One of things I'm asked most about is my opinion of this event, something that surprises me as I think of this site as being an encyclopedia of sorts and reference materials just don't have opinions in them. But since I've been asked so much, here's what I think.

I think there's only a few circumstances that warrant the death of another human being. And while I strongly feel that things in the school system were LONG overdue for a change, killing people was a terrible way to try to "kick-start" those changes.

Dylan and Eric had their reasons for being so off the deep end that they -could- bring themselves to gun down other people; people they knew and ones they didn't. Those reasons are woven into the tapestry that is their history and will largely be overlooked or ignored by the majority of the world because popular sympathies don't lie with guerilla warfare terrorists, regardless of how noble their cause may have originally been.

I think that the shooters thought of themselves as being not unlike the Greek gods, superior to most of the people they had to associate with daily. In their estimation (to judge from what they said and wrote), it was the school that kept them trapped with those people they disdained; the ones who Eric and Dylan knew didn't want them at their parties and in their cliques. They set out to destroy Columbine that day -- they wanted to blow it up. That plan failed due to their lack of experience making propane bombs and they had to settle for an on-the-fly Plan B.

In my opinion, the heart of this matter is school. It's the common ground almost everyone in the educated world has with the next person; something that is surprisingly similar the world over for everyone, regardless of location. Almost everyone has had negative experiences at school -- they felt alone, or bullied, or left out, or humiliated. Most have seen violence between children or been a part of it from some side. We all have known kids just like Dylan and Eric and their victims, or were like them when in school. No matter what we think individually of what happened there, most of us can picture all too clearly what it might've been like to be there either as a victim, a survivor, or a shooter.

I feel badly for the families of the people who were involved in the tragedy. No parent should ever have to lose their child in such a fashion as any of the kids who died at Columbine. No child should ever have to stop living before they've truly experienced life. It's sad that times are such that an act of violence of this scale should take place in order to draw attention to a problem that's been lurking around since before I was born.

I suppose at the heart of it, I feel it's important to remember what happened at Columbine in order to try and prevent something like it from happening again. Till we understand what drove these two teens to commit mass murder/suicide we'll never be able to say that we're prepared for the eventuality that something like it - or worse - could happen again.