That's One More Kid That'll Never Go To School

Eric Harris would have been forty-three years old. Would have been if he hadn't taken his own life after murdering twelve of his classmates and a teacher at his high school in suburban Colorado. His friend and partner in death, Dylan Klebold, was also a victim of the rampage. Dylan would be forty-two. 

It's an exercise in futility, but I wonder sometimes if there is a universe in which they were stopped in the parking lot of Columbine High School, disarmed, and sent to reform school or detention of some kind. Something that would have offered them copious amounts of counseling and time to reflect on their plans to become famous murderers. 

Once they were released, perhaps in their twenties, would they be rehabilitated? Could they have assumed a "normal life?" They might even have been able to get their jobs at Blackjack Pizza back. Some patient young thing could eventually have tumbled into their life, offering the chance for love that they missed as teenagers. 

By now, they would probably be settled down, with family of their own. Kids in high school. Eric and Dylan pontificating on how "it's not like when we were kids." Would they be able to use their troubled past to help this new generation find their way? 

Since April 20, 1999 there have been more than one thousand school shootings in the United States. Jaclyn Schildkraut, the executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government would like us to know that school shootings with mass deaths are "a statistically rare form of crime." 

And yet, I can't help but wonder if Eric and Dylan would have found themselves on the side of gun control after their scrape with the law. A quarter of a century later, with the faces of all those kids burned into our collective memory, would we be in a different place if they had never started the fire? 

Twenty-five years ago, the elementary school kids I taught never had to experience an active shooter drill. Even though this kind of crime is "statistically rare," we remain vigilant. 

Even though Eric and Dylan have been dead for twenty-five years.