Did you know since the Columbine shooting more than 219,000 students have been subjected to gun violence at school? On April 30, 1999, a high school shooting occurred in Littleton, Colorado that would not only impact the safeness of the educational system for decades to come but open the door for more school shootings.  On this day at Columbine High School, two of the students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris planned to bomb the school when this fail they opened fire on their fellow peers and teachersthen killed themselves. Out of all the shootings that have occurred in my twenty-five years of living, Columbine and Sandy Hook were the most memorable yet damaging to society. The Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting occurred in Newton Connecticut, which took place thirteen years after Columbine and was tremendously different as it involved the tragic death of young children. On December 14, 2012, former student Adam Lanza entered the elementary school and first open fired on kindergartners and first graders then their teachers who were trying to protect them. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Columbine High School shooting opened the door to more shootings such as the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, both shootings impact on society and to analyze the psychological mindset of all three shooters. What would make a person do this? How do we as a society lessen the tragic rise of school shootings? 

On April 30, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two students of the students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris planted two bombs in the cafeteria and planned to kill at least five hundred students; shooting at students who survived as they exited the building (p.3, Comprehensive Columbine, Larkin). When the bombs failed to detonate at the designated time, the boys improvised and resulted to entering the school and shooting everyone in their sights. Harris being the lead conspirator and Klebold following along, this was intended to be a deadly massacre, but instead thirteen people were killed including teachers and students and twenty were wounded.This was not the first neither was it the deadliest school shooting but because the Columbine shooting was so widely publicized and received a lot of media attention making those involved inherently infamous. Subsequent shooters who harbored the same sadistic thoughts felt this was an option for them to take in order to leave their mark on the world just as Harris and Klebold had. 

I think its impact was heavy because it was everywhere, newspapers, and television news and to this very day people still talk about it. Psychoanalyst and writer, Manya Steinkoler asserts that Adam Lanza was obsessed with the Columbine shooting. “Research has shown that 8 out of 12 shooters directly referred to Columbine and were interested and engaged in that story, seeing Eric and Dylan as heroes (Steinkoler, 2017).” Fox News host Shepard Smith says, “Since Columbine in 1999, there have been 25 fatal, active school shootings at elementary and high schools in America (Diebel, 2018).” On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza drove to Sandy Hook Elementary school after shooting his mother to death and opened fired on children and staff; fatally killing twenty children and six adults then himself. The Columbine shooters created a gateway for other psychotic and psychopathic people who envy them and ache to duplicate such a violent and heinous crime and this has had a significant impact on society. 

​I interviewed psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Nevada, Andrea Kayl remembered the effect of the Columbine shooting being a “weighted tragedy that she couldn’t quite comprehend.” Kayl follows this by saying she lived only an eight-hourdrive from where Columbine High School was, given the proximity I’d assume this to be more traumatic for her because she says “it was just something I couldn’t process that much.” Kayl says that before the shooting occurred there was no security at the high school she attended and people could just walk in and out of the school freely because the doors were always unlocked and that there was just no plan for something like this. After the shooting,there was a new protocol, the exterior doors were always locked, there was an active shooter code in place and all the staff and teachers wore badges to identify themselves. I asked Kayl what impact did Sandy Hook (2009) had and she stated it didn’t surprise her because so many other school shootings had happened such as West Nickle Mines (2006) and Virginia Tech (2007) school shooting but she was alarmed that it was children whom were targeted. 

In order to begin to understand why these shootings occurred, it is necessary to analyze who these boys were and the psychological state of all three shooters, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Adam Lanza. I think it’s important to begin with Eric Harris because in some aspects he was unlike the other two shooters. Harris had multiple problems, which was based on his need for power. He was categorized as a psychopathic shooter with explosive and tyrannical tendencies. Harris was a narcissist and sadistic psychopath (p.22, School Shooters, Langman).Dylan Klebold was a follower who was deeply depressed, felt slighted by his peers and preoccupied with rejection.Both Harris and Klebold felt inadequate. Adam was a loner who never felt as if he fitted in with his peers or family and was looking for ways to feel powerful (Kayl, 2018). 

