Who Is Responsible For The Columbine Killings?

Cause – Effect

Even since the shooting at Columbine High School caught the attention of America and all the world on April 20, 1999, high school shootings and other forms of violence at schools has been plaguing America during the last ten years. It is also found that most of the violence that occurs in high schools is caused by young men. Students aren’t feeling safe at school anymore and parents are enraged that students could bring the weapons to school in the first place. Many people have brought their own opinions into play about why violence in schools occurs. Such causes range from violence in the media, being treated poorly by peers and administrators in school, all the way to poor parental decisions. Although these are only a few of the possible causes for violence in schools, they are defiantly the most prevalent reasons.

Violence in the media has long been a possible cause for people to commit violent acts. Everyone has seen a violent television show, watched a violent movie or listened to music depicting graphic violence. These forms of media are available to people of all ages across the United States. A major cause of high school violence may be discovered here. Columbine high school shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were avid listeners to violent music such as Slipknot and KMFDM. Both groups feature very dark and twisted lyrics, which the shooters listened too without a doubt. Are the lyrics in the music to blame for the violent behavior of two of the group’s listeners? Another possible source of the hatred that some shooters have may lie in the television shows they watched. Violent television shows are everywhere today; many primetime or late night shows carrying “Parental Discretion Is Advised” disclaimers. In all honesty the disclaimers shown there are more likely to draw younger viewers in to watch the show, rather than keeping them away. “I don’t know if it made me want to watch it more, it’s just like, I don’t know it’s kinda like an advertisement for some cool shit [especially swearing and guns]” Bradley University Freshman Jim Hering said. It seems to be very clear that younger Americans are going to want to watch such shows, regardless of the warnings that the television station puts on before a particular show. Exposing young Americans to such violent shows as “NYPD...

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...hool actually murdered his parents in an act of ultimate frustration. What would cause a boy to kill his own parents? A teenage boy craves attention, attention that only takes a few minutes for parents to give. His parents didn’t offer attention, much less offer help when he was struggling in school. The fact that the parents totally ignored their son had much to do with the shooting. The case with the Columbine shooters is quite similar. Klebold’s parents were fairly wealthy and felt that replacing their personal attention with toys, computers and other kinds of distractions would be good enough to satisfy their son. In doing this, they ignored his playing violent computer games, they ignored his enjoyment of violent music, they didn’t see that he was learning through the internet how to make high powered bombs and worst of all they didn’t know that he was stockpiling weapons and ammunition. One thing that is baffling is that Klebold was in possession of a Tec-9 machine pistol, a tough to find automatic weapon. How could the parents ignore such obvious signs that something was wrong with their sons? Before anything is blamed for a child’s actions, you need to look at the parents.