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columbine
The Sword May Be Mightier, But the Pen Has the Power to Ask Deeper Questions
The mass atrocity may be over, but our meditations on such violence do not end and perhaps still we have much to learn.
Apr 27, 2024
Here’s an anniversary no one wants to celebrate: The Columbine school shooting — April 20, 1999 — just passed its 25th anniversary. Fifteen dead (including the two shooters), twenty-one injured. A new era begins . . .
Why, why, why bring up such a horrific event? Perhaps because it hasn’t stopped.
Even though I sit here in the comfort of my study, feeling perfectly safe, I can’t emotionally disentangle myself from the news, which is always, in one way or another, about the human need to kill itself — or rather, the human assumption that it’s divided from itself, and “the other,” whoever that other is, either needs to be killed or is, at best, expendable. For instance:
“The Senate has passed $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.”
So AP informs us, and immediately scenarios of screaming children, bombed aid workers, home and hospitals reduced to rubble, flash before me. No, these are not abstract scenarios! Part of me and part of you lie trapped in that rubble, or stunned and grieving over the sudden loss of your whole family. And all we seem to do is continue funding the process that makes this happen, as though a larger understanding of our existence is not available — certainly not at the level of global politics.
What is power? Is it simply and sheerly us vs. them, good vs. evil? Every war on Planet Earth is sold with this advertising slogan. Perhaps this is why I find myself thinking about the Columbine shootings — and all the mass shootings since then. Define an enemy, then kill it. This is what we learn in history class — but would-be mass shooters, caged in their own isolation, cross a line. They take this lesson personally.
And there’s a world of possibility that welcomes them, oh so ironically. In this world, the sword is mightier than the pen (or anything else). Power means power over. . . something. So if you’re a lost or wounded soul, imagining an enemy that needs to be destroyed is probably enormously tempting. If the world is going on without you, maybe you should do something to stop it. And the “world of possibility” — by which I mean far more than merely the “gun culture,” but the entirety of our culture of scripted violence, from global politics to the media to the entertainment industry — makes the loner’s imagined and insane solution, defining and killing an enemy, an actual possibility.
At the time of the Columbine shootings, I had begun writing poetry. This was in the wake of my wife’s death, in 1998, from pancreatic cancer. Poetry allowed me to deal with the shattered narrative of my life, and pretty soon I had expanded the terrain of my poetry beyond my personal grief to, well, life itself, including the horrific strangeness of the news. And I happened to read, after Columbine, a news account of President Clinton visiting the school and meeting with students in the gymnasium. And outside the school, gun-rights advocates held what they called a vigil, holding signs that declared “Gun Control Kills Kids” and “We Will Never Give Up Our Guns.”
What struck me about it the most was the idea that this was a “vigil,” which implied something more than simply a protest — an expression of anger and disagreement. A vigil dug deeper, seemingly entering the soul. Guns were a source of power and power was the source of one’s humanity, so stripping away the right to own one had a deep, spiritual impact.
I wrote a poem in response to the vigil — I called it “Vigil” (I quoted part of it in an earlier column) — attempting to address my feelings about the total scenario: the shooting itself, Americans’ deeply desired availability of guns, the impact of that availability on society’s lost souls. Here’s part of the poem, focusing on the lost souls:
. . . The violent seed
in a boy’s soul
must sprout.
It is meant to ripen
into courage,
endurance and grace.
But when it bursts open
in another dream —
the dream of permanent armament
and the grandeur of self-defense —
what happens to the boy?
What happens when soft,
immature fingers
find their way
around the deadly toys
of grown men, and
the desperate possible
co-opts the reverie?
The unimaginable
is suddenly commonplace:
burst lesson plans,
bookbags abandoned
in terrified heaps
and young lives frozen
in their yearbook photos.
This is our nightmare.
I acknowledge that the sword is probably mightier than the poem, but a poem can ask questions that the sword can’t: Why? Where are we headed? What world comes next? Does armed defense — whether of home or country — ever go wrong, ever turn into poison? All humans have a dark side; is killing it in the other guy our only option, and what are the consequences of doing so? Can power be with others, even those with whom we are in serious conflict, rather than simply over them? And if so, how can we begin reorganizing the world’s relationship with itself? What’s stopping us?
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25 Years After Columbine, We Need to Talk About Who Commits Mass Shootings: Men
Until we’re willing to say, men’s gun violence, we’ll continue to miss the mark, falling short of any campaign to prevent these massacres.
Apr 20, 2024
Maybe there won’t be a copycat mass shooting to grotesquely mark the 25th anniversary of the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999. But just as we can be certain there will be another solar eclipse, it’s only a matter of time before a hail of bullets will block out the sun for another community somewhere in America. What’s also true? Expect the shooter to be male, probably white.
In an effort to prevent mass shooters from attaining posthumous fame, today the media rarely reveals their names. Back in 1999, after high school seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murdered 12 classmates and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado, their names were widely broadcast and published.
A quarter century later, despite substantive actions to prevent mass shootings by a number of states—and, with vice president Kamala Harris now overseeing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention—we still lead the world in this particular brand of murder. USA! USA! USA! (As horrific as the April 13 murder of six by an Australian man at a mall outside of Sydney was, he was only wielding a knife. I shudder to think of the level of carnage if he had been brandishing an AR-15, the weapon of choice in most mass shootings.)
Sure, there are rare occasions when women pull the trigger, but as certain as I am that we’ll never hear a news report begin with the words, “A gunwoman opened fire today…,” I believe that to minimize mass shootings, we must move the question of the gender of the shooter from the periphery to the center of a long overdue national conversation.
