I was *very* young when Columbine happened but I distinctly remember how everyone got their motivations wrong.
They weren’t bullied and they weren’t outcasts. Nothing to do with Marilyn Manson or violent video games. They weren’t lashing out at society. They were just evil.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold quite simply wanted to murder their classmates for fun.
The original plan was to place firebombs throughout the school, and then gun down the fleeing students. Their bombs failed, so they went to plan B: the less efficient method of entering the school and shooting who they could before taking their own lives.
After every tragedy, society likes to ask itself where it went wrong. In ancient times, idol worshippers would offer sacrifices to stave off floods, fire, and earthquakes. But sometimes people are just irredeemably evil beyond comprehension. In the diary of Anne Frank, people cling to that phrase of hers: “deep down, I believe everyone has good in them”, but just weeks after writing that, she and her family encountered some men who had no good in them at all.