Free Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser Page A

with Sam he’d been rejected by a private military school he’d applied to.
    I know that must sound totally out of character. I wonder if Gary even knew. I mean, why in the world would a kid like Brendan want to go to military school? But I think somewhere inside he knew he was headed for big trouble, and he must have believed that military school might be the way to save himself. And if I’m right, then when he wasrejected, it was like he lost his last lifeline. Being rejected meant two more years of living hell at Middletown High. I think he knew he’d never survive it. I think maybe that was the last straw. He lost hope.
    We talked for about twenty minutes, and then he asked me if I was going to the dance that night, and I was like, “No way.” He asked if I was sure, because he’d noticed that I was getting friendly with some of the quote, unquote “popular” girls. I assured him there was absolutely, positively no way I was going.
    And then he said he was glad, and that he’d always liked me. And then he said good-bye.
    â€” Emily Kirsch
    I can see how Gary might have been thinking about killing himself. Brendan never struckme that way. It was like he was too angry to do that. He wanted to get too many people. But if you put them together, you can almost see the idea coming to them. Deciding to do themselves in, but going to school and taking as many of those guys with them as they could.
    â€” Ryan Clancy

    â€œFive days before the shooting, Eric [Harris]’s hopes of becoming a marine were undone after his parents told a recruiter about [the antidepressant medicine Eric was taking]. . . . Friends said that Eric was crushed by the news, and had been growing increasingly depressed as graduation neared.”
    â€”New York Times , 6/29/99

    To me it was just like any other Friday night. The popular kids were at the dance. Gary and Brendan were gone. I didn’t know where. I went over to Blockbuster. I wasn’t really looking for a video. I was looking for someone to hook up with for a couple of hours.
    â€”Allison Findley
    It was an unfortunate combination of poor building design and a couple bright minds ingenious enough to take advantage of it. You’ve got a windowless gym with four mainentrances, each consisting of double metal doors. You’ve got two heavily armed young men who’ve rigged booby-trap bombs in a way that kept us from getting to the doors from the outside. Inside they chained the doors shut. You want to talk about planning? They brought drinks and snacks for themselves. And flashlights.
    â€”Allen Curry

    In 1996, 2,866 children and teenagers were murdered with guns, 1,309 committed suicide with guns, and 468 died in unintentional shootings. A total of 4,643 young people were killed by firearms.

    You hear people say the boys were crazy. That it was just an insane, unpredictable thing that doesn’t happen to the vast majority of people. Like getting hit by lightning. Utterly random. But I don’t think so. Every year you hear about kids walking into their school and shooting classmates and teachers. You don’t hear about them walking into McDonald’s and shooting people. They don’t go to the town swimming pool or the movies and do it. Most of these kids live in neighborhoods withelementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. But they don’t go to some other school. They always go to their own school. It’s not random. It’s a message, and the sooner we wake up and listen, the better.
    â€” Beth Bender

    Several newspapers reported that Luke Woodham said he kitted because he felt he was mistreated every day. He said he did it to show society: “Push us and we will push back.”

    My father fought in World War Two against the Japanese and the Germans. I realize that it was a long time ago, but when you face a people in mortal combat, it’s a difficult thing to forget.