DENVER - When the topic turns to school violence, Tom Mauser usually lectures
about guns.
People embrace each other in the Blacksburg Presbyterian
Church during a gathering for the victims of the shooting at Virginia Tech
Monday, April 16, 2007, in Blacksburg, Va. [AP]
|
Mauser became a national advocate of gun control after his 15-year-old son,
Daniel, was among those slain in the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High
School.
But resignation punctuated Mauser's remarks Monday when he learned of the
killings at Virginia Tech.
"I am not going to just say gun laws are going to take care of this," he
said.
"I think my primary thought is about anger. Anger and suicide. Why do we have
so many people who think they have to take others' (lives) with them when they
take their own?"
Other Columbine victims and experts on school violence expressed similar
thoughts about the Virginia killings.
Brooks Brown, a former Columbine student who knew the gunmen and repeatedly
tried to warn authorities about threats they had made, said the Virginia
slayings didn't surprise him.
"Once you've reached the point where you have lost everything it is not hard
to be pushed in any direction," he said of campus shooters.
Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, 15, died at Columbine, blames school
shootings on a society that tolerates, even glorifies, violence.
"We teach students that anything you want to do is up to you and you can
decide whether anything is right or wrong," he said.
Rohrbough said the investigation of the Columbine tragedy was incomplete and
left unanswered questions about the psychology of school shooters.
Authorities did learn that Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
played violent games, made violent videos at school, and were the victims of
bullying because they befriended the Trench Coach Mafia, a group of students who
clashed with school athletes.
Rohrbough and others have fought for public disclosure of depositions given
by the teens' parents, Wayne and Kathy Harris and Tom and Susan Klebold.
They argue the depositions could provide valuable insights into the home
lives of the two teens, who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before
killing themselves.
But a federal judge two weeks ago ordered the depositions sealed for 20
years.
"That is why we were fighting so hard to get that information - because we
need to know what was going on inside the heads of Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold," said Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and
Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.
Killing others before committing suicide is not a new phenomenon, though the
Virginia Tech numbers are shocking, said Tom McIntyre, coordinator of the
Graduate Program in Behavior Disorders at Hunter College in New York.
"Freud said homicide is just suicide turned inside out," said McIntyre, who
began studying school violence after Columbine. "The main motive is revenge."
In the past, a pre-suicide killing usually involved a specific target - as in
the case of a husband finding his wife with a lover, Elliot said.
The victims in the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings appeared to be
random targets, he said.
"I don't know how many times we have to go through things like this before we
can try to learn what is going on," Elliot said. "I think there is an element of
wanting to go out and creating a huge media effect, although that is only a part
of what is going on."