All sources are biased. Including the FBI report, this blog and your comment. And all have an agenda.

“Were you truly objective?” This is like “Are you really saved?”

did you read the FBI report or simply the USA Today article – which actually relies very little on the FBI report.

If you simply read the article (and not the full report) you are doing what you accuse others of doing – using biased sources of information that happen to support your worldview.

Two sides of the same tinfoil hat.

It was CBS News (that well known evangelical media outlet) that reported that “one of the gunmen, after having first shot Rachel in her leg, asked the wounded girl if she still believed in God, and that she had simply answered “You know I do”, provoking a second, fatal shot to her head at point-blank range.” “The FBI later concluded that this interaction did not take place. Despite the controversy surrounding this issue, Rachel’s parents contend in their book, Rachel’s Tears: the Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott, that their daughter was targeted by the killers and died as a martyr for her Christian faith, based on videotapes made by the teenage perpetrators in which they are said to mock Rachel for her beliefs.”

So who is right? CBS? Rachel’s parents? Or the FBI? Wikipedia? Valeen Schnurr? Emily Wyant? Craig Scott? Rocky Mountain News? Misty Benall? Internetmonk?

They all are. They are using different pieces of information and using a different set of criteria for determing truth.

One can hardly blame the evangelical community for taking at face value the words of the parents of Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall and their beliefs to the present day. The fact that many evangelicals haven’t read the evidence to the contrary is not a conspirancy and cynical attempt at perpetuating a myth. It’s just a fact that most people moved on with their lives. They remember the “facts” as they existed in the months after April 20, 1999. “Facts” which were reported by mainstream media and published in books written by the parents.

To insinuate that Darrell Scott equals Mike Warnke is damnably cynical.

Isaiah Shoels
Matt Kechter
Steve Curnow
Corey DePooter
Kelly Fleming
Daniel Mauser
Daniel Rohrbough
John Tomlin
Kyle Velasquez
Lauren Townsend
William “Dave” Sanders
Rachel Scott
Cassie Rene Bernall
Eric Harris
Dylan Klebold

The stories about what was done and said to Jackie Robinson fill volumes. I was born in Brooklyn and was old enough to go to Ebbets Field to see Robinson play in his second year. The insults, curses and threats from the players and fans were still going on then.

The rotten system that kept Robinson out of baseball and harassed him for years was full of anger, hatred and the very real possibility of killing him and his family.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebolt faced a rotten system on the other extreme. They were allowed to be violent, destructive and threaten classmates, but instead of being removed from contact with other students who were their victims, the two were coddled.

A generation in charge of the school and the police falsely believed that if you kept extremely troubled kids in contact with the rest of us and gave them lots of counseling, the troubled kids would stop being crazy bullies. Harris and Klebolt showed a generation what the price was for living that false educational philosophy; each one of those psychopaths could kill about ten innocent people.

We still haven’t righted the system. Thousands of innocent kids are bullied and harassed at school each day while society, the legal system and school principals don’t stop the bullying juvenile delinquents, psychopaths and psychotics.

Jackie Robinson had the character and courage to endure and surmount far worse than the bullying that is claimed to have pushed Harris and Klebolt over the edge. Robinson didn’t give up or explode.

Neither Harris nor Klebolt had character or courage. Bullying didn’t push them over the edge. They ran willingly and repeatedly right to the edge and then jumped off. None of the adults stopped them or removed them.

When will we start protecting the rest of us from the bullies and crazies?

Disclosure: In addition to having six children, growing up in Brooklyn and living in Denver, I’m a practical, pragmatic coach and consultant. I’ve written books of case studies, “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids” and “How to Stop Bullies in their Tracks.” Check out my website and blog at BulliesBeGone (http://BulliesBeGone.com).

Whose fault was the killings at Columbine High School? And how can we help our children resist bullies, not become bullies themselves and thrive after horrible killings?

