There has been a lot of events that have happened over the years that have
changed the that people veiw things. Like when Terry Fox decided that he wanted
to run across Canada, even though he could only do it on one leg. Some people
probably thought he couldn't even run ten miles with an artificial leg. So that
was an event that changed the way people thought about something. The Colombine
High School shooting, in Littleton Colorado, is one of those things. On April
20th, 1999, two students who attended Colombine High, Dylan Klebold, and Eric
Harris opened fire in the school, and shot and killed twleve students and one
teacher, leavind 28 students injured (ten of them in critical condition), before
killing themselves. Eric and Dylan both were in a clique called the "Trenchcoat
mafia". The Trenchcoat mafia was a group of outcasts who would wear long
black coats everyday, always bragged about owning guns, and disliked people of a
certain colour or race. The shooting started at eleven thirty in the morning,
during that time the students and the teachers hid in classrooms, closets, or
underneath desks, until police could take them out of the building. The bodies
of the victims weren't removed from the school until April 21, for fear that
there might be bombs attached to them. A lot of people are blaming things on the
movies that Dylan and Eric watched, the video games they played, or the music
they listen to. I don't think it's fair to blame what they did on all of that
because I bet that almost every kid has either seen the same movies, played the
same games, or listened to the same music as they did, but none of them are
going to school and opening fire on there classmates. And why are people
blamming things on how Eric and Dylan's parents raised them? I don't think that
their parents had anything to do with what Dylan and Eric did, they had a mind
of their own, if they were influenced by anyone, it was probably their friends.
To find the background information on my essay, I decided that I would look on
the internet. There were a lot of webpages, pages dedicated to the victims at
Colorado. One page that caught my attention was a page that was called
"Stop The Hate:Dedicated to Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold". I
couldn't belive it, who would make a website dedicated to two people that killed
thirteen people and destroyed the lives of the people that knew them? Out of
curiousity, I went into the page. The first thing that came up was a picture of
Eric and Dylan and a quote from Eric saying "I did not choose this life,
but I have indeed chosen to exit it." And that was the quote, I can't even
imagine how his parents must have felt after reading that. The person that
created the web page wrote something that said "Stop the hate, stop judging
people by what they dress like, who they hang out with, and what they do in
their spare time. If you strike a match too many times, it'll set your hand on
fire." After reading that I left the page. How can there be people that can
possibly think that just because Eric and Dylan were teased a lot, that's any
kind of reason to kill innocent people. The one thing that got me really upset
was the fact that the website was called "Stop the hate", and the site
was praising two people that killed thirteen people out of hate. The weird thing
about the shooting was that the reason that Dylan and Eric started to open fire
in Colombine was because they didn't like being judged by other people, by what
they wore, and who they hung out with and stuff like that, but isn't that kind
of a double standard since they judged people by their colour? Since the
shooting in Colombine, it seems that police, and school authorities have been
taking things a lot more seriously now then they did before. In the Winnipeg
Sun, there was a poll the statement was "School Authorities are over
reacting to certain situations since the Colombine tragedy". Sixty percent
agreed, and forty percent disagreed. Personally, I don't think that people are
over reacting, I think they are just being aware of more things, and they're
trying to prevent anything like this from happening again. It's sad that it took
the shooting in Colorado for them to realise it though. One week after the
Colorado shooting, in Taber Alberta, a fourteen year old boy killed one student
at the school he attended, and shot another. If you think about it, it's pretty
scary, Taber Alberta? I haven't even heard of the place, it must have been a
pretty small town, I bet what everyone was wondering is how it could have
happened there. There has even been some bomb threats in Winnipeg. At Saint
John's High School, in the past three days, there has already been two bomb
scares, and the whole school had to be evacuated. The "bomb" that was
found in a backpack, wasn't real, and the police say that it was just some kid
trying to pull a practical joke. What kind of joke is that? One of the saddest
things about the Colorado school shooting are that the victims were so young.
Eric and Dylan must have been two really smart young guys, to be able to plan
that whole thing. They could have done great things with there lives, and the
victims and Colombine, some of them would have been going to their graduation,
but now they never will graduate, or become something big, because they didn't
get the chance because two boys were upset about being teased, and decided that
this was how they would solve the problem. So in conclusion, I think that the
Colombine High School shooting, is one of the events that have changed the
thoughts of a lot of people, since this happened, people are now watching
students more closely, and maybe that can prevent something like this from ever
happening again.