Columbine High School Shooting Analysis

School shootings have always been a topic that has fascinated the country and the world, especially when they involve students. They divide the nation, experts, and the press, who scramble to answer the question, why? One of the most shocking and easily recognizable to ever occur was the Columbine High School shooting of 1999. Not only did many lose their lives, but the attack was perpetrated by two young boys who led otherwise pretty normal lives. Although Eric Harris’s motives have been made clear, it has been a little harder to explain Dylan Klebold’s involvement in the shooting. Klebold, who was depressive, saw Harris as a model and became vulnerable to his influence. An analysis of the relationship between the two shooters reveals that …show more content…
One notable exception to this is the Columbine High School shooting, where two teenage boys – 18-year-old Eric David Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Bennet Klebold – carried out the attack as a team. On April 20, 1999, Harris and Klebold walked into the Littleton, Colorado, school and killed 12 students and one teacher before committing suicide. Although the attack is described as a school shooting, the two teenagers had bigger goals. They wanted to ultimately inflict pain on the entire community and initiate a revolution among students like them (Larkin, 2007). Harris and Klebold planted two propane bombs in the cafeteria near the athletes’ tables, which failed to detonate. As they were waiting for these to explode, they positioned themselves on the sides of the south entrance, armed with guns, so they could shoot at fleeing survivors, according to Larkin (2007). Under their black trench coats, they were carrying various guns (Larkin, 2007), pipe bombs, CO2 canisters, ammunition, and knives. Harris and Klebold had also planted bombs in their cars that were set to explode later, targeting emergency personnel that would fill the parking lot. The subsequent investigation revealed that the two boys had planned this attack for months, collecting weapons, making bombs, and drawing up precise plans. Their ultimate goal was to create a …show more content…
A social learning theory based on Skinner’s operant conditioning, Bandura’s modeling, and Sutherland’s differential association theory (Bartol, C. & Bartol, A., 2016), it posits that the strength of deviant behavior is a function of the frequency, amount, and probability of reinforcement an individual has experienced by engaging in a certain behavior previously. These reinforcements can be positive or negative, as well as social or non-social. According to Bartol, C. and Bartol, A. (2016), social reinforcements – those that reward the individual for adopting group norms verbally or symbolically – are the most important. One’s social group will adopt normative definitions about what is considered good or bad, right or wrong, and these will guide what behavior is rewarded or punished by the group in particular contexts. The more a behavior is considered positive or justified, the more likely the person is to repeat it. These normative definitions act as discriminative stimuli, which Bartol, C. and Bartol, A. (2016) define as “social signals transmitted by subcultural or peer groups to indicate whether certain kinds of behavior will be rewarded or punished within a particular social context” (p. 93). These stimuli can be positive, meaning they encourage certain behaviors, or justifying, meaning they neutralize warnings