Columbine expert visits University of Arkansas to discuss school shootings

An aerial view shows SWAT members outside Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. (AP Photo/Denver Rocky Mountain News, Rodolofo Gonzalez)
An aerial view shows SWAT members outside Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. (AP Photo/Denver Rocky Mountain News, Rodolofo Gonzalez)

FAYETTEVILLE -- The 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School was not nearly as deadly as some of America's more recent acts of gun violence, but its legacy continues to resonate.

That's because many perpetrators of other mass shootings have taken inspiration from Columbine, said Dave Cullen, an author who has written two books on the subject.

Anniversary

Today is the two-year anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting ever in the United States, when a 64-year-old man fired from the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas upon a crowd of concert goers. Fifty-eight people, plus the perpetrator, died in the incident; hundreds more were injured.

Source: Staff report

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Dave Cullen

Cullen, speaking Monday to an audience of more than 100 at the University of Arkansas, displayed a diagram of mass shootings showing how many of the killers either had studied or written in journals about the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

"All roads lead back to Columbine," Cullen said. "This is the founding incident, and sadly, Eric and Dylan are the founding fathers of this movement in the eyes of every other person on this picture."

Cullen was one of the journalists who covered Columbine. He fully dissected the incident in his 2009 book, Columbine. His latest book, Parkland: Birth of a Movement, focuses on the students' response to last year's shooting that killed 17 at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Cullen was invited to speak by the university's Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education. He also spoke at Eureka Springs High School earlier Monday.

Many myths sprang up about Harris' and Klebold's motives in the wake of Columbine, including that they were devil worshippers or they were targeting Christians, minorities or jocks. Cullen said none of that was true. He took responsibility for helping to perpetuate those myths before he debunked them in his book.

"People desperately wanted to know why," Cullen said. "We tried to get to that question way too early."

It wasn't until the killers' journals were released seven years after the incident that a clearer picture of the teens became widely available. Harris was a sadistic psychopath and Klebold suffered from deep depression, Cullen said.

Cullen also touched on ways to prevent mass shootings. The vast majority of shooters have either hinted at or explicitly told others they were planning their murders. Often the person hearing the threat doesn't take the threat seriously.

"The key after Columbine was getting the word out to kids ... that you have to take all these (threats) seriously and get that information to an adult," he said.

At the same time, he said, schools instituted zero-tolerance policies, which he said was a bad idea, because they put kids in the position of deciding whether to get their friend suspended or expelled for saying something he possibly didn't mean.

"So gradually we figured out that was really dumb. It was disincentivizing kids from telling," he said.

Cullen also praised student activists like David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, Parkland shooting survivors who pressed for gun control measures.

"They don't have a problem with guns. They have a problem with total lack of control, with this complete free-for-all, and 100-round clips," he said. "Emma is saying, 'You have these rights. But what is the cost?'"

Farrah Jones, a flight attendant from Tulsa, Okla., came to hear Cullen speak. She said she's amazed it's been 20 years since Columbine and no legislation has been enacted in an effort to prevent mass shootings. She wanted to hear Cullen because he was on the scene of the Columbine shooting.

"I think he has a lot of insight because he was there. We need that, we need voices like that," Jones said.

Jordon Henley, a sophomore at the University of the Ozarks, attended Cullen's talk with two other students from her hometown of Eureka Springs. She said Cullen's knowledge on the topic he presented is impressive.

"Reading Columbine is one thing, but then getting to hear him go off on tangents of all these additional things he knows that we didn't get to see in the book is really great and so interesting," Henley said.

NW News on 10/01/2019

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