Talk:Columbine High School massacre/archive

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Gun controversy/not directly related to article

I am Irish and let me tell you why we have an unarmed police (Gardaí) force. Simple if Guards are unarmed then other people don't need to be armed to be equal. We haven't had arms in our country (legally) since 1927 after the civil war. We don't have Columbines because you can't easily obtain a gun. Yet we play the same video games as everyone else, we listnen to the same music, we live like everyone else, yet I know an ambulance driver and in over 15 years of service he has only seen 1 gun shooting. I am only 16 and i my last year in school, yet have walked home by myself at night. We have a reputation as alcholics, which unfortunetly in correct, but not gun crime as we don't have access to them. Think about it, ban guns and confiscate every one of them and gun crime will drop and in our entire state history we have never had an atrocity quite like Columbine. Just think about it. Irish-kid

Yeah, and I live in Montana, and we have a lower homicide rate than anywhere with similar population density in Canada, Ireland, or the UK, despite having an average of 26 guns per home. Correlation doesn't equal causation, find another inanimate scapegoat to blame for the actions of bad people. Contary to popular belief, handguns aren't even responsible for the majority of homicides in the US. Most homicides in the US are committed in heavily populated cities by people with very low income, usually 18-25 males, and are almost always connected with alcohol or drugs. European countries have less homicide not because of guns, but because of better social programs that take away the reasons for crime in the first place. Oh, ahd the reason Ireland has no guns, is because you are subjects of the British Empire, and subjects are best left disarmed.
exactly, here in the US, some of our left leaners go a bit nuts and blame every single thing that goes wrong on america, and george bush, these scumbags would like nothing better than to see America fall to the islamists, that's why commies like mooore get to stay in places like france, and their canes, where people like that sort of thing--205.188.116.65 04:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I think you'll find the Republic_of_Ireland (which is the nation with the Gardaí) is no longer anything to do with the British Empire.
well dur, thanks for your useful suggestion, less guns = less crime, if I want that crap, I'll turn on CNN, listen to people tell me the islamists and the ghetto bangers are just good people, corrupted by americas love of freedom, and we have to understand...take that kind of balony back to france with you!--205.188.116.65 04:48, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
By the way, other than certain neighborhoods in certain large cities in the USA, women here routinely can safely walk home through the city alone, even at night. For people who are not criminals or drug/alcohol abusers, the USA is at least as safe as Canada, UK, Australia or most nations in Europe. If your statement about that Californians neighborhood shootings is accurate, then I have to assume he lives in one of those handfull of dangerous neighborhoods. By the way, the most dangerous neighborhoods in the USA all have the most severe restrictions on gun ownership compared to the rest of the USA. Libdemplus
'US is at least as safe as'? Hardly. Make that 'four times less safe than'. Homicides per 100,000 persons (average 1998-2000): USA - 5.9. England and Wales - 1.5. My source: UK Home Office report [1], bottom of page 3. --257.47b.9½.-19 23:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
PS Yes, I know you said 'for people who are not criminals or drug/alcohol abusers', but you think other countries don't have criminals and bad neighbourhoods too? Even if we assume that 3/4 of all shootings are 'bad-on-bad' (criminals shooting each other), that doesn't make any difference to the relative safety of ordinary folks in the two countries. --257.47b.9½.-19 10:22, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A lot of us Americans think the US approach to guns is nuts. -- Zoe

A lot of Americans are ignorant, bigoted, and wildly mis-informed, but that's no excuse for the systematic oppression of the inherant human right to choose to own firearms of the rest of us. People who fear firearms and the ownership of firearms by ordinary citizens do so out of emotional knee-jerk reactions programmed into the generally ignorant public by the news media, popular entertainment and opportunistic politicians. I should know, I used to be one of the ignorant public, I used to fully support any sort of gun restrictions, including outright bans, but as I said, that's when I was ignorant.

Libdemplus

Don't worry I don't presume that all Americans are gun-crazy. But it was rather funny going to see Bowling for Columbine with Danny from California. The Irish cinema audience was rolling about the place in laughter at the nutty American attitude towards guns as portrayed in the film, while Danny (an ex-soldier) couldn't get the joke and kept asking me "what are they laughing about? What is so funny?". Though he spent the entire holiday in Ireland in shock at the fact that the Garda Siochána (the police) don't carry guns and that they are in as much likelihood of getting shot at as George W. Bush is of delivering an inpromptu speech without a script and not making some monumental grammatical clanger! ÉÍREman 21:25 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)
I have no doubt that the reason they were laughing is simply that they were utterly ignorant about firearms as well as USA history, not to mention that they probably accepted all the non-sense Moore stuck in his film as if it were factual, which it was not. I have found that even Americans who own guns and know something about guns were routinely fooled by various parts of Moore's film. Libdemplus


General Discussion

Okay, I need a bit of help. Does anyone know the exact author of this article? I cant seem to find it anywhere and I need the information for a research project, so if someone could help me there I'd be very appreciative. Thanks! EEF90

By the way, could somebody who knows the editing protocols here better than I do please fix the area around the photo? It looks like a mess with the photo sitting on top of several words of the text. I'm looking at it with Netscape on a Sun Solaris system and the photo obscrues a whole line. Thanks Libdemplus

