USA Today ran a cover story today on the ten year anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.
I read it, in part, because they kept bringing up how much stuff the press got wrong, then how much the cops got wrong, and so on. So my cynicism about law enforcement and, much more, journalism (most especially television and internet journalism) kept me reading along as they summed up the various myths about the Columbine shooters and then debunked them by quoting a few books that have come out recently.
Basically, the thrust of the article was that these kids were not good kids who snapped suddenly, they weren't the victims of bullying, they were deeply disturbed, suicidal boys with grand ambitions to kill pretty much everyone.
So I'm reading this and I'm thinking, the news here is that the Columbine shooters were deeply fucked up? Who knew?
One thing I hadn't known: the whole plot was based on a bunch of bombs that didn't go off. I remember hearing about some improvised propane bombs that didn't detonate, but that wasn't an afterthought. They only had the guns to pick off fleeing survivors from the blasts. Had their cars rigged to blow up on the rescuers and cops too, even parked strategically but, fortunately they were incompetent terrorists. If they'd been worth a shit as bomb builders, there would probably have been twelve survivors instead of twelve dead.
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