Yoel Feinberg
Period 1
Columbine Shooting
One of the most infamous shootings in the United States, the Columbine High School shootings occurred on April 20, 1999. Two high school students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, entered their high school in littleton Colorado and killed 13 people and wounded over 20 others before killing themselves. There were many speculations on why the two gunman committed such atrocities. The leading speculations are that they were bullied and they were strong believers in goth culture. Other people believe that they were influenced by violent video games. While many different speculations were made, none could be proven. Originally, Harris and Klebold planned on bombing the school, taking the idea from the Oklahoma Bombing in 1995. However instead they decided to use guns. The Columbine shooting brought the country deep into the important debate of gun control. The fact that the gunmen in the Columbine shooting could buy powerful weapons and a suspicious amount of ammunition while clearly lacking the criteria or the responsibility of a firearm frightened many citizens
Sources:
http://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-shootings
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/us/columbine-high-school-shootings-fast-facts/
This was a very informative post on the Columbine Bombing. We don't go over it much in class, and so this post does a good job of explaining the incident, how severe the issue of gun control is, and how the debate on gun control started.
ReplyDeleteThis is another interesting example of domestic terrorism in the 1990s. I find the issue of domestic terrorism during this time period to be an interesting one, since it hints at an underlying dissatisfaction of fringe groups with the government that is not clearly evident from studying the period. I wonder if the advent of the Internet had a part in giving these groups a feeling that their opinions should be heard and acknowledged, which in turn led to frustration and violence.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post! It is very interesting to see all of the examples of domestic terrorism in the 90's. Many people believe that terrorism is only a very recent problem, but events like these prove them wrong.
ReplyDeleteVery informative and interesting post! It is interesting how this event played into the discussion on gun control. This event is applicable to the anti gun control side of the argument because the weapons used by the shooters were purchased by an older friend as opposed to the shooters themselves.
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