Bowling for Columbine Reference

I disagree with the third paragraph of this article. It states that the Columbine High School massacre was the subject of the film Bowling for Columbine, and I think this implies that it was the main topic of it when it fact the film was about US violence in general. The school shooting was just a starting point for the film which was occasionally returned to; this is even the opinion of the Bowling for Columbine article itself, but I don't want to change this paragragh since this seems to be a bit of a PoV issue. -- 212.229.115.84

I agree that people who watched the 'Documentry', came out thinking americans were complete dumbasses, im an engish studant and watched the film in a drama lesson. Most of my class were horrified by the things that were shown,ie: the brother of an Oklahoma bomber holding a gun to his head, is the ownership of guns in america treated in such a light-hearted way? Even when the saftys off?

I agree with "212.229.115.84" about the fact that the film exploited the Columbine killers as a jumping-off point for Moore's theories on violence in the USA. I also strongly disagree with calling that film a "documentary" since it was filled with many falsehoods and deceptive editing. Every main-stream published review of that film I have read contains many verifyably false statements and remarkably, these reviewers all seemed to have come up with the same false beliefs from seeing the film. Everyone I know personally who saw the film (who had not already been warned of the deceptions in the film) came away with exactly the same false impressions. Moore systematically tricked the media and the public by various deceptive methods, not to mention the outright lies he told to the various people he used in the film. Libdemplus

I think the paragraph is accurate. The film used the issue of the massacre to highlight the broader issue of gun availability in the US. (But then we Europeans do think the US approach to guns is nuts. A Californian friend on a visit to Ireland could not believe that the police are unarmed, nobody he met had even seen a gun, women regularly walked home through the city alone. And that a city the size of Dublin had less shootings in a year than his neighbourhood had in 9 days. So no wonder Europeans think American gun laws nutty.) ÉÍREman 07:34 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC) PS that Californian got his first gun aged 11!

Added second paragraph correcting the Cassie Bernall story. Feel free to move both paragraphs to their own page if you want to add more. I think there is already too much to be located on the page about Columbine, I don't want it to overshadow the other content by picking apart a tiny incident.

How could the gunman have been inspired by the film The Matrix when it hadn't even come out yet? I think the editor who add that details was confusing the Columbine massacre with another slaying by a teenager called "The Matrix murders" Shall I delete this part? Kricxjo 07:57, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

  • According to [2] the theatrical release date was April 2, 1999. That would've given killers about 18 days to have seen it. Did they? I don't know and I don't plan to do the research to find out. The mention of it seems like speculation to me, but it's possible. M123 08:02, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • What about violent video games and Marilyn Manson? -- goatasaur 16:09, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Trenchcoat Mafia?

The aricle states Harris and Klebold, as well as a few other friends had formed a small club known as the "Trenchcoat Mafia", but as far as I know they may have been called that, but they neither founded, nor was they members of the Trenchcoat Mafia. The actual members of the Trenchcoat Mafia had actually left the school years earlier. // Liftarn

Obvious why 'provoked' gets quotes, as they may not have been provoked at all. Far from clear why 'done' gets a quote. DJ Clayworth 15:29, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Cassie Bernall

Shouldn't she get her own article? I think that the Bernall stuff should be moved. WhisperToMe 09:25, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Why the reference to the birthday of Adolf Hitler? What significance does it have? No reference to it in the article . Moriori 00:42, Nov 30, 2003 (UTC)

Would anyone object to making the intro clearer? It is a long-winded example of excruciation at the moment. Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be clear and concise? Moriori 05:59, Dec 1, 2003 (UTC)

External Links

Should links to the "impact" be added as well ? (I distinctly remember reading Voices from the Hellmouth and the continuations thereof in the aftermath, and think they are relevant in relation to the moral panic mentioned in the article. Any objections ? Eike 04:58, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that the material in the recent Slate article is important and someone with interest in the subject should go through it. Don't miss the sidebar linked from the third paragraph. --Zero 03:35, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

One wonders what Harris and Kliebold would've thought of 9/11, given their airplane hijacking plans. Rickyrab 22:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

We should avoid reifications like "Christian community" as not being neutral. There are only individual Christians and Christian congregations. "Christian community" is an abstraction--one with a lot of ideological baggage--that ought not be treated as something real.

Questions re. "16 minutes of terror"

  1. To which 16 minutes do this section heading refer? I don't see an obvious span of time that corresponds.
  2. In two different places in this section there are references to there being 900 and 448 students in the cafeteria. Which is correct? (Perhaps one is an estimate by the shooters, the other an actual count?)

Can someone who knows more about this incident correct and/or clarify? AHM 04:51, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I changed the "18 minutes of terror" title to "46 minutes of terror" because "18 minutes" depicts the time from 11:19 to 11:37, yet the shooting did not officially end until at least 12:05, which is when the last shots were fired out the library windows, moments before the killers allegedly committed suicide. PRueda29

I removed the sentence about Coach Sanders being a bit faster or the shooters being a bit slower as it seemed like an attempt to increase the drama and sadness of a situation that needed no help in those areas. - 69.140.62.82, 14 Jan 2005

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