As part of the seminars Dave Ashworth conducted on Active Shooters he showed some CCTV footage of the Columbine Shootings, in which you could hear both the 911 call, and the shooters talking. Although grainy the footage was both graphic and disturbing. It is sometimes difficult to makes sense of what motivates individuals to engage in such actions, and how they can behave in such a callous manner disregarding an individual’s plea for life and showing utter contempt for a person’s suffering etc. After watching such footage we can come away with a mix of emotions, including depression, anger and anxiety etc. This blog article is aimed at explaining why individuals, without excusing them, engage and are driven to taking life in this manner.

Firstly it is worth noting that the majority of school shootings take place in rural rather than urban settings. Whilst at first glance this may seem incidental, it speaks volumes about the environments in which many school shooters grow up. The communities they live in tend to be close knit, with everyone knowing and being involved in everybody else’s business. In such situations, those who find themselves on the “outside”, often feel extremely isolated and misunderstood, as well as feeling judged by the majority who are part of the community. The High School, and often the sports team become the focal point, around which the community centers itself. For a teenager seeking to develop their own identity, this can be an extremely claustrophobic and judgmental environment to grow up in. As individuals find themselves without a place in society, they turn their backs on society’s conventions and rules, and try other places in which to find themselves; exhausted they may turn back and punish the communities that have excluded them.

This is no different to the way that many western Islamic extremists become radicalized. Many people living in the west don’t understand why somebody growing up in a country, could end up hating it so much to the point where they would consider going off to join a terrorist organization such as ISIS. However, if you are a Muslim teenager growing up in Boston, and all you hear on the news and in the media is anti-Islamic rhetoric, you are soon going to feel isolated and judged. You are going to try and find/work out if you have a place in a society that seemingly disrespects you. You might conclude from both social and conventional media, that there actually isn’t a place for you as an American Muslim, which may in turn make you look outwards to an organization or group that can explain to you your feelings of anger and frustration, give you a place where you do fit in (even if it is just virtual) and tell you how you should act and behave.

The Columbine shooters didn’t fit into any of the social groups in their High School – they weren’t even judged to be suitable to be part of the Goth scene at their school i.e. even the “outcasts” had rejected them; they simply didn’t have a “place” to belong. They were not in a large city where they could have perhaps found other people who would accept them, but rather they were stuck in a society where everybody knew them, and had known them since they were kids, and which wasn’t able to acknowledge them as being part of that society. This is the same situation that many American Muslim teenagers find themselves in, feeling different, judged and not knowing how to fit in. Both groups feel disempowered, disrespected and confused. Such individuals are ripe picking for groups and organizations who can give them direction and the ability to punish those groups who have shunned them. If ISIS had existed at the time of Columbine, there is nothing to say that the shooters would not have been inspired to “join” by the violent imagery, and the message of retribution and punishment, that is promoted by this group. The Columbine shooters found their guidance from video games, music, and their circle of friends.

People engage in acts of violence because they feel justified, and because they see no alternatives. In any violent act there are always motives fueled by anger and the need for power and control. The Columbine Shooters were not simply punishing their school by their actions but the entire society in which they had grown up in e.g. everybody who had called them or thought of them as weird, and had not given them a place to express themselves in their community. They realized that they would never fit in, and looked for alternative ways in which to express themselves; finding none they turned to violence, something they felt justified to engage in. Anyone who watches the footage can see/feel their anger and their rage. It may be hard to accept that such anger can stem from an inability to find a place in society, however if we are to effectively prevent teenage Muslims from being radicalized we need to recognize the effects that judgment and isolation can have. In those long, few minutes, the Columbine shooters had the power and control that had always been denied to them.

For me one of the most depressing parts of the CCTV footage, is hearing them talk calmly about committing suicide i.e. whether they should pull the trigger on three, or after three. These were individuals who had given up on life completely, not just everybody else’s but theirs as well. They had given up on life long before they planned the shootings. When such a thing occurs society has a time bomb on their hands; violence towards themselves and/or others is inevitable. The Columbine community didn’t consciously create a situation where these teenagers didn’t have a place to fit in. It didn’t deliberately isolate and judge them, and it never warranted the retribution it received. It is worth pointing out that many other kids in similar situations don’t turn to violence however we should recognize that such environments can cause young minds to feel alienated and angry, and that such feelings can lead to violence.         

The Columbine shooters may appear to have nothing in common with the US teenagers who are radicalized by extremists, however if we look at the emotions and feelings of both sets, they are very, very similar. There are people who will punish the societies that don’t acknowledge or give them a position to exist in, and if we are to avoid school shootings and other acts of terror, we must look at ways of accommodating such individuals, so that they have both a sense of belonging and commitment to their society rather than feeling isolated and angry towards it.