Eric Harris believed natural selection needed a boost like him with a shotgun (p.18, School Shooters, Langman). The day of the shooting, he wore a short with the words natural selection written across it. Harris kept a journal in which he expressed his view of natural selection to kill all the people who suffer from brain problems, mental retardation and drug addicts. “I don’t buy that shit like ‘oh, he’s my son, though!’ so the fuck what, he ain’t normal, kill him. Put him out of his misery. He is only a waste of time and money! (p.22, School Shooters, Langman)” This demonstrated his lack of empathy for mankind. Harris was clearly deeply disturbed because he thought the killing of intellectually disabled people was the correct thing to do in order to save money and time. He felt it was a waste to help those in need, which is probably one of the reasons he killed himself. Harris was born with two birth defects a gimp leg and sunken chest; although both were resolved at a younger age this probably affected his self-concept and self-esteem and added to his sense of feeling inadequate.Ultimately, Harris thought natural selection was a problem he could solve by destroying the entire town. In the book Comprehensive Columbine, written by Ralph Larkin, a passage from Harris’s journal read, “I will rig up explosives all over town and detonate each one of them after I move down a whole fucking area full of you snotty ass rich motherfuckers…I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out, all I want to do is kill and injure as many as you pricks as I can (Larkin, 2007).” This was Harris’s approach to natural selection, to eliminate society. 

Eric Harris thrived on power. He wrote about wanting to experience power over girls by getting them into a vulnerable position through impression management which Dr. Robert Harris defines as the ability to be appealing, which psychopaths often use to exploit others by winning their trust (p.22, Why Kids Kill, Langman): “Who can I trick into my room first? I can sweep someone off their feet, tell them what they want to hear, be all nice and sweet, and then fuck them like an animal (p.20, School Shooters, Langman).” Harris wanted to overpower girls while fulfilling some sort of fantasy or sadistic glee. This need for power led him down a path of destruction. 

In another one of Peter Langman’s book’s, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, he defines psychopathic shooters as someone who is narcissistic, lacks empathy and remorse; often sadistic getting a thrill out of being the one deciding life and death. During the attack, Harris mocked and taunted people before he killed them; “at one point he looked under a table where a girl cowered in terror. Harris said, ‘Peekaboo,’ and shot her(p.20-21, School Shooters, Langman).” Harris took pleasure out of killing people; he was truly a sadistic psychopath.

Harris was a self-hating compensatory narcissist, which meant he compensated for his insecure identity by embodying an image of superiority. In the book, Why Kids Kill, Peter Langman asserts that compensatory narcissistic people feel inadequate; therefore they create a grandiose self-image in an attempt to supplement for the skills they wished to have. This rings especially true because Harris expressed feeling godlike, “I feel like God and I wish I was, having everyone being OFFICIALLY lower than me (p.19, School Shooters, Langman). Harris wanted to embody God, be the dicer in order to feel powerful. The day of the shooting Harris got his opportunity to play God and that was probably very fulfilling for him. Eric Harris was eighteen years old when he killed eight people and left thirteen wounded before killing himself at the Columbine shooting along with Dylan Klebold. Harris was a bigot, extremely hateful, and bloodthirsty and expressed disturbing thoughts as oppose to Dylan who was inadequate, depressed, and desperate for love. 

Dr. Theodore Millon categorized Dylan Klebold in Langman’s, Why Kids Kill book as a pseudo psychopath. A person who is weak, insecure, inadequate and develops psychopathic tendencies as an attempt to overcome or compensate for their insecurities who engages in psychopathic behaviors but is not at the core a psychopath(p.54, Why Kids Kill, Langman). Klebold was a follower and desperately needed the approval of his best friend Eric Harris. I believe he felt alone without Harris, this loneliness was one of the reasons he committed that egregious crime. I believe his willingness to do anything to please Harris was the prime reason which motivated him to pull the trigger.

Klebold was an insecure, shy, and odd teenager; these traits were believed to be derived from avoidant personality disorder. This is a “pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation (p.42, Langman)” followed by schizophrenia episodes this explained his feelings of inadequacy, fear of rejection and social anxiety. In Why Kids Kill, Langman follows this by asserting avoidant personality is an exaggeration of shyness that is socially debilitating. People with avoidant personality often avoid intimacy out of fear of rejection. Klebold’s feelings of inadequacy and fear of rejection caused him to feel slighted by his peers, and socially unaccepted. He wrote, “nobody accepting me even though I want to be accepted…me looking weird, acting shy- BIG problem (p.52, Why Kids Kill, Langman).” In high school, it’s important to feel included; feelings of exclusion can be detrimental. But Dylan was included; “he worked with a group of his best friends, went bowling with friends, directed movies with friends and belonged to a 12-person fantasy baseball league (p.53, Why Kids Kill, Langman).” It’s ironic that he felt so left out and alone because he was actually well liked and involved in a wide variety of social activities. Where did these feelings of exclusion and rejection stem from? Klebold had a deficient sense of himself; he was insecure; there wasn’t anything anyone did to make him feel this way. 

