "Friends"
  • “Riding the Bus with My Sister” by Rachel Simon
  • Causes and Effects of Waking up Late for Work
  • Sichuan Earthquake and Recovering as Community Problem
  • Most Cruel Social Problems Analysis
  • Obesity in the U.S.: Ways of Addressing the Problem
  • American Dream Is Not a Myth

ChildTrends

  • Black Children
  • Indigenous Children

The Evolution of State School Safety Laws Since the Columbine School Shooting

  • Deborah Temkin Cahill
  • Victoria Stuart-Cassel
  • Brissa Nuñez
  • Sarah Kelley
  • Claire Kelley

The 1999 shooting at Columbine High School was a watershed moment for many state lawmakers working to keep schools safe. In response to that school shooting—and several other high-profile shootings over the next two decades—policymakers passed new statutes and enacted new regulations in hopes of stopping similar incidents. Unfortunately, as this report reveals, most school safety laws passed after high-profile school shooting incidents primarily focus on preparing for, not preventing, such events. Although many states have incorporated strategies associated with violence prevention into their policies, such as those related to school climate or social and emotional learning, these laws were largely not connected to school shooting incidents.

This report explores how seven topics identified by the Federal School Safety Commission (FSSC) in its  December 2018 final report  have emerged in state statutes and regulations (including those from Washington, DC) over the past 20 years. 1  The federal departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice (DOJ), and Homeland Security convened the FSSC after the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting to identify “best practices” to prevent future school shootings.

The FSSC’s final report examined the relationship between school shootings and 19 issue areas. While many of these issues extend beyond the role of schools—such as press coverage of mass shootings or federal governance—the seven topics addressed in this report have direct implications for school practice and the state laws that govern such efforts:

  • Character development and culture of connectedness

Cyberbullying

  • Mental health and counseling
  • Anonymous reporting systems and threat assessments
  • School personnel training
  • School building security
  • Active shooter preparedness

A closer analysis shows that policies aimed at preparing the school environment for an active shooter event (e.g., school hardening, active shooter drills) were enacted in the years immediately following major school shooting events.

State policymakers added the highest number of laws focused on preparatory strategies during the periods following the 2012 Sandy Hook and the 2018 Parkland shootings.

The state-level adoption of preventative laws (i.e., those focused on developing the individual skills and classroom environments that prevent school violence from occurring, such as character development) is more evenly dispersed across this 20-year period. In other words, laws aimed at preventing school shootings and violence are less likely to be connected to the occurrence of school shooting incidents. Notably, laws focused on mental health and counseling were primarily enacted after 2013, with gradual additions through 2019.

The following sections examine, in detail, which states have laws that address each of the seven topics, along with the year(s) in which states first added these provisions.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding safety laws, by topic and year

Character Development and Culture of Connectedness

The FSSC recommends that states better support schools to implement whole-school efforts that build positive school climates, support students’ character development and social-emotional learning, and implement multi-tiered systems of supports or positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). The FSSC report notes that when students have deeper connections to school, violence is less likely to occur. 2  Although a handful of states had laws addressing these prevention-focused efforts even before 1999, widespread adoption did not occur until after 2010. The adoption of these laws largely did not coincide with major school shooting incidents. Although the laws may refer to school safety, they often cite broader issues such as bullying and student mental health, rather than prevention of school shootings, in explaining their purpose.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to character development and a culture of connectedness, by year

Laws addressing school climate typically require districts and schools to develop and implement plans to create and maintain safe and supportive conditions for learning. As of 2019, 40 states encourage or require school districts to establish school climate provisions. Most of these laws focus on developing school climate plans or implementing programs to support a positive school climate. However, laws in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, and Massachusetts encourage or require the collection of school climate survey data from students in at least some schools, and Georgia requires the creation of a ranking system for schools based on the quality of their climates.

As of 2019, 40 states encourage or require school districts to establish school climate provisions Number of states with laws related to school climate, by year

California’s school counseling law, passed in 1987, is the earliest law that references improving school conditions for learning, followed by Georgia’s in 1991. The majority of states (21) added provisions referencing the concept of school climate after 2010. Seventeen of these states added laws addressing school climate from 2015 to 2019.

As of 2019, 40 states encourage or require school districts to have plans to create and maintain safe school climates Number of states with laws related to school climate

Helping students understand their own emotions, recognize how their actions impact others, and resolve conflicts and disagreements is critical to creating and maintaining safe schools. 3  Character development and social and emotional learning are related, although not fully interchangeable, strategies for accomplishing these goals. 4  States have long incorporated character development into their laws; more recently, some states have adopted language specific to social and emotional learning. We consider references to both character development and social and emotional learning (or specific components thereof) within state laws.

37 states have laws that encourage or require character development or social and emotional learning Number of states with laws addressing character development and social and emotional learning, by year

As of 2019, 37 states have laws that encourage or require schools to address character development or social and emotional learning.

37 states have laws that encourage or require character development or social and emotional learning Number of states with laws addressing character development and social and emotional learning

Twenty-one states specifically require districts to address these concepts in schools. Specific terminology varies considerably between states. Indiana, for example, references “good citizenship instruction,” 5  while Maryland embeds social and emotional learning under its definition of “restorative approaches” in relation to student discipline. 6  Texas does not specifically reference character development or social emotional learning, but instead requires instruction in “mental health, including instruction about … skills to manage emotions, establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and responsible decision-making …”. 7

Tennessee passed the first law requiring character education in 1985, and nearly half of all states (24) had laws by 2004. From 2017 to 2019, only four new states (Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington) added laws addressing character education or social emotional learning.

As of 2019, 21 states require character development or social and emotional learning in schools Number of states with laws addressing character development and social and emotional learning

Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) use a data-based process to identify and provide supports to students. 8  The system is a three-tiered framework, whereby all students receive supports in the broadest tier, while supports are more tailored for students with greater need in the second and third tiers. MTSS can be used to address a number of needs, including both academic and behavioral challenges. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Response-to-Intervention (RTI) are both considered types of MTSS.

As described in the FSSC report, MTSS designed to address student behavioral challenges can help prevent school violence; used systematically, MTSS can reduce disciplinary referrals and improve overall perceptions of school safety 9 . For this analysis, we focus on state laws that reference MTSS to address student behavior school-wide. Although many states specifically reference PBIS, or reference adaptations of RTI to focus on behavior, others provide more general descriptions of behavioral support with components consistent with MTSS (i.e., addressing behavior from both universal and more targeted levels in the context of a cohesive framework). This analysis excluded state policies that referenced behavioral supports without mention of a tiered framework—for example, special education laws regarding positive behavioral supports for individual students with disabilities.

