I was in eighth grade when the Columbine school shooting happened. It was near the end of the school year, but I remember the security measures that followed: you were supposed to carry your belongings into school in a clear bag, and I think we had a couple weeks of bag searches before we entered the building. I remember my mother being nervous, and I was too. If it could happen in a place like Littleton, it seemed like it could happen in my small town just as easily. The idea that school was an inherently safe place was permanently destroyed.
It might be the most infamous, but the Columbine massacre was not the first school shooting, not by a long shot. The reality is that schools in the United States have seen gun violence for essentially as long as we’ve been a country. But this time was different. Dave Cullen’s Columbine is the product of a decade of work and research, rooted in his own experience of being a reporter responding to the scene. He tells the story on two tracks: in one, he examines killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, going back to their childhoods and charting their growing bond as they develop and execute their plans to slaughter their classmates; and in the other, the aftermath of the crime, including the myths that sprung up about what happened that day.
It’s clear from the records Cullen was able to examine and analyze that Eric was a sociopath and the leader, and Dylan suffered from deep depression and followed Eric. They did not fly entirely under the radar before the shooting: about a year beforehand, they were caught breaking into a car and sent to a juvenile diversionary program, which they both successfully passed through. They convinced of-age contacts to help them acquire weapons. They were not popular, but neither were at the bottom of the school’s social hierarchy. They had friends. Eric had dates. They were not a part of any group wearing trenchcoats. They didn’t spend a whole lot of time listening to Marilyn Manson. They didn’t even really plan a shooting: they had built and placed bombs that, if they’d worked, would have killed hundreds. They only planned on using their guns to target those fleeing the explosion.
But the 24-hour news cycle doesn’t wait for the truth, so rumors flew quickly in the aftermath of the shooting: that the perpetrators had been bullied relentlessly, that they were influenced by “Satanic” music, that Cassie Bernall had been shot in the head after responding affirmatively to a question about whether she believed in God. Cullen takes time debunking this rumor in particular, which took off to such an extent that Cassie (who was shot and killed, but never was asked about her faith) was more or less anointed a martyr in Evangelical circles. It was another student who was asked whether she believed in God, and though she said she did, she was not murdered. Cullen also explores those who were left behind to pick up the pieces, including family members of murdered students, the widow of a slain teacher, and the principal who had been devoted to the school and well-liked by the student body.
As someone whose own experience and schooling was shaped by Columbine, I found myself often surprised by the way I’d internalized most of the misinformation that had spread about it. I had no idea that they’d gone in intending to blow things up rather than use their guns. I remember having found out at some point that the Cassie Bernall story wasn’t true as initially presented, but did not know that the student who was asked about her belief didn’t die. Cullen does an excellent job of keeping up momentum with both of his storylines…knowing full well what happens at the end, there’s a sense of dread that builds up as we follow Eric and Dylan, seeing chances where they might have been found out but instead avoided detection. And the reactions of the impacted community members are reported in a way that I found clear-eyed but sensitive: he doesn’t paint Bernall’s parents as malicious or opportunistic, for example, but rather as grieving the loss of a daughter who had seemed to overcome her struggles only to be killed and seizing onto a story they were told that provided them with comfort.
The most frustrating thing about the book is the lack of answers. This isn’t Cullen’s fault, of course. There is no single answer to “why?”. There’s also no single answer to how to prevent future shootings, as the killers procured weapons in ways that circumvented gun laws. This lack of easy understanding, though, makes the book in my opinion even more important to read. It’s a very well-constructed piece of journalistic nonfiction and I found it difficult to put down even as it was hard to read. It’s heavy stuff, but important and worthy of the time and effort it takes to reckon with it.
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