The author formats his research into two sections: the first section is the Virginia Tech and then the Columbine shooting. The main focus will be about the Columbine massacre that occurred in 1999. Chen gives a brief summary of the case but focuses more of the psychological field as to why this incident happened. Looking into his research, Chen points out a lot of mental illness attribution, causal attributions, racial exemplars and interracial evaluations. The usefulness of his work is well played including a mass of data/statistics to back up his research. With Virginia Tech, he compares to Columbine on how the suspects have mental issues that caused them commit multiple homicides. “Mental illness would be perceived as an external attribution…
Eric Harris was a psychopath; this fact allowed him to commit a terrible crime without feeling empathy or remorse for his victims. However, on the outside he was anything but antisocial (or criminal). Eric smoke, drank, dated—all within a close circle of friends. Yet, he was excellent at manipulation. His lies were so finely tuned that even his ex-military father suspected nothing. Eric received a slew of A’s from his teachers; every single one of them considered him a “good kid”. No one ever suspected that anything as devastating or horrifying could erupt from such a well-rounded kid from a nice family. This is why Dave Cullen’s description of Dylan Klebold who “tried extremely hard to emulate Eric” was not mistaken. Although Dylan was considerably smarter…
In October 1997, I heard on the radio that Luke Woodham, a sixteenyear-old, had killed two classmates and wounded seven others in a school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi. In a note, Luke declared: “I am not insane. I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day.”1 He explained that he was tired of being called a “faggot”; he was additionally enraged that his girlfriend—whom he killed in the shooting—had broken up with him. At the start of the Woodham case, I began examining school shootings. Two months after the massacre in Mississippi came a shooting in Kentucky, then one in Arkansas that same month, and then another in Arkansas three months later in March 1998. There was a shooting in Pennsylvania that April, in Tennessee…
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates and teacher at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. (Cullen“The Depressive and Psychopath”). Harris and Klebold have planned for a year about what they wereare going to do. They wanted to do the shooting on the same day as the Oklahoma City bombing (“Columbine High School Shooting”). Their hatred led them to seek revenge on the people at the school whomthat they both hated. In Harris’s journal, his opening sentence was “I hate the f---ing world” (Cullen“The Depressive and Psychopath”). In theirthere massacre they targetedaimed towards athletes but, when bombs went off they would gun down any and everything fleeing the school. It was just as much of a bombing as it was a shooting (“The…
The Columbine shooting unfolds in an unforgettable life story of two honor students with a healthy circle of friends and family with undetectable dark personalities. They secretly stockpiled weapons in their basements. They recorded themselves practicing shooting prior to the actual shooting in the Columbine high school. Dave Cullen with a sharp investigative eye and psychological acumen was able to find hints to their intended plans by finding warnings they left behind all around them, and with the help from hundreds of interviews, thousands of police files, testimony from world-class psychologists brought in by the FBI, and the two boy’s videos and journals. He is able to deliver the first comprehensive account of the horrific tragedy in the Columbine school shooting.…
There had been school shootings before Columbine. However, Columbine was the first where cell phones played a substantial role. Cell phones were rising in popularity and many students had one. Many teachers and students called the authorities as well as the local news stations from inside of the school. They were able to give live accounts of what they were seeing, who was injured and where the shooters were (CNN, Kay Jones). The police were also able to gain vital information through discarded phones that were still on call with 911 by listening to conversations and exchanges between the shooters and other victims (LiveLeak, Columbine Massacre). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered the school at 11:09a.m. and had committed suicide by 12:08. Knowing virtually nothing, the press descended on the school by 12:30p.m. Watching the massacre unfold they reported anything they saw or heard. The news stations often interviewed students who had fled from the building, as well as anxious parents waiting for word. News anchors covered anything and everything they could get their hands on. The majority of the information received by the police immediately after the shooting was assumptions, rumors or figments of the imagination and the police refused to release any information to the…