As of 2019, 40 states encourage or require districts to implement MTSS for behavior, with 20 states requiring its use. Maryland was the first state to reference MTSS in law in 2002, followed by Louisiana in 2003 and New Hampshire in 2005. States gradually added laws related to MTSS over the following decade, with eight states adding laws from 2005 to 2009, 18 states from 2010 to 2014, and nine from 2015 to 2019.

As of 2019, 40 states encourage or require school districts to implement school-wide multi-tiered systems of support Number of states with laws encouraging or requiring school-wide multi-tiered systems of support

Following the 1999 Columbine shooting, six states enacted legislation requiring districts and schools to address bullying, with 13 states passing legislation by 2009. 10  This reaction was partly in response to a pervasive narrative that bullying was a predominant precipitating factor for the perpetrators at Columbine and other school shooting incidents, although the role of bullying in these incidents remains a source of debate. 11  By the time of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had existing laws addressing bullying in schools.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to cyberbullying, by topic and year

The FSSC report highlighted a subset of bullying behaviors—cyberbullying—as a key issue to be addressed. Overall, state policymakers have largely focused on cyberbullying as an issue affecting students’ mental health and suicidality, rather than a precipitating factor for broader school safety issues. Policy making around cyberbullying has therefore not clustered around known school shooting incidents; rather, it clustered in a period from 2008 to 2012. By 2016, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had laws addressing cyberbullying on school campuses, and 30 states address cyberbullying that occurs off-campus.

Colorado was the first state to reference cyberbullying in its bullying laws in 2000, followed by Idaho and South Carolina in 2006. All three states included references to cyberbullying in their original bullying laws. The last state to add references to cyberbullying was California, in 2016, although California’s original bullying law dates to 2007.

As of 2019, all states have laws addressing both bullying and cyberbullying Number of states with laws addressing bullying and cyberbullying, by year

Mental Health and Counseling

The FSSC report highlights what previous Child Trends work has confirmed 12  —that there is little association between having a diagnosed mental health illness and committing violence. Indeed, children with mental health needs are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. 13  However, the FSSC report highlights the need to expand comprehensive mental health services for students in order to enhance protective factors that buffer the effects of violence, reduce other risk factors that may contribute to violence perpetration, and improve schools’ ability to respond to violence. The report specifically calls on states to improve mental health identification and referral procedures, improve access to comprehensive school-based mental health programs, and train school staff to effectively respond to their students’ mental health needs.

Although some states began incorporating school-based mental health services into laws prior to 2000, most laws pertaining to these services were enacted after 2012. Since then, such laws have been more directly tied to school safety efforts, both in terms of their content and their placement within state education codes.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to mental health, by topic and year

Schools can serve as key intermediaries in identifying children who need mental health services and in providing resources and references to families to receive those services. As of 2019, 11 states encourage—and 27 require—districts and schools to provide mental health identification and referral services.

Laws in Hawaii (1988), Connecticut (1990), and California (1991) included the earliest references to mental health referrals by schools; each of these states subsequently amended and updated their laws. Most states (24) enacted laws regarding mental health identification and referrals after 2010, with seven laws passed from 2018 to 2019.

As of 2019, 27 states require and 11 states encourage schools to provide mental health identification and referral services Number of states with laws on early identification and referral

School-based or school-linked mental health programs can promote access and reduce stigma associated with using such services. 14  Twenty-eight states encourage schools to create school-based or school-linked mental health programs, and an additional 15 require it. In some cases, mental health programs are embedded within school safety plans. For example, South Carolina’s law establishes a school safety task force to “… develop standards for district level policies to promote effective … mental health intervention services.” 15  Tennessee’s law similarly embeds comprehensive school counseling and mental health programs within the purview of a state-level safety team. 16  Other states, such as Colorado, embed mental health programs within the scope of school-based health centers.

Laws in Connecticut (1990), Hawaii (1991), and Idaho (1997) include the earliest references to school-based mental health programs. Most states (27) added such references to their laws after 2012, with seven states enacting laws in 2018 and 2019.

As of 2019, 43 states encourage or require schools to create school-based or -linked mental health programs Number of states with laws related to school-based or school-linked mental health programs, by year

To better address their students’ needs, schools can provide teachers and other school staff with basic training, such as Mental Health First Aid, upon the signs of—and in response to—mental distress. 17  As of 2019, 30 states’ laws address staff mental health training, and seven specifically reference Mental Health First Aid.

Twelve states directly link staff mental health training to school safety efforts. For example, Michigan lists training for teachers on mental health as an essential component of emergency operations plans, 18  and Georgia includes mental health among the training topics contained within its required school safety plans. 19

Hawaii has the earliest law referencing mental health training for staff, enacted in 1974, followed by Tennessee in 1994. Six states passed laws on staff mental health training from 2003 to 2012. The remaining 22 laws were passed after 2013, with eight enacted after 2018.

As of 2019, 30 states have laws addressing staff mental health training Number of states with laws related to staff mental health training, by year

Threat Assessments

Both the FSSC report and a subsequent U.S. Secret Service analysis 20  highlight that, in most school shooting incidents, perpetrators made their intentions known. Mechanisms to both receive information about potential threats and systematically assess and respond to those threats can help prevent shootings. Laws addressing anonymous reporting systems and threat assessments in schools are relatively new, with the vast majority enacted after 2013.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to anonymous reporting systems and threat assessments, by year

Anonymous reporting systems can include phone lines, text systems, and/or email boxes that allow for communication of potential threats to school systems and law enforcement. As of 2019, 22 states address or establish provisions for anonymous reporting systems related to school violence concerns.

Virginia established the first anonymous reporting system in its laws in 1993. Although not required, the law encourages school systems to partner with local law enforcement and news media outlets to establish a “school crime line.” New York (2000) and Rhode Island (2001) added similar lines shortly after the 1999 Columbine shooting. The remaining 19 states added laws pertaining to anonymous reporting systems from 2010 to 2019, with 10 states enacting laws in 2018 and 2019.

