Neither the first nor the first major. If you mean based on notoriety, there was the girl who shot up her school in San Diego in 1979 because “I Don’t Like Mondays”. If you mean body count, there was Austin in 1966 - 17 dead and 31 wounded.
The first known school shooting occurred before the American revolution.
Pretty sure she’s full of shit. Didn’t they find scores of bombs, guns and ammo in their houses? The neighbors reported power tool usage that was later said to be from making pipe bombs. Everything was right in front of their faces and they didn’t see it?
My older brother made scores on bombs when we were growing up. He became a firefighter. It’s actually not that uncommon. Likewise, have fascinations with guns is pretty commonplace.
Pre 9/11 days making bombs would not raise that much concern.
It’s not like I could ever forget Columbine anyway. My father died that same day. (Unrelated and in another state.)
As alluded to in another post, “Profits from the book will be donated to research and charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues” (from various reviews of the book, and also stated in her abcnews interview).
I agree with the OP in many ways. Anybody can quote the killers’ names from memory, but very few people know the victims’ names. The sheer amount of popularity - I guess you could call it notoriety if you want - the killers got is disgusting.
That being said, she is writing a book as her way of penance, I feel and she should write it, too. The victim’s families can write one, too, but - many of us know someone who was killed in a bad way, or have read about people who were killed in a bad way. To have someone you know dearly be the killer - maybe it should be something we read about more, and understand more.
I blame the parents, too, like lots of other people. And yes, there isn’t really much anyone can say that can make me excuse them. But that doesn’t mean I think they should be made to shut up about their story.
Kids blow stuff up. My friends and I played with fire and small explosives more than we probably should have. We also shot guns and used power tools. Thankfully, nobody came to the conclusion that our intent was to kill. It’s not unreasonable that this mother knew her son had those interests but didn’t think he would intentionally cause harm.
I haven’t seen the interview or read the book, but her story is intriguing.
Not to mention bizarre, unenforceable, and utterly unfair. What are we going to do, issue a blanket law that no one involved in a tragedy can ever write about it afterward?
Cassie Bernall’s mother wrote a book that was a huge best-seller and is still in print called “She Said Yes”.
I may get the Klebold book from the library; it sounds like it might be interesting. Some of the survivors have said on the record that they don’t blame the shooters’ family members, because they aren’t the ones who pulled the trigger.
I heard from several people who lived there at the time that the place was a powder keg waiting to go off, but people didn’t think it would be quite that bad. 
I would imagine that the same thing could be said of any big city high school. I’ll share details with anyone who PMs me; they’re that incendiary. They also said that if something like that had happened at some of the mostly black and Hispanic schools in the Denver area, it may not have even made the local news. I’ve said the same thing about Sandy Hook.
If I were Susan Klebold and I felt I had gained any insights into what had driven my child to commit such a heinous act, I would feel compelled to share them, too. Other school shooters since and potential shooters as well, have repeatedly mentioned that Columbine is their inspiration. This must be like an arrow to this woman’s heart every time she reads it.
From what I’ve heard living hear in Denver - and it’s hearsay, so value it accordingly - Klebold and her husband were typical yuppie parents, engrossed in their careers and wrongfully assuming that if their kid wasn’t having issues at school or with local law enforcement, that he could be left safely to his own devices. Neglect of a sort, yes, but quite common during that time period. In those years, we were allowing our children ‘space’ and not going into their rooms or looking through their backpacks unless invited to do so. For 99.9% of the kids out there, it worked out just fine. For this one, it didn’t. As a parent myself during that time, it’s hard to hate Klebold for doing what many of us were doing. It had terrible consequences, but her behavior in and of itself was unremarkable. Her life hasn’t been easy and she’s handled her circumstances as well as she could.
I’m sure writing this book is cathartic for her and if it alerts even one parent to double check on a child that is sliding into trouble, than more power to her.
can you share here? I’m happy to PM you. But I think many would be interested to hear what you have to say.
I listened to Fresh Air today. She displayed no exploitative interest. As she stated, when she got breast cancer a couple of years after the massacre, she realized she wanted to live (she wasn’t sure up to that point), and dedicate her life to service. This is part of that.
So I hear that she is seeking a purpose-driven life in the shadow of this awful event. She offered fairly flat “what we now understand” readings on her son and the killings, as well as shootings like this in general - she is focused on that understanding.
Some of her wording put me off - she said she was glad he killed himself so he was in control of that choice and not murdered. She tended to frame her grief as a suicide parent first and a parent of a murderer second.
I listened to an interview. I have no window into this woman. I didn’t hear a person looking to exploit this for any reason, but some stuff was off to my ear. Almost equivocating…but not in any direct way. Still thinking about it.
I will say Columbine finally forced schools to look into bullying issues and to doing something about them.
I don’t mean to turn this into a parenting thread, but compare your parenting experience with today where you have helicopter parents all up in every bit of their kids’ business. Is it better? That’s certainly debatable. There has to be a balance. You can’t give your kids space to the point where you’re ignoring them. But I don’t think it’s productive to hover over your kids 24/7.
I think you’re right that for 99.9% of kids, a great deal of freedom and lessons learned in the real world are helpful experiences. If the Klebolds had been *this *much more attentive would it have changed something? I’m sure the mother asks herself that every day.
Barkis, I agree about the helicopter parenting. In its own way, that is going to have unwanted consequences as kids become adults, too.
When I was in school in the 1960s and 1970s, we all used to map out how to blow up the school. It was a common pastime. Really, I’m not kidding. It’s just what students did. But it’s only been in recent years that students have actually started trying to do it.
Ditto on this 100%.
There was a shooting at my junior high in 1972; I went there a few years later and never knew about it until I read about it on that school’s Facebook page. A boy who was being bullied brought a rifle to school with a target in mind; all the bullets went into a wall before he was tackled by a teacher (who took a LOA for the rest of the year) and several kids had minor injuries from jumping out a first-floor window.
Turner Classic Movies sometimes shows old educational films on the weekends. This one, from 1955, says it’s based on a true story, or a compilation of them, and I find it quite believable. TL : DW - a young boy, distraught over his mother’s death and the family’s poverty, finds his stepfather’s gun, takes it to school, and fires it into the pavement at recess. What’s done to him? He’s escorted to the principal’s office and referred for counseling. :o
A disgruntled janitor actually did do this, in 1927. It has the highest casualty count of any act of school violence in the U.S.
Several years ago, when I was living in my old town, one of my co-workers, who lived in a nearby small town, got a call from her son, who let her know he was OK. She wondered why he was calling to tell her this, and he replied, “The school blew up.” Long story made short: While the kids were at lunch, there was an explosion in one of the science classrooms, and that wing of the school burned down and the entire school had to be demolished and rebuilt. You don’t know about it because there were no injuries, and classes resumed within a few days at churches, vacant storefronts, and other public buildings in that town. The explosion was later determined to be a combination of an electrical short and some fumes.
Also in my city, in the mid 1980s, there was a murder/suicide at another high school. One of my oldest friends, whom I met a few years later, was the best friend of the female murder victim. It was the culmination of a stalking situation; he had asked her out a couple years earlier and she wasn’t interested, and every time her family went to the authorities, SHE was told that SHE had to stay away from him and leave him alone. :mad: AFAIK, nobody even so much as sat him down and told him to knock it off. Every one of these shootings that makes the news rips open the wound for her all over again.
It’s only recently that it’s become some sort of meme or warning sign. A kid caught sitting around thinking up bombing plans would be taken seriously only in recent years.