The senseless murders at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado have the nation terrified. What scares me more are the suggested remedies for this kind of breakdown of the social order. Every time something like this happens, the first call is for restrictions on our civil liberties. Some are calling for a ban on the possession of firearms. Some are calling for censorship to prevent the influence of violent television, movies, and video games from falling on our children. Some are calling for a ban on black trenchcoats, as though apparel is the cause of violence. People are saying that we need to minimize the differences between school children by requiring them to dress alike and by segregating those whose behavior and beliefs are different from the norm.

Guns have been with us forever, and there were many more available in the past than there are now, but this kind of incident didn't happen. When I was a little boy in the 50s, we had toy guns and played "war", both of which are now considered to be politically incorrect, but we never went on to kill our playmates. We watched cowboy movies and war movies with gun battles all of the time. There were cliques in my high school who abused outsiders, which never resulted in anything worse than a fistfight.

What is the difference between then and now? The difference that I see as being causative in the acting out of murderous rage is that the perpetrators have lost all hope of any kind of future, including an afterlife. The difference is that in the past, actions always had consequences, even if the consequences were divine punishment. The new crop of killers are so nihilistic that they see murder/suicide as the ultimate chance to express their rage and escape without paying any price. If the average person gets their fifteen minutes of fame, how much more do the Littleton duo garner by their reign of terror? How else could two losers hope to make a mark on the world that no one will ever forget?

Call it lack of hope, depression, or a failure of society, it all comes down to young men who feel that they have no future, that the best times were in the past, and that they have no reason to go on. Teenage suicide has been a problem for a long time and has gotten worst as the strictures of religious belief have faded in many young lives. In a materialistic culture like ours, those who don't excel can come to believe that they are superfluous. If they aren't getting the kind of reinforcements at home that tell them that they are valuable in-and-of themselves, it is only a short step to the murder/suicide scream for attention.

Because it can't be legislated or taught in school, it's tough to say that the causes lie in how we raise our children. It would be easier to blame guns, media, and high school culture. But when you think about it, most of our kids are exposed to these influences and only a vanishingly small number of them are acting out the rage we all feel at some time in our lives.

With a commentary for WCPN, this is Marc Myers.

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