The "Real" Story of Columbine?

The other day I found this, an article describing "the real story behind Columbine."

It started on Twitter, when @OMGFacts tweeted that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the gunmen, were not bullied but were themselves the bullies. I was enraged by this, and was determined to find the source of their "fact". A Google search brought me to the USA Today article.

I find the article troubling. The author states that Harris and Klebold were not bullied: where is the proof of this? The article's evidence comes from the boys' journals, in which they discussed "picking on freshmen and 'fags.'" While this is bullying behaviour, it is not isolated. Bullying is never isolated. Something sparks it, and who is to say that it wasn't brought on by bullying Harris and Klebold experienced themselves?

Mental health issues are also a factor, as the USA Today article acknowledges. However, the article stigmatizes mental illness. Quoting an author who wrote on the attack (not a psychologist, mind), the article says that Harris was "a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath -- a smart, charming liar with 'a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control.'" While this all may be true, it nevertheless places a negative connotation on mental health. If this is true, then Harris should have been helped. If he was truly struggling with such issues, can the blame rest completely with him?

Finally, I think that the article is trying to shift any blame away from the victims of Columbine and place it entirely on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. I think this propagates bullying with the implication that some people will lash out violently regardless of whether or not they were bullied (or suffered from mental illness), therefore people should bully others since it won't make a difference. This is obviously ridiculous, and I believed it was common knowledge that an event such as the Columbine shootings could not be an isolated situation until I realized how many people were eating this shit up. There are always other factors to something like this, whether it is mental illness, or bullying, or childhood abuse, or what have you. It is absurd to try to fit this into a cookie cutter explanation that disregards any other factors.

I am not at all trying to suggest that what happened at Columbine wasn't tragic. It was. I remember coming home from school and seeing it on TV. I remember feeling afraid for the students that were, at that time, still trapped inside the building. I remember feeling relieved when they began to emerge. I remember sympathizing again with the friends and families that suffered losses, and injuries. I remember crying during an Oprah episode years later when she interviewed survivors of Columbine, and watching them struggle to recount the traumatic episode. It is tragic. It should be commemorated. But it shouldn't be disregarded as a case of a psychopath and his minion. Because that's not at all what it was.