i, like any other american, wanted to find out more about what happened in littleton, so i shelled out fifty cents and bought a newspaper. I quickly noticed an underlying theme in most of the articles in the three-page layout. They all seemed to be desperately asking “Why? How could this have happened? What possible motive could the shooters have?
(a throwback from my 3rd Shift Gastation days)
UNDERSTANDING WHY
People react to news of the event with disbelief that is soon shattered by the unstoppable flood of media attention the shootings are receiving. Everyone is shocked even though it’s the eighth school shooting in two years. Although I regret something that terible happened, I don’t find the tragic shootings in Colorado shocking. Surprising yes, shocking no.
The killer’s motives can be seen if you put yourself in his shoes. You are an outcast. A misfit. Almost everyone your age disrespects you or is just plain cruel to you without provocation. Your peers have been that way to you for as long as you can remember. You hate your school. You associate it with pain, and are forced to go every day by law and your parents’ expectations. Happiness is a rarely experienced emotion. When it unexpectedly appears, you savor it and desperately clutch at it until it slips through your fingers once again. It always does. Sadness is comforting. You’ve grown so accustomed to that icy feeling in the pit of your stomach that you feel unsure of yourself when it’s not there.
Some people are pointing at you and laughing. You can’t hear what they are saying, but it doesn’t matter. Those bastards. RAGE wells up in you. From the looks of their smirking faces, they’ve forgotten what unhappiness is. You briefly give yourself to your anger. It infuses your whole body. You would like to see those people feel pain. Anger makes you feel better, important. Your anger slowly fades. The people are still laughing. Is that all you are? A joke? For once you’d like to be taken seriously.
You decide to kill yourself. Deciding was the hard part, now you just have to figure out how. none of the conventional means sound very good. You suddenly have an idea. An idea that sounds too good. Revenge against everyone who made your life miserable, and a chance at a thing in death that you never had in life. Dignity. No one will ever laugh at you again.
The motive for this terrible crime isn’t so inconceivable to me, or anyone else that’s ever felt the barbs of a classmate’s repeated taunts. After understanding the shooters’ motive, people still wonder how they actually could have gone threw with it. “How could anyone have such little value for human lives?” they ask. It all hinges on the fact that the shooters did not see people the way most others do. When all some one ever sees in the faces of those around them is cruelty or apathy, they regrettably but inevitably begin to view the human race as nothing but soulless monsters. Killing a person is very difficult; killing a soulless monster is much easier.
In closing, I hope no one misinterprets what i have written. I do not seek to justify these terrible crimes, but only too provide insight on what must have been going through the killers’ minds. My heart goes out to the victims of the shootings and their families. I would also like to express my sympathies to the members of the “trench coat mafia” who were not involved in the shootings, but are undoubtedly being labled murderers because they found acceptance in the friendship of a few troubled teens.
-jake