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TEN YEARS AGO, the world watched in horror as a tragic scene unfolded at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo. Two young shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, roamed the hallways, dealing death to 12 students and a teacher. Few of us watching then could have believed the tragedy would find an echo at our own Virginia Tech eight years later.
In April, the air is turning sweet and warm and the blooms are arriving. Spring is supposed to be a time of renewal, of Earth's bold reawakening and life's triumph over cold, dark winter. But all too often, the Grim Reaper stalks the season: April 19, 1993, Waco, Texas, the burning of the Branch Davidian compound; April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing; April 20, 1999, Columbine; April 16, 2007, the Virginia Tech massacre. And this spring, in the space of just a few weeks, random mass shootings across the United States have claimed 57 people.
From what simmering pool does such violent come? A New York Times editorial links Columbine with the recent shootings at a Binghamton, N.Y. immigrant center and says they are "yet another reminder of America's terrible gun problem." The Times calls on lawmakers to "insist on common-sense gun laws."
Yet common sense does not automatically indicate more restrictions on firearms. It is certainly easy to point to the gun used in a crime, far more difficult to probe the mind and the heart behind the weapon. Deconstructing the psychology of a killer, the twisted motivations and violent ideation, and then prescribing cures and preventatives (and defenses for society) requires more wisdom than ordinary mortals are allotted.
In the 10 years since Columbine, experts and pundits have tried to assess its causes. They've pointed to the "availability of guns," as well as bullying, an obsession with violent video games and music, the Goth subculture, poor parenting, a desire for attention, depression, and even prescribed antidepressants.
But as Greg Toppo points out in USA Today, most of what we thought we knew about Columbine has proven wrong under the light of extensive investigations. The perpetrators were neither bullied nor denizens of Gothworld. Dave Cullen, author of a new book "Columbine," says psychologists now believe that Harris was a cold-blooded psychopath, Klebold his depressed follower. As Jeremiah the prophet lamented, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?"
We do know this: The Bureau of Justice Statistics says that in 2004 there were 16,137 murders in the United States, 66 percent committed with guns. When prison inmates were asked where they got the guns they used in their crimes, 80 percent said they'd come from family, friends, or illegal street sales. Only 2 percent obtained their weapons at flea markets or gun shows. So much for the "loophole" that has come to symbolize menace and political truckling to the gun lobby.
Preventing another Klebold, another Harris, or another Seung-Hui Cho requires facing their true motivations. That's a bit more complicated than simply banning the weapons with which they chose to enact their dark fantasies. Criminal lunatics already are operating outside the law; more gun laws just give them more to ignore while imperiling the rights of the law-abiding and sane.
