Mass School Shootings: The Dickenson High School Massacre

School shootings are something that happen rather often here in America, that most of us seem to be getting increasingly (and alarmingly) desensitized to; a simple Google search could tell one everything they need to know about the most recent shooting, which, at the time of writing, was at a Dickenson High School. The first thing someone should ask in this situation is ‘why, exactly, is this happening?’, and there are plenty of people who would be willing to give a different opinion to why this is happening. Whether someone believes it is the effects of lax gun control, or violent video games, or even poor mental health care, there is no denying that this is a recent phenomenon. Perhaps to trace to the root of the problem, one should look

There are plenty of rants about the planned massacre in Harris’ diary, but often motivation is unclear. However, he does mention it once, “ [S]omeones bound to say "what were they thinking?" when we go NBK [Code name for the massacre] or when we were planning it, so this what I am thinking. "I have a goal to destroy as much as possible so I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy, mercy, or any of that, so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom like FH or FS or demons, so It 's either me or them. I have to turn off my feelings’ ” (Harris). In clarification, Doom was a 90s 2.5D First Person Shooter game by IDSoftware about a space marine who goes into Hell to fight demons. FH and FS are simply names for the different creatures that can be killed in Doom. This game, and other violent video games of the time, is often one of the things people will blame when they try to figure out why Harris and Klebold went through with the massacre. In fact, this event is what generally started the debate on whether or not video games made children violent. Plenty were quick to actually try to ban the game-- which pattern has continued with many different games, such as Postal, Manhunt, and Hatred most recently-- but these calls to ban the game never we acted upon. What did happen, however, was a change in the rating system of games. Back in the 90s, there was not a rating system in place for games, so anyone could get their hands on a copy of Doom; many children did, in fact. Due to the backlash of the ‘games make kids violent’, a rating system (ranging from E for everyone to M for mature) was put into place. Other than that, the backlash did not really change much, and it continues to this day. While many uphold it as the cause of the Columbine massacre, “...I know I could get shot by a cop after only killing a single person,