The first one is, of course, that they're dead. For that matter, so were most TV anchorpersons. The root cause of the Columbine massacre lies in a system that grooms certain privileged members of our society for success, and pacifies the rest of us by permitting us to take a shit on the omega members of the tribe. Columbine was symptomatic of a veiled class war that is being waged in the formative institutions of America, and anyone who doesn't admit that we're in the middle of a class war is guilty of perpetuating it. What happened was revolting and inexcusable and futile and cruel, and yet it was perfectly understandable.
Abused wives mow down abusive husbands, abused children mow down abusive parents.
In Littleton, abused teenagers mowed down abusive peers. The difference is that in this case, the abuse they were enduring was sanctioned by society. I believe that that is what made their reaction so horrific, and the carnage so tremendous. And that is also why it took so many by surprise. And I think that if we look inside ourselves really hard, down into the black scary shit, we might start to understand where the gunmen were coming from.