22 states have laws addressing anonymous reporting provisions States with laws addressing anonymous reporting systems, 2019

Threat assessment is a concept originally developed by the U.S. Secret Service that is now being applied in school settings. The process typically involves a multidisciplinary team—including law enforcement, educators, and mental health providers—working collaboratively to identify students who have threatened or are at risk for violence, assess the seriousness of the threat, and develop an intervention approach that addresses underlying problems contributing to the threatening behavior. 21

Thirteen states have enacted laws that encourage or require school districts to implement formal threat assessment protocols. Of these, eight states encourage or require districts to adopt formal school board policies detailing threat assessment protocols. Five states mandate the development of state model policies or guidelines to advise districts on implementation, and three require state education agencies or districts to provide threat assessment training for school personnel.

13 states have laws encouraging or requiring school districts to implement threat assessment protocols Number of states with laws encouraging or requiring threat assessment protocols

The first state threat assessment law was passed in Virginia in 2000, requiring the Virginia Center for School Safety to provide technical assistance to districts to support safety planning efforts. These technical assistance efforts were to include the development of protocols addressing threat assessment in schools. 22  The second state to implement a formal threat assessment law was Indiana, in 2013, followed by 10 other states in 2018 and 2019. Several states, including Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Washington, had existing provisions in state laws that served as precursors to more formal threat assessment protocols. For example, Connecticut mandated that Safe School Climate Committees “collect and evaluate information on instances of disturbing and threatening behavior” and report information to the Safe School Climate Coordinator. Similarly, Washington required districts to establish a plan to recognize, screen, and respond to emotional or behavioral distress in students. 23

Until 2013, only one state encouraged or required school districts to implement threat assessment protocols Number of states with laws encouraging or requiring threat assessment protocols, by year

As states strengthen school surveillance and enforcement activities, many have also balanced the need to ensure equity in the school environment and protect students from biases that could influence the results of threat assessment procedures. For example, Texas’ 2019 threat assessment law mandates training for threat assessment team members on avoiding bias when identifying students at risk. Similarly, the most recent amendment to the Maryland Safe to Learn Act requires the state to develop a model policy for schools to include formal training for threat assessment team members on “implicit bias and disability and diversity awareness with specific attention to racial and ethnic disparities.” 24

School Personnel Training

The FSSC report calls for training all school staff on emergency operations and school safety procedures, but also for specialized training of school-based law enforcement (or school resource officers; SROs). The FSSC further recommends the establishment of memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between law enforcement and school systems about the role of SROs in schools.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to personnel training, by topic and year

Schools often partner with local law enforcement agencies to provide security personnel on campus (such as SROs) to be available if an emergency occurs. According to national data from the 2015-2016 school year, about 42 percent of all public schools report having an SRO or other school security personnel present on school grounds for at least one week during the school year. 25  However, little evidence suggests that increased policing of school campuses makes them any safer. According to a Congressional Research Service report, there is some evidence that the presence of SROs on campuses may increase law enforcement involvement in discipline for minor, nonviolent offences. 26  This is of particular concern given demonstrated disparities in the use of discipline for such offenses for students of color. 27  As noted in the FSSC report—and detailed in a 2016 guidance letter from ED regarding SROs on school campuses—MOUs are critical to establishing the role of SROs on campus, including their role in securing school facilities, and limiting their role in student discipline.

As of 2019, 41 states authorize the presence of law enforcement officers on their school campuses, of which 29 either encourage or require districts to establish MOUs with local law enforcement that clearly define the roles and responsibilities of officers in school settings. For example, a 2019 Washington law includes explicit restrictions on officer roles, stating that SROs should “focus on keeping students out of the criminal justice system when possible and should not be used to attempt to impose criminal sanctions in matters that are more appropriately handled within the educational system.” 28  The Washington law, and others like it, underscore the tension between the need for increased policing and monitoring of school campuses to protect them from serious safety threats and the need to ensure an equitable school environment and limit the criminalization of minor student behaviors.

While some states, including Kansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Texas, enacted laws encouraging or requiring MOUs with law enforcement prior to 1999, most states enacted laws after 2012 (17 states). Eight states have added laws encouraging or requiring MOUs since 2016, after ED issued its guidance letter.

As of 2019, 41 states authorize the presence of law enforcement officers on their school campuses Number of states with laws on presence of law enforcement

In tandem with MOUs, specialized training helps ensure that law enforcement personnel on school campuses are aware of issues specific to working with children and adolescents, including an awareness of child and adolescent development and other issues unique to the school environment. As of 2019, 33 states encourage or require specialized training for SROs and other school security personnel. Many recent laws go beyond security and enforcement in the physical school environment to embrace aspects of both social-emotional climate and protections for students with trauma or underlying mental health needs to ensure their safety and psychological well-being. For example, the 2019 Washington law that authorized the presence of SROs in schools also mandated comprehensive training on content areas that included—but were not limited to—child and adolescent development, trauma-informed approaches to working with youth, recognizing and responding to youth mental health issues, de-escalation techniques, and bias-free policing and cultural competency. 29

Most states (18) with laws encouraging or requiring specialized training for SROs and other security personnel enacted them after 2012. Early adopters, including Connecticut (1993), Delaware (1991), Florida (1991), Rhode Island (2001), Texas (2001), and Virginia (2001), have all passed subsequent legislation to extend and expand the requirements for SRO training.

As of 2019, 33 states encourage or require specialized training for school resource officers Number of states with laws encouraging or requiring specialized training for SROs and other security personnel, by year

The FSSC clearly states that, even with an SRO present, all school staff should be prepared for a school security emergency. As of 2019, 32 states encourage or require districts to train staff in emergency preparedness and school safety. Many of these laws are not specific on the content required, but embed training requirements within broader school emergency planning. For example, Indiana simply requires that “safety and emergency training and educational opportunities for school employees” be included in school emergency operations plans, 30  and Nebraska’s law tasks a state school security director with “[e]stablishing security awareness and preparedness tools and training programs for public school staff.” 31  More recent laws specify requirements for staff active shooter preparedness (see section below).

States have added staff training provisions in clusters, with 14 adding training requirements since 2012. Four states added staff training provisions in 2007 and 2008, another seven added them in 2013 and 2014, and five added them in 2018 and 2019.

