The Colombine Shootings in the early summer of 1999 were truly a massacre. I still remember first hearing about it. I was traveling home from Cancun, Mexico, basically cut off from civilization for a week of debauchery. We stepped on the plane and were handed a newspaper, our first glimpse into what had been happening in the world while we had been gone. There it was. Front page. The disaster. The article went into great detail to recount the horrific details of the day. What caught my attention was a related article accompanied with pictures of the film the Matrix. In just days, the media had already figured out the source of the problem. The awful films and the horrible music.

Why is this continuously done? Why are music and films and other forms of art continually blamed for the wrongs of all society? Why would those teenagers do something like this? Blame the film “Snatch”. How could this happen…? Must be “Limp Bizkits” fault.

Why is this continuously done? It’s simple. We need easy answers.

But people will say that it’s happening more then ever now. You think so? You don’t think that there were murders and rapes committed hundreds of years ago? My parents will tell me that you just never heard these stories at such frequency back when they were younger. Should we be surprised? No. The only difference is now we can be exposed to it more. There are so many channels of communication available that we are blind and deaf to nothing. A story on a rape in Collingwood, Ontario can be distributed through out the world. Mass murders and other tragic events have always been happening. They just can be broadcasted to a larger audience now.

So we blame the Colombine murders on a movie the teenagers watched. So what about Andrew Kehoe, the man that committed the Bath School murders in the summer of 1927, what do we blame his actions on? The terrible radio shows he listened too? What about H.H. Holmes, who committed countless murders in the suburbs of Chicago in 1886? The awful plays he watched? The lousy books he read? What about Hitler?

I am not saying that music, film, and whatever other stimuli people are exposed to can’t influence. But do we honestly believe that the motivation to kill 27 people can be solely blamed on a film starring Keanu Reeves? So the teenager was wearing shades and a black long jacket? That is a tactic…the idea came from somewhere else.

Where does one get the idea to kill? I don’t know…perhaps depression. Drug and alcohol abuse. Chemical imbalances. Psychological disorders. Revenge. I don’t know…

Maybe we should ask the parents. The siblings. The friends. The teachers. But then again…those answers might be a bit hard to get.

…but that’s just my opinion.

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