Klebold also kept a journal, he expressed depressing and alarming suicidal thoughts, “Let’s sum up my life… the most miserable existence in the history of time (p.44, langman, school shooters).” “I am in eternal suffering, in infinite directions in infinite realities (p.44, School Shooters, Langman).” The fact that he wrote passages like this, it’s not surprising he killed innocent people and then himself. An air of melancholy surrounded Dylan Klebold;this feeling combined with his desperate need to feel included led him to kill those students at Columbine High School. Sadly, he was not the only shooter who failed to communicate his psychological distress, which leads us to Adam Lanza. 

Adam Lanza was a “psychotic shooter; this kind of shooter hears voices, hallucinates and has delusions of grandeur. Lanza was out of touch with reality, isolating himself in his mother’s basement, playing video games and watching movies (Steinkoler, 2017).” It’s important to note psychotic people are out of touch with reality yet can be highly functional (p.49, Why Kids Kill, Langman). Lanza worshiped the Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and frequently posted on a website dedicated to the fans of Columbine. Upon investigating Lanza’s room, the FBI found a seven by four-foot spreadsheet listing over 500 mass murders and the weapons they used. He had been researching school shooters and planning for years (Steinkoler, 2017). Adam Lanza was the sole shooter at the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting back in 2009. Lanza attended the school in his early childhood but at the time his mother was a volunteer. 

Lanza was smart but quiet and socially awkward; appeared weird, frail and wide-eyed. He was labeled a loser and seen as odd by his peers and appeared to be ghost-like, removed from society. Lanza was aware of this and wanted to change his persona by becoming a marine so that his peers would see him as manly rather than skinny and weak (p.141 School Shooters, Langman).

I believe Lanza’s family relationship contributed to his act of violence on the school. His parents divorced when he was ten years old, which exacerbated his psychological state. I feel this resulted in him having an insecure parental attachment and he displayed avoidant attachment characteristics, which is he didn’t seek comfort or contact with his parents and was unwilling to share his thoughts and emotions with others (chapter 10, Children in Their Development, Kali). Peter Lanza, the father says that Nancy Lanza, the mother became a stay at home mom once Adam was born. I believe that Nancy was a permissive parent; this meant she was lenient with Adam, no structure or guidelines but still loving. As we see, the dynamic this creates is unhealthy and detrimental to the child. Nancy knew her son lacked language and motor developmental skills and believed her son was “special” and accommodated him in every way. For example, Adam was sensitive to smell so she didn’t cook, he would go throughtwenty socks a day and she would do his laundry daily and his touch phobia caused him to go through boxes of tissues using them to open doors throughout the house. Instead of seeking help, she fed into his “reality”. Adam was said to have a sensory processing disorder and this caused him to be disturbed by the world; he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and so Nancy always used these illnesses as her excuse to cling to him (Steinkoler, 2017). In an article from Global Post regarding the Sandy Hook shooting written by Jennifer Mattson, “the gunman’s mother, Nancy Lanza, reportedly told him a military career ‘wasn’t right for him,’ stated family friend Ellen Adriani.” Lanza psychological problems stem from the parenting of his mother, Nancy Lanza’s lack of support in his career choices and her over involvement as a volunteer at the school. This is the reason he chose that particular school.Clearly, the mother was overbearing and we see the negative effects over parenting can have while the father’s lack of love did not help Adam. Peter Lanza, the father of Adam expresses that his son was evil and he doesn’t mourn or miss him, “You can’t get any more evil (Steinkoler, 2017).”

The father’s statements demonstrate a lack of parental love and he may have been scared of Adam. I’m also led to wonder if this is the reason the parents divorced because of Adam’s inability to function and perform adequately. 

Lanza psychological issues stem from parental attachment problems; there has been various studies done on how harmful parental emotional neglect can be. Psychologist, Harry Harlow performed experiments in the 1950’s, which resulted in him finding that a strong emotional bond with one’s parents or secure attachment is imperative to good health in children as they growthroughout their life (Broggard, 2016). Lanza clearly didn’t feel a secure attachment with his mother or father. I believe Adam was insecure and deeply affected about his mother feeling he was incompetent,

This is probably why he shot his own mother to death in her bed while she was sleeping in the home before he left to shoot up the school. Although, the father states, “he shot Nancy one for every member of the family (Steinkoler,2017).”

