By David Himmel

April 20, 1999. I was a sophomore in college in Las Vegas, Nevada. A columnist for the university newspaper then called the Rebel Yell. Just nineteen years old, high school was still a near memory. I heard the news about a high school in Colorado. Some kids were blowing their classmates and teachers away with rifles, automatic weapons and homemade bombs. The whole thing sounded, in lieu of a more apt description because there isn’t one, pretty goddamn fucked up.

I headed into the newspaper offices. I felt that I should be in a newsroom when news like this was breaking.

“Are we covering this Colorado high school shooting?” I asked our managing editor. A gigantic man with a terrifying presence I did my best to not be terrified of. He was old. Seemed too old for college to my young eyes. He was probably twenty-six at the time. He stared at me. Was he rattled by the news like I was? Was he angry? Had I asked a dumb question? Should I not have been there? He stared me down. I didn’t usually hang out in the office like that. But I wanted to be a part of the business. I was there to learn and report. His glare cut through me like a bullet might a teenager in Colorado.

“Iron your fucking shirt, you fucking bum,” he replied. “Don’t you have a fucking iron? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I looked at my wrinkled shirt. He was right. What the fuck was wrong with me? But that wasn’t the issue.

“Are we covering this Colorado high school shooting?” I asked again blasting a glare back at the dried out old sonofabitch.

“Yes,” he replied before re-hunching over his iMac.

“Good,” I said. Then I found a spare desk with a computer and began researching the story so I could construct my take on the thing.

Unfortunately, the UNLV Rebel Yell archives are crap and I cannot find any article prior to 2000. So I cannot repost that story here. But I vaguely remember what I wrote.

• Terrible tragedy

• The shooters were not just crazy, they were products of their crazy world

• We, as a nation, need to do something to help our troubled kids before things get out of hand again

I remember feeling sorry for the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. I didn’t sympathize with them. I ached for whatever hell they felt they went through that brought them to that most horrendous and wretched result. And, of course, I felt incredible pain for the victims—the dead and wounded, and the rest of community—local and national—impacted by the massacre at Columbine High School.

✶ 

A few months ago, I was painfully cleaning out old files. I say painfully because I am one who has a hard time letting go of scraps. Call it histrionic if you want to insult me. I call it journalistic. Papers, notebooks… these are records of our existence. This isn’t hoarding, this is proof. My unread magazine piles meet the trash bin every three months or so. I like clean, not clutter. My papers and notebooks are tucked away in quaint filing cabinets. And a good cleaning at least every year is beneficial. It makes room and reminds. And in this last cleaning, I was reminded of what things were like in the spring of 1999.

 When Eric and Dylan murdered twelve students and one teacher, we were shocked—just like the two angry killers wanted. They also wanted the day to be remembered forever. And it will be. Because the Columbine High School Massacre is like Elvis Presley. Nothing like it came before and every mass shooting since can’t help but draw inspiration from it.

 There were around thirty-one school shootings or attempted shootings in the entire 19th century in the United States. That kicked up to approximately 276 in the 20th century before Columbine. In the twenty-twenty-two years since Columbine, there have been around 240 school shootings. (We’re not counting general mass shootings here. Just the ones happening in schools.) Before Columbine, the death rate was low. One dead, maybe five. Some shooters missed completely, maybe only injuring one or two. Terrible attacks but, comparatively merciful. Peaceful.

On April 20, 1999, peace and mercy were not possible. It changed everything. And we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

My notes reveal the developing story and laughable insight into the future. The first line is, “Congress may approve new gun control measures proposed by Clinton.” Cute.

There’s a note from the developing story that there were fifteen dead including one teacher. This is interesting to me because if this happened in today’s news cycle and I had printed that fifteen were reported dead, I’d likely have been ostracized by the mass public for publishing fake news. Because in 2021, reporting on developing news stories are a sign of ineptitude and/or partisanship and propaganda.

My favorite notes are the most prescient. “MSNBC four correspondents all fighting talking at once. (bickering)” Absolutely nothing has changed there. So, our mass shootings have become more frequent and MSNBC is still producing stage plays of yelling buffoons accomplishing next to nothing. Yay us. Yay MSNBC.

But in reviewing my notes, the one scribble that gave me pause was this: “NRA is not to blame.” Oh, nineteen-year-old David… So naïve. So sweet. So simple. Today, with the knowledge of history and factual findings it’s safe to say that while the NRA did not pull the trigger, it did little to nothing to prevent weapons getting into the hands of the wrong people like angry children. The NRA couldn’t know about Eric and Dylan specifically but they did very little to promote gun safety and responsibility.

After reviewing these notes and thinking back on Columbine in the wake of the most recent mass shootings in Texas and Wisconsin, my takeaway is this: As a collective people living in this nation, we don’t care about our children or each other. We also have no problem with MSNBC cultivating a journalistic culture of screeching at one another with functioning rubes at the desk like Brian Williams or in the guest chair like Amy Klobuchar. But that’s another polite discussion for another time.

Today, we ought to consider the dead, the wounded, the impacted, the good who continue to fight against bullying, fight for reasonable gun control, and generally, a better place for our kids to safely learn what a fucked up country they live in.