Did it all begin with Columbine?

J

JBR

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Southern Canada mtn. valley, tad west of Rockies
Some people here must've studied this. I admit limited knowledge of the modern history of non-military mass shootings. Did Columbine begin the bizarre wave that's now international?

I remember when the first few subsequent incidents that bore some general similarity were termed "copy cat".
 

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A fabulous question and my answer is Yes. Remember hearing it on radio while crossing Mass Ave Bridge in Boston. Just left from visiting son in college. Shocking, it was so out of the blue.
 
JBR said:
Some people here must've studied this. In my limited awareness of the modern history of non-military mass shootings, did Columbine begin the bizarre wave that's now international?
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I haven't studied it, but it's my personal belief that Columbine set something off... absolutely. I know there were school shootings before that one, but there was something more evil with Columbine for some reason. I remember there was a school shooting where a close friend of mine lived... Stockton, CA. That was maybe like 10 years before Columbine, but while it was horrid, Columbine just seems to have started a whole different era for mass shootings.

Oh... wonder if it's the Internet?! With Stockton in the '80s, we heard about it on the news and in the papers only. With Columbine (and online/social media) we heard about the kids under desks and the teenage girl begging for her life and those graphic images from the descriptions stuck with us. Copycats had more of a roadmap at their fingertips. :(
 

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Old medic, aren't those earliest ones typically well-organized quasi-military or police massacres? Columbine & ones like it usually involve one (or in the case of Columbine, two) wackos with first-rate weaponry & plenty of ammunition. And an element of death, possibly by suicide, at the end for the shooter.
 
In 1976 they further sensationalized mass shootings with the movie. "Two Minute Warning"

In just two terrifying minutes the lives of 91,000 people were changed forever.A nightmare of fear and panic unfolds in this chilling tale of a lone gunman who sets his sights on a sell-out crowd at a championship football game.

Charlton Heston is the police captain who leads the desperate fight to stop the madman ā€“ high atop the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum ā€“ before he sets off widespread devastation in the jam-packed stadium.John Cassavetes and Martin Balsam are among those risking their lives to thwart the sniper's attempts, while innocent spectators Gena Rowlands, Jack Klugman, Beau Bridges, Walter Pidgeon, David Janssen and thousands of others try to hide from the fatal gun sites and avoid the deadly ensuing stampede.

Two Minute Warning (1976) - Official Trailer (HD)
 
Nathan said:
Although some of the mass shootings share similar traits, it would be quite a stretch to view some kind of "beginning" or connection between one incident and another.
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You may be right, Nathan... but something itches at my thoughts. There was an American pop song (1960, I looked it up). "Lets Think About Living" by Bob Luman. He sang "Let's forget about the whinin' and the cryin', and the shootin' and the dying, and the fellow with the switchblade knife, let's think about living, let's think about life" But that's exactly the opposite of the attitude of these guys after the publicized tragedies of the Texas Tower shooting (I'm learning)... but especially the internet-publicized Columbine incident).

Bob Luman's song carried a good attitude & gave good advice, but it was not what these wackos were interested in. One after another, they've acquired the weaponry they wanted and went out and killed innocent people. I think you could graph it as a J-curve.




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number-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us.jpg
 
Instead of having troops stationed all over the world, supposedly protecting our interests, how about protecting this country and station some outside of our schools?
 
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I remember the Texas shooting from the tower. He had it well planned, but didnā€™t secure the door to the tower well enough. It was later discovered that Whitman suffered from some sort of brain ailment. If that was part of the cause for him going bonkers, Iā€™m not sure.

He was a retired Marine, but didnā€™t serve well. He had issues with gambling and getting in trouble with Officers.

I often think of those little Amish girls that were killed and I helped remove them from the scene. Out of the 11 that were shot, 5 were killed. The shooter, Charles Roberts also killed himself. When I arrived at the scene. I was the second Trooper on scene. Because I out ranked the Trooper First Class, I took charge of the scene until our sergeant arrived.

There were 4 other Troopers on the way, but I decided not to wait because I heard gunfire inside. I told the Trooper to guard the front door and I wanted to check if the back door was locked. I first put on my vest and then checked the door. It was locked, so I came back around to the front door and decided to go in, even though it was locked, I knew I could break it in.

I had grabbed my shotgun out of the trunk and made sure it was ready to fire. Just as I was ready to kick in the door, our Sergeant arrived. He ordered us to stand down until the Lt. gave the order to engage the shooter. ā€˜I thought to myself this is a mistake.ā€™ Heā€™s inside shooting kids. I didnā€™t know at the time they were all girls. There were a bunch of kids on the outside and I never noticed they were all boys.

At the scene as we started the cleanup, there wasnā€™t a dry eye to be seen. The Amish were very nice to us, even though some had lost a child. One father lost sisters. It was my worse day on duty.
 
911 said:
At the scene as we started the cleanup, there wasnā€™t a dry eye to be seen. The Amish were very nice to us, even though some had lost a child. One father lost sisters. It was my worse day on duty.
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:cry: I remember that so well because I'm in an area where there's a pretty heavy Amish population and it was surreal. I still can't really process the horror of it. I wish you'd have eliminated him before the coward did it himself. @911
 
CallMeKate said:
:cry: I remember that so well because I'm in an area where there's a pretty heavy Amish population and it was surreal. I still can't really process the horror of it. I wish you'd have eliminated him before the coward did it himself. @911
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I just wanted to get inside.
 
Paco Dennis said:
Have you heard about the new movie soon to arrive? "Civil War"

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Bad idea. Maybe. Intended to be a warning, I suppose. Thng is, yes the concept reflects a social reality, and the ideas can be expressed for reasons of freedom of expression. But very possibly it will inflame some people who want to act it out in real life.

Even when there's a "message" or a moral that comes through by the end of some movies, some viewers only get what they're personally psychologically interested in... like their inner urge to being badass, aggressive, disruptive. 'I'm bored, let's raise some hell'.
 
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Remember the book "Animal Farm"? What kind of human are you? or do we have a choice? What kind of moral force rules our world today? In general it seems it is not "human well being". It does seem like "The winner takes all".
 
Paco Dennis said:
Have you heard about the new movie soon to arrive? "Civil War"

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I wish the media and fearmongers would stop this. Does anyone really believe there will be another civil war in America? Come on. It will end like the first. Why go through that again for the same result.
 
old medic said:
Deadliest school killings in history???? Guess what...... US worst falls 16th on the list, and that occurred in 1927. Around 40 before Columbine.
And the media would lead you to believe its and American problem....
List of school massacres by death toll - Wikipedia
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Agreed. Columbine wasn't the first mass shooting. It was the first to be covered, live, 24/7 in the news media.
What's scary is the plot the shooters planned went awry. If it went as they planned the kill numbers would have been way more.
 
Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, are psychopaths, they were thinking of killing things for years. Together, even without Columbine, they probably would have left a trail of bodies. What, I think Columbine did, was to change budding psychopaths' sights from killing one or two at a time, to the concept of mass shootings.
 

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