Seven of the most common targets of blame are:
1. The bullies who pushed Harris and Klebolt over the edge.
2. The parents of the bullies who didn’t stop their children.
3. The school principal who didn’t stop the bullying of Harris and Klebolt, or stop the earlier violence of the killers.
4. The parents of the killers who didn’t raise their kids better and didn’t had them incarcerated or committed.
5. Harris and Klebolt were simply psychopathic, psychotic killers.
6. A society that is violent and corrupt.
7. A society that has lost its connection with God.

Looking to blame and then fix one part of human life is the wrong way to go. Our efforts to change our school and legal system are necessary, useful and laudable, but they’re not a solution that will prevent future massacres.

Face reality. Bullies, psychopaths and killers are like the weather – they’ve always been with us and always will be. Assigning blame won’t change that.

The useful question for us is how we prepare our children and teenagers for a world in which they’ll face crazy, violent people.

We must teach our children not to use bullying tactics, and to be resilient in the face of bullying and to learn how to stop bullies in their tracks. Obviously, Harris and Klebolt never learned this. The hardest task for parents is to recognize when our children have gone bad and to do something about it.

Answering these difficult questions will help us teach our children better than hand wringing or assigning blame.

Disclosure: In addition to having six children and living in Denver, I’m a practical, pragmatic coach and consultant. I’ve written books of case studies, “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids” and “How to Stop Bullies in their Tracks.” Check out my website and blog at BulliesBeGone (http://BulliesBeGone.com).

i remember after the shootings, a man came to our church to speak to the youth group and parents of youth. i was in 9th grade at the time of the shootings. he was the father of one of the girls who was killed, rachel joy scott. she was a christian as well. her father came to speak to us about the shootings and tell rachel’s story. it was interesting story to hear about how for quite a while rachel had written in her journal that she knew she was going to die and not live past 16, but God had given her peace in it.

toward the end of the talk, the father talked about the state of the schools. he mentioned how God, the Bible and prayer were slowly being taken out of them, and christians were not stopping it. he made the claim that you can’t find the clause about the “separation of church and state” anywhere in the constitution and bill of rights. it was a lie that christians believed, and that we should look it up for ourselves and fight to change our schools.

looking back on the talk that night, if who i am today was there, i would just want to walk toward the guy after the talk and give him a long embrace, tell him i’m so sorry for his loss, but also tell him that nothing he does will bring her back. she’s gone.

i don’t want to cast motive on a grieving father 10 years after the fact, but i would venture to say that the passion he had speaking about the situation of our schools was part of his healing process in venting his deep anger and seeking justice and meaning. it’s a hypothetical situation to say that if we had more God/Bible/Prayer in school this wouldn’t have happened and he would still have his baby girl. but to a grieving father it might make perfect sense, and give him someone to blame and something to fight against.

The Columbine shootings clarified things for me, as I asked myself how would I respond in a recant-or-die situation. Would I deny Christ to save my own skin? Or would I remain faithful to Him, even unto death?

Even though I have learned since that Christians were not specifically targeted for their faith, I truly believe that false rumor was used – by the grace of God – to pull me off the fence from nominal profession of belief into the conviction of true faith.

1. There are a lot of troubled youth. A lot. It is only by God’s grace this doesn’t happen more. You can’t live under your bed, but you can’t be ignorant that the world can be a dangerous place.

2. Conspiracay theorist can be crazy, but they can also be right sometimes. I’ve met a few very impressive Birchers.

3. Gun control does not work. More laws would not have stopped young boys as intellegient and deceptive as these. In fact we need more guns and less control of them. We need more good people with guns. Criminals don’t mind breaking laws, that’s why they are criminals. I went hiking with my son this week. We have a new law letting us carry in state parks. I strapped on my 38 and went hiking. A young lady was killed in another state park last year. Would a gun have helped? It wouldn’t have hurt?

You can mod this if you want but the only thing worse that Christians tyring to make culture war hay out of this tragedy is for folks to use for anti-gun propaganda.

Thanks,
Austin