As of 2019, 32 states require districts to train staff in emergency preparedness and school safety Number of states with laws requiring staff training in emergency preparedness, by year

School Building Security

The FSSC report identified several “best practices” for securing the school building in the event of school violence. These include establishing emergency operations plans, hardening the school building to prevent intrusion, and conducting security and risk assessments.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to hardening school buildings, by year

Emergency operations plans (EOPs) serve as guiding documents for local efforts—including coordination between schools and community partners—to prepare for severe violence, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Forty-nine state laws require the creation of district- or school-level EOPs to guide school actions to prevent, mitigate, and respond to safety threats. The U.S. Department of Education’s  Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Response Plans 32  recommends that plans be developed at the building level for each school. Twenty-three states require districts to create school-level plans, while 26 require district-level plans only. The two remaining states—Hawaii and North Dakota—do not establish legal mandates in either statute or regulation to create school or district safety plans. Thirty-nine states require districts to review and update their emergency plans periodically, consistent with best practices, and more than half of those require annual updates. The remaining 12 states with school emergency planning laws do not require districts to regularly review or update school safety measures once plans have been developed and implemented.

The first state to mandate the development of a comprehensive safe school plan was California, in 1989. 33  The authorizing legislation represented an approach to crime prevention on public school campuses, although it also addressed emergency and disaster preparedness. 34  Ten other states established laws addressing school safety planning prior to 1999, and 13 states passed such laws in 1999 and 2000. By 2012, 19 additional states enacted school emergency response and crisis management statutes or regulations, with three more (Connecticut, Kentucky, and Montana) in 2013 and the remaining three (Iowa, Kansas, and Wyoming) in 2018.

As of 2019, 49 states require districts to create school- or district-level emergency operation plans Number of states with laws requiring the creation of plans to prevent, mitigate, and respond to school safety threats, by year

Hardening the school building refers to installing physical security mechanisms to prevent the entrance and advancement of an armed intruder. Such mechanisms can include access control systems, video surveillance, metal detectors, classroom and building locks, and other protocols. Research is limited as to the effectiveness of such measures on improving school safety. 35  While some research indicates that certain hardening protocols, such as external video surveillance, may increase perceptions of safety, other protocols, such as internal video monitoring, may decrease perceptions of safety and students’ feelings of connectedness to school. 36

As of 2019, 28 states have provisions in their laws relating to hardening school buildings, 37  including building code requirements, authorizations of funding to support school hardening improvements, and guidelines for security measures in schools. Most laws specify the types of hardening procedures, including building locks, access control, and panic systems. Georgia’s law allows districts to request funding for security upgrades, “including, but not limited to, video surveillance cameras, metal detectors, alarms, communications systems, building access controls, and other similar security devices.” 38

New York (1994), Oregon (1995), Delaware (1996), Virginia (1997), and Pennsylvania (1999) had the earliest laws referring to hardening procedures, which were generally much less prescriptive than later laws. For example, Oregon’s law, which has not been amended, simply requires schools to maintain doors that can be opened from the inside without a key. 39  Most states with school hardening laws passed them after 2012, with seven states adding laws from 2013 to 2015 and nine adding them in 2018 and 2019.

As of 2019, 28 states have laws that encourage or require schools to install physical security mechanisms Number of states with laws related to hardening school buildings, by year

Risk assessments help schools identify and mitigate potential security vulnerabilities. As of 2019, 30 states address or establish provisions for security, hazard, or risk assessments in schools. Such laws are often paired with the development of EOPs and often specify both the frequency of such assessments and the agencies that must be involved in assessment execution or review. Colorado requires annual inspections to “address the removal of hazards and vandalism and any other barriers to safety and supervision.” 40  Other states have instead created tools and technical assistance to support schools in conducting risk assessments. For example, Kentucky recently updated its 2000 law to require schools to conduct a security assessment, create a risk assessment tool, and provide training for school administrators. 41

In 1995, South Carolina passed the first law requiring a school security assessment, followed by Oregon (1996), North Carolina (1997), and Virginia (1997). Most laws addressing risk and security assessments were passed after 2012, with eight states adding laws from 2012 to 2016 and six states in 2018 and 2019.

As of 2019, 30 states address or establish provisions for security, hazard, or risk assessments in schools Number of states with laws requiring school security assessment, by year

Active Shooter Preparedness

Prior to 1999, most states already had laws or regulations mandating the implementation of practice drills to prepare schools for fire or natural disasters. However, after the Columbine shooting, states incorporated more detailed and prescriptive mandates to expand and enhance practice drill requirements—for example, by requiring a variety of functional drills, such as lockdown, shelter-in-place, and evacuation drills.

States have addressed most federal school safety recommendations, with many adopting laws in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings Number of states adding laws related to active shooter preparedness, by topic and year

As of 2019, 42 states encourage or require districts to implement such multi-hazard drills.

The FSSC report notes that states are moving toward including drills specific to active shooter or armed intruder events. As of 2019, 16 states encourage or require active shooter drills, 10 of which passed following the Parkland shooting. Ohio passed the earliest law requiring active shooter drills in 2006, followed by Indiana in 2007.

Many states are enacting laws that encourage or require active shooter drills in schools, in addition to multi-hazard drills Number of states with laws related to multi-hazard and active shooter drills, by year

Twenty years after the Columbine school shooting, state policymakers continue to refine policies in an attempt to improve school safety and security. With each school shooting, policymakers establish new laws and regulations in the hopes of avoiding another tragedy. Using the FSSC recommendations as a framework, this brief explored seven issue areas in state-level policies. While policymakers continue to refine their approaches, many current proposals were already firmly embedded in state laws prior to the Parkland shooting in 2018. Still, that incident—as with many other major shootings of the past two decades—seems to have spurred considerable policy making, particularly around the FSSC’s recommendations related to protection, mitigation, and response. Although many states have also enacted laws related to the FSSC report’s more prevention-focused recommendations—including laws related to character education and school climate—both the timing and content of these laws have generally been unconnected with efforts to respond to school shooting events.

Still, some laws and policies have evolved to recognize the need to integrate and align efforts to promote safety and security with initiatives to maintain supportive school environments that remain focused on student learning and well-being. This is particularly evident in the growth of laws that better define the roles of school-based law enforcement and require training to ensure that the presence of officers does not lead to adverse consequences for students, as well as in the growing integration of laws that address school safety with those addressing student mental health and positive school climates. This promising trend recognizes that the threat of school violence often emerges from within the school itself, rather than from an external threat. 44 It further expands the notion of school safety from a mere defense against an attack to preventing one in the first place.

Although some policymakers are moving toward this holistic understanding of school safety, many are still calling for expansion of school security laws without consideration of the existing policy landscape. Such a consideration should include both an assessment of how existing laws have been working and of how such laws may contradict broader efforts to support the “whole child” (including efforts around character education and school climate). This is particularly evident in the rapid expansion of laws requiring schools to implement active shooter drills.

The existence of a state law does not mean that schools or districts are implementing that law as written or intended. Our current analysis only examines whether states have school safety provisions in statutes and regulations, but not whether those laws have been well understood or implemented by districts and schools or whether they have reduced school violence. More work is needed to understand how provisions in state law have translated into practice in schools and to evaluate such policies’ relative effectiveness.

Methodology and Data

The research, coding, and analysis method used to formulate this policy brief builds on a previous methodology developed by Child Trends, the Institute of Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and EMT Associates, Inc. for the January 2019 Using State Policy to Create Healthy Schools report. The report and policy brief are two products in a series of deliverables developed under a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Together for Healthy and Successful Schools Initiative. 45 The larger policy report assessed coverage of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Whole School, Whole Child, Whole Communities (WSCC) policy framework, which includes 10 interrelated WSCC domain areas: health education; physical education and physical activity; nutrition environment and services; health services; counseling, psychological, and social services; social and emotional climate; physical environment; employee wellness; parent engagement; and community involvement. Comprehensive state policy responses to school safety and security issues cross-cut several of these domains, including physical environment; social-emotional climate; counseling, psychological, and social services; and parent and community engagement.

To assess the history of state school safety policy efforts, we collected state statutes and administrative regulations for each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia using Boolean keyword searches in Lexis Advance and Westlaw commercial legal databases. We identified school safety-related statutory and regulatory provisions enacted or amended as of May 2019, with an emphasis on policies enacted from 1999 forward, and documented the legislative histories of each statute and regulation to assess the emergence of specific policy trends in state laws and regulations. To analyze the content of identified statutes and regulations, we developed a coding rubric across 15 core school safety domains that align with seven sections of the FSSC report that have direct implications for school practice.

The larger report describes the current policy landscape within each safety-related domain, reporting the number of states that do or do not address various provisions in law and documenting the timing in which certain provisions first appeared in state statute or regulation. The brief does not assess whether such policy strategies have been effective at addressing or reducing school violence; rather, it focuses on what supports currently exist in state law and how such supports were established.

1. DeVos, B., Nielsen, K. M., & Azar, A. M. (2018). Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety . Presented to the President of the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from:  https://www2.ed.gov/documents/school-safety/school-safety-report.pdf

4. Gulbrandson, K. (2018). Character education and SEL: What You Should Know . Seattle, WA: Committee for Children. Retrieved from: https://www.cfchildren.org/blog/2018/07/character-education-and-sel-what-you-should-know/

5. Ind. Code Ann. § 20-30-5-6 (2005).

6.Md. Code Ann., Education § 7-306 (2013).

7. Tex. Educ. Code § 28.002 (1995 & Supp. 2019).

8. Horner, R. H., et al. (2009). A randomized, wait-list controlled effectiveness trial assessing school-wide positive behavior support in elementary schools. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions , 11(3), 133-144.

10. Stuart-Cassel, V., Bell, A., & Springer, J. F. (2011). Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/bullying/state-bullying-laws/state-bullying-laws.pdf

11. Cullen, D. (2009). Columbine . New York: Twelve.

12. Moore, K. A., et al. (2015). Preventing violence: A Review of Research, Evaluation, Gaps, and Opportunities . San Francisco, CA: Futures Without Violence. Retrieved from:  https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/preventing-violence-a-review-of-research-evaluation-gaps-and-opportunities

13. Ibid 12.

14. Acosta, O. M., Tashman, N. A., Prodente, C., & Proescher, E. (2013). Establishing successful school mental health programs: Guidelines and recommendations. In H. S. Ghuman, M. D. Weist, & R. M. Sarles (Eds.), Providing mental health services to youth where they are: School and community-based approaches (pp. 57-94). New York & London: Brunner-Routledge.

15. S.C. Code Ann. § 59-66-40 (2014).

16. 19 TAC § 129.1045 (2017).

17. Jorm, A. F., Kitchener, B. A., Sawyer, M. G., Scales, H., & Cvetkovski, S. (2010). Mental health first aid training for high school teachers: A cluster randomized trial. BMC psychiatry , 10(51). doi:10.1186/1471-244X-10-51

18. MCLS § 380.1308b (2018).

19. O.C.G.A. § 20-2-1185 (1994 & Supp. 2018).

20. U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. (2019). Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence . Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service. Retrieved from:  https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/usss-analysis-of-targeted-school-violence.pdf

21. National Association of School Psychologists School Safety and Crisis Response Committee. (2014). Threat Assessment for School Administrators and Crisis Teams . Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Retrieved from:  https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-climate-safety-and-crisis/systems-level-prevention/threat-assessment-at-school/threat-assessment-for-school-administrators-and-crisis-teams

22. Va. Code Ann. § 9.1-184 (2019).

23. Rev. Code Wash. (ARCW) § 28A.320.127 (2013 & Supp. 2016).

24. Maryland Safe to Learn Act of 2018 Md. SB 1265 (2018).

25. Exstrom, M. (2019). School Safety: Overview and Legislative tracking . Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved from: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/school-safety.aspx

26. James, N., & McCallion, G. (2013). School Resource Officers: Law Enforcement Officers in Schools . Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Retrieved from:  https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43126.pdf

27. Miller, M. & Jean-Jacques, W. (2016). Is School Policing Racially Discriminatory? Washington, DC: The Century Foundation. Retrieved from:  https://tcf.org/content/commentary/school-policing-racially-discriminatory/?session=1&session=1

28. Rev. Code Wash. (ARCW) § 28A.320.124 (2019).

29. School Safety and Student Well-Being 2019 Wa. HB 1216 (2019).

30.Ind. Code Ann. § 20-34-3-23 (2018).

31. R.R.S. Neb. § 79-2,144 (2014 & Supp. 2017).

32. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students. (2013). Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from:  https://rems.ed.gov/docs/REMS_K-12_Guide_508.pdf

33. Cal Ed Code § 32282 (1985).

34. 1989 Cal AB 450

35. Jonson, C. L. (2017). Preventing school shootings: The effectiveness of safety measures. Victims & Offenders , 12(6), 956-973. doi: 10.1080/15564886.2017.1307293

36. Johnson, S. L., Bottiani, J., Waasdorp, T. E., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2018). Surveillance or safekeeping? How school security officer and camera presence influence students’ perceptions of safety, equity, and support. Journal of Adolescent Health , 63(6), 732-738. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.06.008

37. This count includes legislation passed by Kansas in 2019 that has not yet been codified into statute.

38. Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-1185 (2010).

39. ORS § 336.071 (1995).

40. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 22-32-109.1 (2000).

41.Ky. Rev. Stat. § 158.445 (2018).; Ky. Rev. Stat. § 158.4410 (2019).; Ky. Rev. Stat. § 158.442 (2018).

42. Rygg, L. (2015). School shooting simulations: At what point does preparation become more harmful than helpful? Children’s Legal Rights Journal , 35(3), 215-228.

43. Hamblin, J. (2018, February 28). What Are Active-Shooter Drills Doing to Kids? Washington, DC: The Atlantic. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/02/effects-of-active-shooter/554150/

44. Ibid 35.

45. Chriqui, J., et al. (2019). Using State Policy to Create Healthy Schools: Coverage of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Framework in State Statutes and Regulations, School Year 2017-18 . Bethesda, MD: Child Trends. Retrieved from:  https://cms.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/WSCCStatePolicyReportSY2017-18_ChildTrends_January2019.pdf

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More than 360,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine

There have been 394 school shootings since 1999, according to post data.

There were more school shootings in 2022 — 46 — than in any year since at least 1999.

Beyond the dead and wounded, children who witness the violence or cower behind locked doors to hide from it can be profoundly traumatized.

[ Mass shootings: Tracking gun violence in the U.S. ]

The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Washington Post has spent years tracking how many children in the United States have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999.

The Post pieces together its numbers from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports, and calls to schools and police departments.

There have been 394 school shootings since Columbine

A shooter injured two students and an administrator before dying from a self inflicted gunshot wound.

A police officer was shot by someone who was off campus.

A student was shot and killed while walking home in the afternoon.

Three students were shot and injured at the begining of the school day.

A teenage was shot and injured at a playground shortly after dissmissal.

The Post’s search for more shootings will continue, and it’s possible reporters will locate additional incidents from previous years.

Hundreds of outlets cover the deadliest attacks, such as the Feb. 14, 2018, rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., where a 19-year-old man with an AR-style rifle killed 17 people.

Others are covered by a single newspaper, such as a 2001 shooting at Pearl C. Anderson Middle School in Dallas, where a 14-year-old boy held a revolver to a girl’s chest and asked her whether she was “ready to die” before a bullet fired, grazing her hand.

Across all such incidents, The Post has found that at least 203 children, educators and other people have been killed, and another 441 have been injured.

Even as the list of incidents has expanded, however, the trend lines have remained consistent.

School shootings disproportionately affect Black children

Among The Post’s most important findings: the disproportionate impact of school shootings on children of color.

Almost all the deadliest assaults were committed by White gunmen, a reality that has left much of the public with the false impression that school shootings almost exclusively affect White students. Children of color, however, are far more likely to experience campus gun violence: more than twice as much for Hispanic students and over three times as much for Black students.

At schools with majority Black student bodies, shooters typically target a specific person, limiting the number of people shot — and the subsequent media exposure.

Black students make up 16.6 % of the school population ...

... but they experience school shootings at twice that rate.

The Post has reviewed more than 180 shootings committed by juveniles since Columbine, and in cases where the source of the gun could be determined, 86 percent of the weapons were found in the homes of friends, relatives or parents.

The median age of a school shooter is 16

Children, The Post also determined, are responsible for more than half the country’s school shootings — none of which would be possible if those children didn’t have access to firearms.

The ranks of school shooters include a 6-year-old boy, who killed a classmate he shot on purpose, and a 15-year-old girl, who did the same to a friend for rejecting her romantic overtures.

School shootings on the rise

While it remains highly unlikely that any student will experience a school shooting, the number of incidents has risen rapidly in recent years. Through 2017, the country averaged about 11 school shootings a year, never eclipsing 16 in a single year. But starting in 2018, violent incidents started climbing.

In 2020, the novel coronavirus closed campuses for months, and the number of shootings declined. But with classes in session again, 42 K-12 schools experienced school shootings in 2021, and 46 endured one the next year — mirroring the nation’s broader rise in gun violence as it emerged from the pandemic.

About this story

The Washington Post spent a year determining how many children have been affected by school shootings, beyond just those killed or injured. To do that, reporters attempted to identify every act of gunfire at a primary or secondary school during school hours since the Columbine High massacre on April 20, 1999. Using Nexis, news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports, information from school websites, and calls to schools and police departments, The Post reviewed more than 1,000 alleged incidents but counted only those that happened on campuses immediately before, during or just after classes.

Shootings at after-hours events, accidental discharges that caused no injuries to anyone other than the person handling the gun and suicides that occurred privately or posed no threat to other children were excluded. Gunfire at colleges and universities, which affects young adults rather than kids, also was not counted.

After finding more than 200 incidents of gun violence that met The Post’s criteria, reporters organized them in a database for analysis. Because the federal government does not track school shootings, it’s possible that the database does not contain every incident that would qualify.

To calculate how many children were exposed to gunfire in each school shooting, The Post relied on enrollment figures and demographic information from the U.S. Education Department, including the Common Core of Data and the Private School Universe Survey. The analysis used attendance figures from the year of the shooting for the vast majority of the schools. Then The Post deducted 7 percent from the enrollment total because that is, on average, how many students miss school each day, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Reporters subtracted 50 percent from a school’s enrollment if the act of gun violence occurred just before or after the school day.

You can obtain the raw data here . To provide information about school shootings since Columbine that fit The Post’s definition, send us an email at [email protected] .

Research and reporting by John Woodrow Cox, Steven Rich, Allyson Chiu, Hannah Thacker, Linda Chong, Lucas Trevor, and Alex Horton. Production and presentation by John Muyskens, Monica Ulmanu, Leslie Shapiro and Reuben Fischer-Baum. Editing by Lynda Robinson, Meghan Hoyer, Wendy Galietta, Frances Moody and Stu Werner.

Originally published April 20, 2018.

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In Missouri, gun laws take center stage after another shooting

ST. LOUIS — Two weeks after the mass shooting in Kansas City that left 22 people injured and a mother of two dead, another shooting claimed the lives of an officer and a civil process server. Since those deaths, lawmakers in the Missouri Legislature have renewed their focus on the state’s gun laws.

Missouri has some of the loosest gun laws in the United States. The state does not require permits to purchase or carry, and it does not require firearms to be registered or for gun owners to be licensed. For years, lawmakers have struggled to find bipartisan solutions to gun violence in the state.

While some Republicans say the focus on gun policy is a knee-jerk reaction, state Democrats argue it’s common sense.

READ MORE: Missouri law barring police from enforcing federal gun laws creates confusion

In Missouri, violent crime dropped slightly in 2023, but the vast majority of incidents involved guns. Firearm crimes, as reported by police in both St. Louis and Kansas City, went up from 2022 to 2023. Last year, nearly 500 people in the state died as a result of a firearm-related crime.

These acts of violence have sparked a fresh round of calls to act, including a quick and rare bipartisan effort to ban celebratory gunfire, though that issue was not a factor in the shooting that followed the Kansas City Super Bowl parade.

Last year, survivors of a St. Louis-area school shooting called on lawmakers to act. State Democrats proposed so-called “red flag” laws as well as raising the minimum age for firearm purchases, but both failed.

Still, there might be new opportunity this year, said Leila Sadat, international criminal law professor at Washington University.

“We’ve all felt that it was hopeless for so long,” said Sadat, who also leads a project on gun violence and human rights at the university. “Sandy Hook didn’t change anything, Columbine didn’t change anything, Parkland didn’t change anything. Would it ever change? And I think actually we are seeing a subtle shift, mostly because the gun deaths are so high now.”

What the Legislature has done about guns

So far this session, more than 35 bills with language around firearms have been filed in the state house by both parties.

Democrat state House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a gun owner who grew up in rural Missouri, said it’s “almost impossible” to get support for gun legislation in the Legislature.

“Politics gets in the way of keeping our community safe when it comes to the Republican supermajority here in Missouri,” she said, and “law enforcement asks us for help and the Republicans who are in charge here say, ‘No, now is not the time.’”

Officials said 800 members of law enforcement were on the scene when the Kansas City shooting began. Nearly half of the people shot that day were children.

Quade was among those attending the parade when shots rang out. She said she was in the bathroom when a man entered to warn everyone inside that there was an active shooter — a moment she said was “absolutely terrifying.”

“I, along with a few other adults, put the kids behind us and piled them in a corner and stood in front of them until we had the [all-]clear that we could leave the bathroom,” she said, recalling the chaos of people running and children crying to be reunited with their parents.

“It’s something that obviously any survivor of a mass shooting will say that I’ll relive that for a very, very long time, if not forever,” she said.

Just days after the shooting, the Republican-led House passed a ban on celebratory gunfire in a rare bipartisan move. The 120-26 vote made it a misdemeanor to shoot a firearm within city limits for the first offense.

Republican Rep. Ben Baker told the PBS NewsHour he voted for that bill, which he said was a “reasonable gun measure” to pass.

“It’s just irresponsible to be operating a firearm … in that way, and I think most people that have been trained properly and have been around firearms in a responsible way get that but unfortunately, in some cases, people don’t,” he said.

READ MORE: St. Louis school shooting focuses area leaders on threats to children from guns

Another bill, filed by state House Democrats in the wake of the shooting, proposes amending the Missouri Constitution to give municipalities and counties the power to enact and enforce their own gun policies, which Sadat said could lead to cities being safer.

While Missouri’s laws are comparable to states on its western border, across the eastern border is a different story.

“Our neighbor right to the east [Illinois] is much, much better, on gun legislation than we are. They have an assault weapons ban. They have a much stricter enforcement policy,” she said.

But Republicans, such as Baker, argue there needs to be more in-depth thought before legislation is proposed surrounding gun policy. On the House floor, he said calls for stricter gun policy were a “knee-jerk reaction.”

After shootings happen, he said, people are looking for answers and often look to the government to pass a law, which he added can be “problematic in a lot of ways.”

“The premise of what I was speaking about is we need to take some time and really ponder this and try to look at it from all angles, in all of the facts and all of the details, and then go through that,” he said. “I think that is the purview of what we do as legislators.”

Republicans in the state have also filed their own types of gun policy this session, several aiming to expand where guns can be carried. Baker is sponsoring a bill that would change state law to allow firearms in churches and places of worship with a concealed carry permit. Over in the state Senate, a bill sponsored by Sen. Nick Schroer would allow a person with a concealed carry permit to carry firearms on public transportation. That bill has been referred to the state’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee.

The state Legislature also passed a bill in 2021 that would have made it harder for law enforcement to enforce federal gun laws. However, the policy was met with challenges almost immediately. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case after a federal court deemed it as unconstitutional.

How Missourians feel about guns

US-NEWS-CHIEFS-PARADE-SHOOTING-SIGN-KC

A sign made from chairs spelled out “KC STRONG” is seen in front of Union Station, the site of a Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally. Photo by Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/TNS/Abacapress.com

Polling across the state suggests there is bipartisan support for some stricter gun policy. In 2023, months after the 2022 school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, a SLU/YouGov poll found that at least 59 percent of voters supported criminal and mental health background checks, and a 21-year-old age requirement before a person could purchase a gun.

Nearly 60 percent of voters also supported tighter security in schools including metal detectors, security cameras and having a police officer on campus.

“These results suggest school safety is on the minds of many Missourians. Findings indicate bipartisan support for several school safety measures,” said Ashley Donaldson Burle, chief of operations and a research fellow at Saint Louis University’s PRiME Center. “However, voters are more divided or unsure on controversial measures such as allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns.”

Their findings show less than 50 percent of voters support teachers or administrators having guns in schools.

Though movement on gun legislation has been slow in Missouri, Sadat said there are some versions of bills across the country that could receive more bipartisan support.

“Age limits are more palatable than some other kinds of limits,” she said. [There are] a lot of good reasons to keep especially AR-15s out of the hands of very, very young people,” who may be more reckless and impulsive.

READ MORE: St. Louis grapples with aftermath of school shooting and widespread gun violence

“I think raising age limits seems to be something that is easier to get bipartisan consensus for,” she added.

Given the high rates of suicide in the U.S, Sadat also believes there might be opportunity for consensus around wait times for gun purchases, too. In 2021, suicide was one of the top nine leading causes of death for people 10 to 64 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, many policies are likely to face challenges, including the assault weapons ban.

“I don’t think they’re more likely to get bipartisan support because the sort of culture has grown up around them and there’s this fear that … taking [assault weapons] away or banning them will lead to these terrible things,” Sadat said. “But I do think that that is one of the key things that could be done to make Americans safer.”

What’s next?

With the state Legislature only being in session for a few weeks, many bills have only gotten a second reading with some already being referred to committee.

Given the information he has so far, Baker said there is no law that could have prevented what happened in Kansas City on Valentine’s Day. More facts are needed to determine how best the Legislature should move forward, he said.