It has been thought that those who would commit such horrendous crimes would suffer from some sort of mental illness, however Granovetter’s model proves otherwise. In Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Thresholds of Violence” he uses the story of a young man named John LaDue, who was a quiet and loving kid that one day plotted to set off a bomb at his own high school. “I have good parents. I live in a good town,” says LaDue. He was never diagnosed with any type of mental illness and did not have typical symptoms of a school killer. Granovetter’s theory offers us an explanation as to why such a normal kid would commit to such a terrible act. The theory states that a person who normally wouldn’t do something belligerent, such as a rioter, is more likely to do it because they saw someone do the same thing first. Gladwell uses this theory to convince readers that this is why school shootings have become more common. “A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them.” Granovetter claims that this theory could describe many different situations such as strikes, elections, and even leaving a…
The lives of many were to change on the day of April 20th, 1999, at Columbine High School. With the death of twelve students and one teacher, it was to be the deadliest mass murder committed on an American high school campus. The massacre, committed by senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, sparked debate over gun control laws; whether the availability of guns across the United States, especially to young people such as these, was socially acceptable. This event is what sparked Moore to create his documentary, ‘Bowling for Columbine’.…
Yes, Hazzard is effective for his audience because he is showing the truth about how the paramedics.…
Just after school began on a Friday morning in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Adam Lanza opened fire in the main office of Sandy Hook Elementary. What followed was the mass murder of 20 students and 6 staff members (Stroller, Strauss & Stanglin, 2012). A mass murder is defined as “single episodic act of violence, occurring at one time and in one place…where three or more people are killed with no cooling off period between killings” (Kitaeff, 2011, p. 81-82). Investigators estimate that from the time Lanza began shooting until he turned the gun on himself was less than five minutes. Lanza, 20 years old, then turned the gun on himself, he was found dead inside the school. In all, he fired from three weapons, Glock and Sig Sauer pistols as well as an AR-15, military style rifle. Police reported that Lanza first shot his mother in the forehead then drove her car to the school and began firing (Stroller et al, 2012).…
It was Tuesday, April 20, 1999. It was an exciting day for me in the fourth grade when I turned 9 years old. However, the people of Littleton, Colorado remember that day as something more and definitely less exciting than my birthday was. On April 20, 1999 Littleton Colorado experienced what we now know as the Columbine Massacre. Two seniors at Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold completed this act killing 12 students, 1 teacher, and injured 21 others before committing suicide. Why would anyone want to commit such a horrific crime? Today I am going to talk to you about the boys and their preparations, the massacre itself, and the aftermath.…
Two characteristics that came up during studies of school shootings were peer rejection and social rejection. The studies from the literatures also reveals that the intentions of the assailants are often made very clear to their peers often stating time and place. It was shown that 50 percent of school shootings were made known to others, this is known as leakage. It was shown that the Columbine shooters repeatedly let known of their intentions and planned a year a head prior to the incident being carried out. For instance one of the boys English papers stated that the boy wanted to be a bullet himself and strike people, this was 2-3 weeks prior to the shooting. They had built small bombs that they were caught with. One month prior to the shooting one of the boys, Erik Harris, revealed in his psychology class that he had a recurring dream that he started shooting the students and the teachers. He also revealed in his diary that everyone made fun of him. Dylan Klebold , the other shooter wrote in his diary that he was lonely and without friends and was very troubled with his failures with girls (Bartol…
The motivation that backs a person to commit a mass shooting has peaked the minds of many over the years. Maybe none quite as much as the shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14th 2012. Adam Lanza decided to end the lives of twenty six innocent women and children, and then turned the gun on himself. There is no excuse for something so disturbing as this crime, but there are explanations for why something like this may happen. In Lanza’s case there were so many big changes that were happening in his life. There was also numerous warning signs that were overlooked that could have potentially ceased this tragedy from occurring. Lanza also suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, anorexia, and depression that all…
The word ‘premeditated’ is defined as, an act done with willful deliberation or an act that has been planned in advance.…
The documentary “Bowling for Columbine” is an award-winning documentary directed by well-known filmmaker Michael Moore. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, as well as an Independent Spirit Award, a Cesar Award and many others. This bold movie criticizes America’s large number of gun related deaths annually compared to other countries around the world. He discusses why America seems to have such a problem with violence and how it has led to tragedy’s involving firearms like the imfamous shooting at Columbine high school in Columbine, Colorado. Since the Columbine shooting in 1999 there have been other school shootings that seem to closely resemble it, such as the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting and the recent 2012 Sandy Hook…