Columbine III

I've had to do quite a bit of public speaking and presentations on workplace violence lately, and I've been working more and more with colleges and universities regarding clinical placement of students in hospitals as part of a nursing program. More and more in the last year the topics of Columbine and Virginia Tech have come up. As a result I've had to educate myself quite a bit on those two events, particularly the warning signs and speculated motives of the killers.

There exists online a greater deal of information about Columbine than Virginia Tech. There are countless articles, several full length films, and various documentaries. I watched a few of the documentaries and other columbine-related footage on Youtube and while they didn't contain much valuable information for my work, I was stunned at what I read in some of the comments:

"oh no! they fought back at the people who hurt them! they must be evil! lol. R.I.P. Eric and Dylan"

"man I wish I could have been friends with them man.Maybe I could have been someone to keep this shit from happening because I can relate.but anyway R.I.P Eric,Dylan and all the lives lost on that day"

"R.I.P Eric/Dyan/Cho-Seung
You guys Did the right thing
You are my heros <3"

"it takes some serious balls to walk into a school with a gun and murder 15 year old kids bro. I'm not defending it, but they had the nuts to do it."

There are many, many more. Probably hundreds more, the above comments were lifted from only 2 or 3 of the videos. But I generally think of Timmies as the guys who piss me off when I'm playing CoD4 on a public server, not as the guys who could potentially kill somebody I know. You could point all the blame you want at video games, music, and gun control but the fact remains that there are kids out there who A. are either depressed or mentally ill, and B. actually idolize mass murderers who intended to become celebrities and kind of did.

And despite all the efforts by congress, victim's families, and Michael Moore, it happened AGAIN last year. There were twice as many victims and the shooter may as well have been one of the Timmies commenting on Youtube in support of the Columbine killers.

Where am I going with this? I'm concerned. I honestly believe that there will be another Columbine. There is so much information available online on how the Columbine shooters carried out their plans and even what parts of their plans went wrong and would have caused a higher death count. Many parents out there are either unattentive to their kids or wouldn't want to believe their little Timmy is capable of something like Columbine, even if the evidence was staring them in the face. And if you think back to when you were in high school (I think we all went to school pre-Columbine), you can probably think of one person in your school who may have been just crazy enough to pull off something extreme if they were resourceful enough to get their hands on weapons.

Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's because I have a young son who will be going off to school after our society has just a few more years to degrade. Is anybody else as concerned as I am?