20 Years After Columbine, What Have We Learned?

Among the unknowns is just how severe the threat is to America’s vulnerable young and their teachers. Some analyses show an increase in Columbine-like episodes, others a decline. Researchers disagree even on methodology. Do you include gang fights in the tally of misery? How about incidents that take place near school grounds but not on them?But the knowns are self-evident, and unspeakable. From their writings, we know that Columbine became a touchstone for some of this country’s most unhinged. It inspired the armed young men who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech[1] in 2007 and 26 first graders and their instructors at the Sandy Hook Elementary School[2] in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Less clear was its influence on the shooter who took 17 lives last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School [3]in Parkland, Fla. Still, the madness spoke for itself.The derangement extends beyond schools to other venues once considered sanctuaries against a raging world. Concertgoers at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas[4] came under fire in 2017, with 58 of them killed. Houses of worship are no longer havens. Witness the 9 shooting deaths in 2015 at a black church in Charleston, S.C.[5], the 11 deaths last year at a synagogue in Pittsburgh[6], the 6 at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis.[7], in 2012, and the periodic assaults on mosques, even if none in this country have approached the carnage last month in Christchurch, New Zealand[8], where 50 Muslims were gunned down at prayer.For people fearful of falling victim themselves someday, the question is no longer “Why me?” but, rather, “When me?”Gun Violence Archive[9], which tracks the mayhem online, defines a mass shooting as one with four or more casualties. Through April 10, the archive had recorded 80 incidents in the United States this year, with at

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