The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre ("Columbine"), which occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods (including gun control and metal detectors), and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many perpetrators taking inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, often describing them as martyrs or heroes and imitating their methods or outward styles. Dozens more threats never made the news.
As of 2024, the Columbine massacre has been directly linked to at least 50 other mass shootings that have left over 300 people dead and over 500 wounded. Columbine has also had a significant impact on popular culture, with Harris and Klebold often depicted and referenced in several forms of media. