Book Review: The Columbine Shootings

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On April 20th 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold placed bombs inside their high school but they failed to detonate. Even though the bomb attack went wrong, the massacre that followed shortly after remains one of the most well known shootings in US history. Columbine was the most fascinating but heartbreaking and revolting non-fiction book I have ever read. Reading this book taught me a lot about the shooters personalities and proved rumors that I had in my head wrong, such as, the Columbine killers were social misfits who were bullied by their classmates and were a part of the Trench Coat Mafia. One of the scenes that was most difficult for me to read was when the cops left Danny Rohrbough’s deceased body outside and denied his father the …show more content…

“Eric raised Arlene, and aimed her at the camera. “You guys will all die, and it will be fucking soon,” he said. “You all need to die. We need to die, too.” (pg 327). This scene shows how much hatred Eric Harris had for humanity and showed how much of an angry, hateful person he was. I’ve heard rumors about Columbine before where people said the shooters (Eric being one of them) were bullied and misfits. It wasn 't about the jocks, the goths or the trench coat mafia. Reading this book proved every rumor wrong. Eric and Dylan were not bullied, they fit in with their classmates, they played sports and had friends; Dylan even had a prom date. This just shows how the way people act on the outside does not mean they are the same in the inside. Dylan and Eric were psychopaths and the thoughts running through their heads were …show more content…

Is it bad that when I hear of a mass shooting on the news I’m not even surprised anymore? It’s like a norm. Our world should NOT be like this! I think it is very likely that an event like the Columbine shootings could happen where we live in Canada. However, I think it’s more likely to happen in the United States because of their much larger population, lax gun laws, and easy access to weapons. The world has lost so many innocent souls in mass shootings such as the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and the Batman cinema shooting. Maybe these shootings aren’t occurring so often because of lax gun laws and easy access to weapons. Gun laws have been the same for many years in both Canada and the United States. Maybe they’re occurring because of the increase in rates of mental health problems. Both Eric and Dylan were not mentally stable, and neither is any mass shooter out there. Maybe if our society paid more attention to people’s mental health and made access to Psychologists and Psychiatrists more affordable and easy, the rate of mass shootings in the world would

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