Talk:Columbine High School massacre

By the way, could somebody who knows the editing protocols here better than I do please fix the area around the photo? It looks like a mess with the photo sitting on top of several words of the text. I'm looking at it with Netscape on a Sun Solaris system and the photo obscrues a whole line. Thanks Libdemplus

I disagree with the third paragraph of this article. It states that the Columbine High School massacre was the subject of the film Bowling for Columbine, and I think this implies that it was the main topic of it when it fact the film was about US violence in general. The school shooting was just a starting point for the film which was occasionally returned to; this is even the opinion of the Bowling for Columbine article itself, but I don't want to change this paragragh since this seems to be a bit of a PoV issue. -- 212.229.115.84 I agree that people who watched the 'Documentry', came out thinking americans were complete dumbasses, im an engish studant and watched the film in a drama lesson. Most of my class were horrified by the things that were shown,ie: the brother of an Oklahoma bomber holding a gun to his head, is the ownership of guns in america treated in such a light-hearted way? Even when the saftys off?

I agree with "212.229.115.84" about the fact that the film exploited the Columbine killers as a jumping-off point for Moore's theories on violence in the USA. I also strongly disagree with calling that film a "documentary" since it was filled with many falsehoods and deceptive editing. Every main-stream published review of that film I have read contains many verifyably false statements and remarkably, these reviewers all seemed to have come up with the same false beliefs from seeing the film. Everyone I know personally who saw the film (who had not already been warned of the deceptions in the film) came away with exactly the same false impressions. Moore systematically tricked the media and the public by various deceptive methods, not to mention the outright lies he told to the various people he used in the film. Libdemplus

I think the paragraph is accurate. The film used the issue of the massacre to highlight the broader issue of gun availability in the US. (But then we Europeans do think the US approach to guns is nuts. A Californian friend on a visit to Ireland could not believe that the police are unarmed, nobody he met had even seen a gun, women regularly walked home through the city alone. And that a city the size of Dublin had less shootings in a year than his neighbourhood had in 9 days. So no wonder Europeans think American gun laws nutty.) ÉÍREman 07:34 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC) PS that Californian got his first gun aged 11!

By the way, other than certain neighborhoods in certain large cities in the USA, women here routinely can safely walk home through the city alone, even at night. For people who are not criminals or drug/alcohol abusers, the USA is at least as safe as Canada, UK, Australia or most nations in Europe. If your statement about that Californians neighborhood shootings is accurate, then I have to assume he lives in one of those handfull of dangerous neighborhoods. By the way, the most dangerous neighborhoods in the USA all have the most severe restrictions on gun ownership compared to the rest of the USA. Libdemplus

'US is at least as safe as'? Hardly. Make that 'four times less safe than'. Homicides per 100,000 persons (average 1998-2000): USA - 5.9. England and Wales - 1.5. My source: UK Home Office report [1], bottom of page 3. --257.47b.9½.-19 23:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A lot of us Americans think the US approach to guns is nuts. -- Zoe

A lot of Americans are ignorant, bigoted, and wildly mis-informed, but that's no excuse for the systematic oppression of the inherant human right to choose to own firearms of the rest of us. People who fear firearms and the ownership of firearms by ordinary citizens do so out of emotional knee-jerk reactions programmed into the generally ignorant public by the news media, popular entertainment and opportunistic politicians. I should know, I used to be one of the ignorant public, I used to fully support any sort of gun restrictions, including outright bans, but as I said, that's when I was ignorant.

Libdemplus

Don't worry I don't presume that all Americans are gun-crazy. But it was rather funny going to see Bowling for Columbine with Danny from California. The Irish cinema audience was rolling about the place in laughter at the nutty American attitude towards guns as portrayed in the film, while Danny (an ex-soldier) couldn't get the joke and kept asking me "what are they laughing about? What is so funny?". Though he spent the entire holiday in Ireland in shock at the fact that the Garda Siochána (the police) don't carry guns and that they are in as much likelihood of getting shot at as George W. Bush is of delivering an inpromptu speech without a script and not making some monumental grammatical clanger! ÉÍREman 21:25 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

I have no doubt that the reason they were laughing is simply that they were utterly ignorant about firearms as well as USA history, not to mention that they probably accepted all the non-sense Moore stuck in his film as if it were factual, which it was not. I have found that even Americans who own guns and know something about guns were routinely fooled by various parts of Moore's film. Libdemplus

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Added second paragraph correcting the Cassie Bernall story. Feel free to move both paragraphs to their own page if you want to add more. I think there is already too much to be located on the page about Columbine, I don't want it to overshadow the other content by picking apart a tiny incident.

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How could the gunman have been inspired by the film The Matrix when it hadn't even come out yet? I think the editor who add that details was confusing the Columbine massacre with another slaying by a teenager called "The Matrix murders" Shall I delete this part? Kricxjo 07:57, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• According to [2] the theatrical release date was April 2, 1999. That would've given killers about 18 days to have seen it. Did they? I don't know and I don't plan to do the research to find out. The mention of it seems like speculation to me, but it's possible. M123 08:02, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• What about violent video games and Marilyn Manson? -- goatasaur 16:09, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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Trenchcoat Mafia?

The aricle states Harris and Klebold, as well as a few other friends had formed a small club known as the "Trenchcoat Mafia", but as far as I know they may have been called that, but they neither founded, nor was they members of the Trenchcoat Mafia. The actual members of the Trenchcoat Mafia had actually left the school years earlier. // Liftarn

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Obvious why 'provoked' gets quotes, as they may not have been provoked at all. Far from clear why 'done' gets a quote. DJ Clayworth 15:29, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Cassie Bernall

Shouldn't she get her own article? I think that the Bernall stuff should be moved. WhisperToMe 09:25, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Why the reference to the birthday of Adolf Hitler? What significance does it have? No reference to it in the article . Moriori 00:42, Nov 30, 2003 (UTC)

Would anyone object to making the intro clearer? It is a long-winded example of excruciation at the moment. Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be clear and concise? Moriori 05:59, Dec 1, 2003 (UTC)

External Links

Should links to the "impact" be added as well ? (I distinctly remember reading Voices from the Hellmouth and the continuations thereof in the aftermath, and think they are relevant in relation to the moral panic mentioned in the article. Any objections ? Eike 04:58, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)