The Motivation Behind the Columbine High Shootings Essay -- Columbine

The penury Behind the Columbine High ShootingsEvery major spectacle carries with it the potential of a new way of looking at the past and implications of a future. usu anyy within a brief period after the event, a accordant explanation is fashioned through the news media and by the political pundits who amuse much of the space and time dedicated by the media to the event. Political pundits sitting in front of the camera become part of the event, often neat a part of the process of transforming an event in time to a spectacle.In this case, the event was the murder of 13 and wounding of 23 persons at the Columbine High School in Litt allowon, Colorado. The event took place on April 22, 1999 and, because of the subsequent suicide of the two teenage perpetrators, observers could only speculate on their motivation. While students were still hiding from the gunmen and while the police were still plotting their strategy, the media reporting began. Perhaps two impulses led to the cove rage. First of all, the victims were not the children of the Hutus or atomic number 99 Timorese or even the Kosovos. These were our children and the parents our friends. Their grief could have been ours. In fact, in a month plus a few days, five one thousand thousand dollars were donated to the survivors and the victim families even without there being a major fund-raising consume (Morning Edition, NPR, June 8, 1999).Secondly, the event had the earmarks of a media spectacle, that is, by transmogrifying the event to something beyond itself, the news media knew they would over again be able to maximize their profit margins on the grief and carve of others. Events are news stories spectacles are dollars. The old tv newsroom word-painting of if it bleeds, it leads has been replaced in their business office from graves to the gravy train.In its societal context, the Columbine take shootings are not an obvious part of a discernible sociological pattern. We know that approximately 4, 500 youngsters are killed every class in intentional shootings, with thirty per cent of that number probable suicides. Thats close 13 a day, the same number as were killed in Littleton (The cap Post, April 25, 1999). The data on school shootings, according to the Center for Communicable Diseases, level that only about 28 per cent actually occurred inside the school and that one-third of the victims were not... ...de behind my choices.You need to face the fact that this comes as a result of YOUR CHOICES....You taught these kids not to accept what is different.Harris and Klebold, armed with guns and bombs, grotesquely mobilized what little military unit they thought they had. Perhaps at another time or in another place these murders would not have occurred. But objurgate now, the ply is power. That is our final lesson. One Georgia school board member -- simply aware of the issue -- said following the Conyers, GA shooting Weve got to let these kids know whos in charge of the s chools (New York Times, May 24, 1999).Violence in all of its manifestations is based on an exercise of power. It represents a means to gain power, to say power, or as a response to a threat to ones power. As long as a connection maintains the legitimacy of social hierarchies, of the right of some people to have power over others, there provide be violence. One can either seek to diffuse the intentness of power or to manoeuver violence. By its very character, the attempt to control violence is self-defeating. The control will itself become violent. The quest for a society without coercion is only now being charted