Australia, you might recall, banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons after a mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on April 28, 1996. There a gunman opened fire in a cafe, slaughtering 35 and wounding 23. Then-prime minister John Howard, a conservative politician in office for just six weeks, was able to push through sweeping gun control legislation12 days after the shooting.
The legislative package he shepherded through banned selling and importing semi-automatic and automatic rifles, and shotguns, and required gun purchasers to explain the reason—and wait 28 days—before buying a firearm. Most significantly, the Australian law required a mandatory gun buyback. The government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms, cutting in half the number of households that possessed guns.
Prime Minister Howard said at the time, “People used to say to me, ‘You violated my human rights by taking away my gun.’ I’d tell them, ‘I understand that. Will you please understand the argument [that] the greatest human right of all is to live a safe life without fear of random murder?’”
Why, in 2024—a quarter century after Columbine, 12 years after Sandy Hook, eight years after Orlando, six years after Las Vegas, two years after Uvalde, and six months after Lewiston—is it so hard for U.S. legislators and gun owners to understand that?
In a world where leaders of all stripes use the term “a just war” with a straight face, working to prevent mass shootings feels more within our grasp then say, ending the war in Gaza. What to do first? Change how we talk about the issue. That means refusing to speak out against generic “gun violence.” Until we’re willing to say, men’s gun violence, we’ll continue to miss the mark, falling short of any campaign to prevent mass shootings.
This is not a condemnation of men. The vast majority of men are not mass shooters. For decades, I worked at a men’s center, published a magazine promoting a new definition of manhood, and championed revisiting how we socialize boys, as early as preschool. More and more men are rejecting conventional masculinity.
The weakened, shell-of-itself National Rifle Association coined the oft cited cliché, “Guns don’t kill people. People do” more than a century ago. Variations have long been used to thwart gun control legislation. It’s astonishing how little pushback there’s been.
“People kill people?” Really? Sure, there are rare occasions when women pull the trigger, but as certain as I am that we’ll never hear a news report begin with the words, “A gunwoman opened fire today…,” I believe that to minimize mass shootings, we must move the question of the gender of the shooter from the periphery to the center of a long overdue national conversation.
Now is a good time to listen again to entertainers Martin Mull and Steve Martin. They had it right when they penned the satirical sea shanty, “Men” with its one word chorus: Men, men, men, men.
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Mass Shootings and the 100th Monkey
In our years-long struggle to eradicate the scourge of mass shootings, could we be approaching a tipping point?
Nov 01, 2023
Another American first. We’re closing in on 600 mass shootings in 2023 and—good news, people—there’s still two months left in the year. Can we get to 650? 700? USA! USA! USA!
Banks. Bars. Beauty Salons. Big box stores. Bowling alleys. Concerts. Colleges and universities. Convenience stores. Dance studios. Gas station. Grocery stores. Halloween parties. Houses of worship. Massage parlors. Mushroom farms. Movie theaters. Nail salons. Nightclubs. Restaurants. Schools. Shopping malls. Spas. Please forgive me if I missed other venues where (primarily) white men hunt to kill in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
While the Maine shooter was clearly suffering a mental health crisis, don’t let that fact distract you from the larger truth: The shooter, once again, was male.
On October 25, a 40-year-old white male Army reservist murdered 18 people and wounded 13 in Lewiston, Maine. Even before authorities discovered that he had died by suicide, a Maine congress member did a 180, reversing his views on gun control. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, told a press conference:
I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure—which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress to take up his proposal. The best newly installed Speaker of the House, evangelical Christian and staunch gun control opponent Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), could manage to offer was, “This is a dark time in America… Prayer is appropriate at a time like this, that this senseless violence can stop.” That’s it, Mr. Speaker? That’s your “Sandy Hook” promise? WWJD?
One of Maine’s most famous residents, author Stephen King, wrote on social media, “It’s the rapid-fire killing machines, people. This is madness in the name of freedom. Stop electing apologists for murder.”
King, whose titanic body of work includes the aptly named 1982 novel, The Dark Tower: Gunslinger, is just the latest prominent voice calling to stop the madness. What’s true, and what continues too often to go unexamined amid the horror of the latest mass shooting, is the gender of the shooter. While the Maine shooter was clearly suffering a mental health crisis, don’t let that fact distract you from the larger truth: The shooter, once again, was male.
Last December, commemorating the 10th anniversary of Sandy Hook, I reiterated my long-standing assertion that:
If we are ever to radically reduce, if not prevent, this almost exclusively U.S. phenomenon, the murderer’s gender must move from the periphery to the center of the discussion. If we refuse to turn our attention, resources, and political muscle to asking why the killers are almost always white men, we will be doomed to a never-ending cycle: murder, outrage, mourning, repeat.
April 20, 2024, will mark the 25th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two alienated young white males, 17- and 18-years-old, slaughtered 13 and wounded 21. Imagine if we had begun back then paying attention to how we raise boys, beginning in preschool? How many alienated, lonely, and bullied males might we have helped to live a healthy boyhood and a productive manhood? It’s not too late. The warning signs are often right in front of us.
While a dysfunctional House of Representatives is highly unlikely to take up my suggestion anytime soon for Congress to authorize the CDC to begin a pilot study of Head Start preschool boys, that’s not a reason to stop trying. There are plenty of staff in both the Senate and the House who would gladly run with this idea.
Despite my doom and gloom, I believe we are inching closer to reaching the “100th monkey effect”: the phenomenon in which a new behavior or idea inexplicably begins to quickly spread from one group to all related groups as soon as a critical number of members begins to exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. In other words, in our years-long struggle to eradicate the scourge of mass shootings, could we be approaching a tipping point?
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
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