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Columbine Massacre Myths Revealed

As many of you probably remember ten years ago today, a couple of wackos shot up a high school in Colorado. The media had a field day blaming guns, violent video games, scary sounding music (Marilyn Manson in particular), bullying and trench coats. Well, not so unsurprisingly, it turns out a lot of what was initially reported wasn’t true. Slate wrote an article about it a few years ago, in which you can read all about the myths here and the rest of the story right here. Also, there is a new book out that apparently has all the gory details (from the FBI reports and such). 

I think it is great that the misinformation and lies surrounding the columbine massacre are being steadily put to rest. Maybe it’ll help put the kibosh on the many asinine rules and policies that high school administrators use the massacre to justify. Plus, as someone who strongly believed that everyone you picked on and tortured during high school became your slave when you reached Valhalla it is slightly vindicating.

  1. Vincent says:

    Well, the narrative goes that we’ve had “untrammeled” “laissez-faire” capitalism since Reagan, which Clinton didn’t do anything about (VRWC, and all that), and… and… just like… connect the dots, man!

    No one’s accusing the “blame free markets” brigades of being particularly consistent or coherent.

  2. Betz says:

    What I don’t understand about the Salon article is that the shooting occurred 10 yearz ago, before the recent downturn of the economy. And furthermore, these were high-school students for chrissakes! The current state of the economy is one of the last things on a high-school student’s minds … they don’t pay taxes, they don’t own any valuable assets like land or stocks, they don’t have 401K’s … seems like a pretty weak argument to me.

  3. Matt says:

    Damn. Well I always felt like they were, ya know, a little “off.”

  4. Timothy says:

    I blame Columbine on a couple of fucked up kids with untreated mental illness, but I’m weird like that.

    I remember that I had to stop wearing my trenchcoat to school as a result, this ruined many a pair of slacks.

  5. Vincent says:

    Sadly, nothing has changed.

    What’s funny is that Sirota seems completely oblivious to the fact that he’s doing exactly what he accuses everyone else of: blaming Columbine on their favorite boogeyman. Only for him, it’s not Marilyn Manson or DOOM, it’s “our winner-take-all economy.”

    (H/T: CJ, for the Salon link)

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