The Columbine Incident - Case Study Example

On recovering from the initial shock of hearing or reading about this incident, if one starts thinking about it, it seems very likely that the two sick villains perpetrating this crime were probably taking revenge of some sort. For the simple reason that if not one but two persons randomly opened fire within the premises of a fully populated high school, with hundreds of students moving around, there would have definitely been more casualties. One must remember that the perpetrators knew their way with guns, and had indeed used powerful weapons, walking down the length and breadth of the school building hunting people down, while everyone was frantically trying to escape or hide.

Another important fact of this incident is that the killers killed themselves in the end. Such prima facie impressions engendered by this tragic incident may have prompted the various theories that circulated in the media as to the murderers' possible motives, in the immediate aftermath of the event. The fact that they killed themselves suggested a strong possibility that these guys could somehow have been underlings victimized by the school bullies, and this is their way of evening the scores.

But the systematic manner in which they carried out their horrific act may have suggested that these guys could have been part of some dark cult, brainwashed by their cult to commit an atrocity that otherwise, no seemingly regular type students could have even contemplated upon. And as the fact surfaced that one of the killers had a history with anti-depressants, the role of the drugs in bringing about this disaster was also discussed in the news. All in all, several theories, which later became entrenched as myths, surrounded this event - but not because of any kind of media distortion, nor for the sake of sensationalism that media often seeks to cater to.

The blame solely lies with the FBI. The FBI released official reports three months after this incident, but why did it not ascertain the nature of this massacre along with an official version of the most likely motives that could have spurred it We must remember that journalists are no trained criminologists, though they do try their best to intellectually comprehend the rationale and scope of any incident they are covering. Five years (!) after the incident, Dr. Frank Ochberg and Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier come up with a rather definitive theory about the massacre, attributing the key responsibility to the vicious psychopathic nature of one of the murderers.

No cults nor bullying was involved. And murderers did not target anyone specifically. Here, the real puzzle is what took these experts so long before they came out with rather simple observations on the nature of psychopathic behaviorPsychopaths are indeed a real menace to the society, and the best way to honor the memory of the victims of the Columbine incident is to commission more university-level studies into the elusive nature of psychopathic behavior, in order to find a possible cure to this abnormality.

Columbine- type events do terrorize and traumatize the society, and it is the duty of every thinking person to work for a safer and more meaningful society, in whatever capacity they can.