It was the spring of 1999 and I was floating up the Nile River on a canoe. The Egyptian gentleman with leathery hands guiding the canoe said to me, “Where you from?”
“The United States,” I said.
“Where in United States?”
“Colorado.”
“Columbine?”
Columbine?, I thought to myself. How does this motherlover know where Columbine is?
Columbine is a small suburb just south of Denver and, until April 20, 1999, was unknown to anyone not from Denver, let alone a leather-handed Egyptian canoe guide.
1999 was the Dark Ages of No Internet, particularly in rural Egypt, so when we got to a decent-sized town, I tracked down a newspaper and, sure enough, the headlines screamed of a school shooting at Columbine High School.
I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t mad. I was confused. A school shooting? Done by students at the school? Done in nondescript suburban Columbine by some white boys who looked like they got cut from the JV soccer team? What the fuck?
Columbine was, by no means, the first school shooting: In 1970, the National Guard killed four Kent State students; in 1976, custodian Edward Allaway killed seven students in a library at Cal State Fullerton; in 1989, Patrick Purdy killed five Southeast Asian refugee students at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California; in 1992, alumnus Eric Houston killed three students and one teacher at a high school in Olivehurst, California; in 1998, after killing his parents, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel drove to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon where he killed two students. I left a bunch out but you catch my drift.
And you know what I know? That other than Kent State, you haven’t heard of any of these.
Neither had I. And that’s why I was so god damn confused when I picked up that newspaper on April 23rd-ish, 1999, in middle-of-nowhere Egypt.
Columbine was confusing for everyone. Who were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? How could they kill so many kids? Where and how did they get the guns? How the hell did they learn to make bombs? Why did they do it?
Cliques and bullying got blamed. Mental illness and psychiatric medications got blamed. The video game DOOM got blamed. Marilyn Manson got blamed. Michael Moore made a movie.
There were so many questions and so much confusion and yes, of course, so much anger and sadness, but mostly people just tried, unsuccessfully, to make sense of the thing.
Fast forward a few years and a few school shootings, and we arrive at Virginia Tech in 2007 when Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, and it is still the deadliest school shooting ever. If Columbine was confusing, Virginia Tech was horrifying.
Fast forward another few years and a few more school shootings, and we arrive at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 when Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders. Columbine was confusing because Eric and Dylan were armed to the teeth. Virginia Tech was horrifying because so many people died. Sandy Hook was downright devastating. College kids? Terrible. High school kids? Awful. First-graders? C’mon now.
Fast forward another few years and a few more school shootings, and we arrive at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 when Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people. To date, it is the deadliest mass shooting at a high school. It is also the school shooting which, thanks to the internet, social media, and the empowerment of the youth, provoked outrage. Parkland students formed an advocacy group and lobbied for gun control. For, like, one fleeting fucking second, I felt hope. Maybe, just maybe, we can do something about this plague…
Nope.
Fast forward another few years and a few more school shootings, and we arrive at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022 when Salvador Ramos killed 19 students between the ages of 9 and 11. Jesus man, again with the young ones? Outrage had turned to hope but now hope had turned to sadness and despair.
Fast forward two years and a few more school shootings, and we arrive at Apalachee High School near Winder, Georgia where, just two and a half weeks ago, two teachers and two students were killed by, allegedly, Cole Gray.
And I felt nothing.
(Do you remember this school shooting? Do you remember students at Apalachee High School getting gunned down while working on a stupid Algebra assignment two and a half weeks ago? No, you don’t. Because when it happened, you also felt nothing. I was gonna publish this post more than a week ago but realized there was no urgency because no one, including you and me, cares anymore.)
Okay, fine, I’ll just speak for myself: They won. They beat me. I’ve given up. I’m too tired. I’ve watched Bowling for Columbine more than once, I’ve lobbied for gun control, and I’ve taught classes about special interests in American politics. But now I’m indifferent and I realize there’s nothing I can do about it. School shootings are now, school shootings are tomorrow, and school shootings are forever.
But let me discuss yesterday for a quick sec because yesterday was also fucked.
Guns are in our blood and efforts to limit them have been too little and too late. The British imposed a gunpowder embargo on some American colonies in the 1770s and look how that ended. In the early 1800s, some folks from Kentucky (of all places) tried to limit the practice of “concealed carry” but by 1822, the state ruled that the “right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State must be preserved entire.” To be clear, the “arms” in question was a sword cane, not a Beretta M12 semi-automatic submachine gun, but let’s not split hairs.
Gun reform was trending in the 20th century, though many millions of guns were produced and sold and many thousands of Americans died.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 allowed the federal government to regulate machine guns and other weapons but it was passed only after thousands died from gun violence during Prohibition.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 regulated firearms commerce and ownership but it was passed only after John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X (amongst others) were shot and killed.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 mandated background checks and a waiting period for firearms purchases but it was passed only after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and a successful assassination attempt on John Lennon.
The Federal Assaults Weapon Ban of 1994 prohibited the manufacturing of certain assault weapons for civilian use but it was passed only after the aforementioned 1989 school shooting in Stockton, California.
Of note: The Federal Assaults Weapon Ban expired in 2004 and has not been renewed.
Also of note: Almost 30,000 people died from guns in 2000 and almost 45,000 people died from guns in 2020. In other words, these reforms may have slowed but certainly did not stop the gun violence epidemic you and I and every other American are currently experiencing.
But who cares? Not me.
The NRA is too powerful. It successfully markets itself as “America’s longest-standing civil rights organization,” it has millions of members, and it helped pass a 1997 amendment that prohibits the CDC, our nation’s leading public health organization, from advocating for gun control. In 2008, the Supreme Court explicitly and directly protected an individual’s (as opposed to only a “militia’s”) right to possess firearms for certain purposes such as self-defense. Well done, American democracy. I concede.
The military-industrial complex is too powerful. The United States spends nearly $1 trillion annually on its military and more on defense than the next 13 countries combined. The Pentagon’s budget exceeds the combined budgets of the Departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and State. Well done, Lockheed Martin. I concede.
The culture of gun ownership is too powerful. 1/3rd of American adults say they own a gun. My Christian friend in California owns a gun. My Jewish friend in Chicago owns a gun. There are approximately 350 million Americans in America and 450 million guns in America. Well done, Charlton Heston. I concede.
If you know me, you know that my first car was a red Saturn and that my second car was a green Saturn and that on both of those Saturns, I had a bumper sticker that said, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”
For most of my life, that was my mantra. I believed in it fully. But now I’m not so sure because I’m still paying attention but I feel nothing. I feel numb. I feel desensitized. I feel hopeless. School shootings have always been a thing and always will be a thing.
We have a problem on our hands that we can’t (or won’t) get rid of. Enact common-sense gun reform? Maybe. Produce fewer guns? Unlikely. Repeal the 2nd amendment? C’mon now.
If you know me, you might think this post will end with a message of hope. It won’t: School shootings now. School shootings tomorrow. School shootings forever.