I’m led to wonder what causes a person to perform such an egregious crime? Peter Langman suggests that it’s a slow build of little events over time before the attack happens, which ultimately pushes the shooter overboard(Steinkoler,2017). There is some kind of event which causes the shooter to snap, for example in Dave Cullen’s book, Columbine; he says Harris was rejected to the prom three times. I believe prom is everything a student looks forward to the fact that his shy best friend had a date to the biggest party of the school year was too much for Harris to handle. “Violence as a way to obtain social recognition has become quite popular (Steinkoler, 2017).” I believe this is what all three shooters were after, wanting to finally be popular and recognized by the world. Langman asserts shooters have role models people they admire. For example, Harris idolized both Hitler and Charles Manson while Dylan just wanted Harris approval and he was willing to go along with whatever Eric had planned. The same can be said for Adam Lanza who idolized both Harris and Klebold; he wanted to fulfill their legacy. It’s an unfortunate psychotic chain effect. 

As horrible and tragic as Columbine and Sandy Hook school shooting were, these shootings continue to be a part of our current landscape. “There was on school shooting in the U.S. in 1927. The next was in 1966. There was four in the 1960s, six in the 1980’s and twenty-five in the 1990’s. There were forty-eight in the first decade of the new millennium, seventy-four since 2010 and over two hundred since 2013(Steinkoler, 2017).” A solution proposed in a podcast titled, Before the Next One, which I find unnecessarily dangerous, has been implemented at a rural Ohio school. In preparation for another shooting, the school decided to arm some of the staff and trained them on what to do in case of an emergency with timing & shooting exercises, the possibility of having to shoot a student and examined previous shootings. I find this solution extremely distasteful because teachers shouldn’t be prepared to shoot their students. I understand their point of the police or ambulance being fifteen minutes away but the effect on the teacher preparing for this could cause more harm than good. If teachers are worrying about keeping their guns on them at all time and out of the way of the students, it could take away from the classroom experience. Instead of this, I suggest a fundamental approach, which would consist of revising the K-12 curriculum. 

I suggest reconstructing the educational plan for K-12. Beginning with implementing a mandated therapy session for every student, requiring teachers to become certified in clinical therapy and implement psychology and communication courses into the curriculum. Mandatory therapy would give children the opportunity to express their feelings. By requiring teachers to become clinically certified, they will be able to better understand and respond to the psychological needs of children. It is pertinent to implement communication classes so that young children can learn how to properly use their words to communicate their thoughts and emotions. Lastly, it is necessary to implement psychology classes in order for children to understand why they feel the way they do. There needs to be psychological discussions incorporated into the curriculum. This solution will not be easy and will take some serious planning as to how to go about this but it’sextremely necessary to identify these types of behaviors early on in life for children. 

In summary, I have detailed the events of the Columbine shooting, asserted the reasons I feel it occurred and how that shooting led to subsequent shooters taking that same option in particularly, Adam Lanza. I have detailed the psychological effects of each shooter, the impact Columbine High School Shooting has had and still has on society and what I think we can do to begin minimizing shootings. At this current rate, there will be soon be a school shooting every day; there only going to get worse, drastic solutions like the revisions of the K-12 curriculum is needed before it’s too late. 

                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited 

Bowers, Elizabeth & Rodriguez, Edel. “School Shooters Inside their Minds.” 2013, ed.lehigh.edu/theory-to-practice/2013/school-shooters.

Broggard, Berit. “Parental Attachment Problems” Psychology Today 9 Nov, 2016 psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201611/parental-attachment-problems.

“Columbine Shooting.” A& E, 9 Nov 2009, history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings.

Cullen, Dave. Columbine. New York: Twelve, 2009. 

Diebel, Matthew. “Fox News Host Shepard Smith emotionally lists all 25 fatal School Shootings since Columbine.” USA Today 15 February, 2018.

Glass, Ira et al. Before the Next One. 12 Oct, 2018, Podcast.

Kali, Robert. Children in Their Development. Pearson, 2014. 

Kayl, Andrea. Personal Interview. 26 November, 2018.

Langman, Peter. School Shooters. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 

Langman, Peter. Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. New York City: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2009.  

Larkin, Ralph. Comprehensive Columbine. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007. 

Price, Tom. “Gun Violence.” CQ Researcher, Vol. 28, 27 November, 2018.

Mattson, Jennifer. “Sandy Hook Shooting: Adam Lanza considered joining Marines, Military: Report.” Global Post, 20 Dec, 2012. pri.org/stories/2012-12-20/sandy-hook-shooting-adam-lanza-considered-joining-marines-military-report.

“Sandy Hook Elementary School: What happened?” CNN, 2012, cnn.com/interactive/2012/12/us/sandy-hook-timeline/index.html.

Steinkoler, Manya. “Lone Wolf Terrorists: Howling in the Eye of the Wind- The Case of Adam Lanza.” International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 26, No.4, 2018. 

 

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