“The important thing to do is say, ‘Yes, that’s a terrible tragedy that happened,’” he said, and we need to take the time to go through all of the details” and look at how we can respond to those facts.

For Quade, there isn’t any time to wait.

The Democratic lawmaker said the current conversations around guns in Missouri “ isn’t an attack on the Second Amendment or people’s individual rights.”

“We have folks from all various backgrounds, all political spectrums … law enforcement officers asking for us to do something about this.” she said. “We don’t have to live this way.”

Gabrielle Hays is a Communities Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour out of St. Louis.

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Missouri law barring police from enforcing federal gun laws creates confusion

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  1. Columbine High School shootings

    The shootings were carried out by Eric Harris, age 18, and Dylan Klebold, age 17. On April 20, 1999, they entered Columbine High School in Jefferson county with semiautomatic rifles, pistols, and several explosives. In less than 20 minutes they killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded 21 others.

  2. Columbine High School Shooting: Victims & Killers

    The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others ...

  3. Columbine High School Shooting: The Full Story Behind The Tragedy

    Within an hour, 18-year-old Harris and his 17-year-old partner Dylan Klebold — a fellow Columbine High School student and Brown's friend since first grade — were dead. In that time, they had murdered 12 students and one teacher in what was then the deadliest school shooting in American history.

  4. The Shooting At Columbine High School Sociology Essay

    The Shooting At Columbine High School Sociology Essay. About eleven years ago on Tuesday April 20th, 1999 (anniversary of Hitler's birthday) started out like any other day. Parent and children in a small Colorado town both went their separate ways to work and school, neither excessively concerned about the other or how their day would turn ...

  5. Columbine High School massacre

    The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher.

  6. PDF A Brief History of Columbine and Its Effect

    Early Signs of Massacre Months before the Columbine shooting, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris demonstrated concerning signs and behavior that hinted at their future actions. Essays and conversations by both students were investigated and illustrated problematic conduct. Dylan Klebold submitted a 1 Bologna, Jamie. "'Patrio ts Day' Is A Difficult ...

  7. Columbine at 20: how school shootings became 'part of the American

    Mauser spoke with the Guardian from Colorado, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine high school. The attack on 20 April 1999 saw two boys murder 12 students and one teacher ...

  8. Columbine's Legacy, 24 Years After the Shooting

    Top Story. Twenty-four years ago today, two teenagers opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and killed 12 students and one teacher. The massacre shocked a nation that has now grown accustomed to violence at schools: Since 1999, according to a Washington Post tracker, there have been 377 campus shootings, and more than ...

  9. Marilyn Manson on Columbine School Shooting

    In the aftermath of the Colorado school shooting, Marilyn Manson speaks out. By Marilyn Manson. June 24, 1999. "America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I have assumed ...

  10. 20 Years After Columbine, What Have We Learned?

    A 1998 massacre at a middle school in Jonesboro, Ark., left five dead and 10 wounded. But no earlier burst of gun insanity shattered the national psyche like the carnage on April 20, 1999, at ...

  11. My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story

    Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters who committed the Columbine High School massacre, murdering 12 students and a teacher. She's spent years excavating every detail of her family life, trying to understand what she could have done to prevent her son's violence. In this difficult, jarring talk, Klebold explores the intersection between mental health and violence ...

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    June 1, 2022, 1:31 AM PDT. By Craig Nason. In April 1999, I survived the Columbine shooting. At just 17 years old, I was forced to process the murder of my friends, the trauma of my community, and ...

  13. What We've Learned From School Shootings : NPR

    If you work in a school, we wonder how your school's approach to security has changed. The number is 1-800-989-8255. Our email address is [email protected]. And join the conversation as well by going ...

  14. (PDF) The Columbine High School Shootings

    However, there is a considerable amount of research on the Columbine High School shooting, as this is typically the benchmark case to which all other school shootings are compared (Altheide 2009 ...

  15. Newspaper Article Analysis

    The article, from The Christian Science Monitor published on April 23, 1999, serves to illustrate the community response following the Columbine High School shooting. It further sheds light on the strength and resilience present within the community. The article begins by highlighting a note someone wrote, reading "'You have been shattered ...

  16. Columbine parents praise essay by mom of shooter

    Oct. 13, 2009 6:45 PM PT. DENVER —. Parents and survivors of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School are saying good things about an essay released Tuesday by the mother of shooter Dylan ...

  17. The 11 mass deadly school shootings that happened since Columbine

    3. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School - Feb. 14, 2018 - 17 victims. While the response of "thoughts and prayers" offered after mass shootings was once again decried by many as inadequate ...

  18. Rachel's Challenges and It Benefits to the Youth. Columbine School

    Introduction. The incident which occurred on Tuesday 20 th April 1999 has been simply referred to as the Columbine High School Massacre. At the center of the killing were two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. The two went on a killing spree; killing twelve students and a teacher and injuring twenty-four others before turning the gun on themselves and committing suicide.

  19. The Evolution of State School Safety Laws Since the Columbine School

    The 1999 shooting at Columbine High School was a watershed moment for many state lawmakers working to keep schools safe. In response to that school shooting—and several other high-profile shootings over the next two decades—policymakers passed new statutes and enacted new regulations in hopes of stopping similar incidents. Unfortunately, as ...

  20. Essay On Columbine High School Shooting

    The Columbine high school shooting took place in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. The crime was named one of the worst high school shooting in U.S. history and later began a national debate ...

  21. There have been 394 school shootings since Columbine

    The Washington Post for years has tracked the number of students affected by school shootings. Since 1999, over 300,000 children have experienced gun violence during school hours.

  22. Marilyn Manson-Columbine High School massacre controversy

    The Carbine High Massacre (1999) Rock musician Marilyn Manson ( left) was linked to the Columbine High School massacre ( right) in the aftermath of the tragedy. Following the massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, one common view was that the violent actions perpetrated by the two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were due ...

  23. 1991 University of Iowa shooting

    The University of Iowa shooting was a mass shooting that occurred in Iowa City, Iowa, on November 1, 1991.Gang Lu, a 28-year-old former graduate student at the University of Iowa, killed three members of the Physics and Astronomy Department faculty, an Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and a fellow student, then seriously injured another student working at the university's campus ...

  24. In Missouri, gun laws take center stage after another shooting

    In 2023, months after the 2022 school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, a SLU/YouGov poll found that at least 59 percent of voters supported criminal and ...