Terrorism continues to strike America's schools. How can we understand such tragedy?
by Darris McNeely
Evil manifested itself on a spring
morning at a high school in Littleton, Colorado, last month. In its
wake is a community trying to grasp another act of terrorism in America.
Two teens dressed in black garb
and loaded with weapons and bombs walked into Littleton's Columbine
High School on April 19 and began shooting students and faculty at
random. When it was over 13 were dead and approximately 25 wounded.
The two teens also died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
At the first news of the shooting
you thought, "Oh no, not again! Another school shooting." Then there
was the inevitable live coverage from CNN telling us that another school
in America had suffered an act of violence on its grounds. We are shocked,
we ask "Why?", and "How could this happen here?"
It is being called the "deadliest
school massacre" in American history. That very phrase defines a chilling
epoch of modern society that is hard to grasp and understand. Instead
of safe places of learning for children have schools become the stages
upon which the cancers of our age erupt with frightening regularity?
Consider what has happened in American
public schools in the past 19 months. In nine separate shooting incidents
at least 29 students and faculty have been killed while 70 others were
wounded. They have occurred in the south, the west and the north, in
middle class neighborhoods. The perpetrators have been as young as
11 years old up to age 18. The motives are varied. One of the killers
said he "had no choice but to do it," others had no explanation for
their crime. In at least two of the cases the shooters were members
of fringe cult-like groups.
Early reports from the Littleton,
Colorado, shooting described the two students responsible for the shooting
as members of an outcast group known as the "trench-coat Mafia." They
did not fit into the mainstream life of the school and were known to
have a fascination with guns and an obsession with death. In exiting
this life their anger gathered many innocent victims in its grasp,
and left permanent scars upon the minds of friends and family.
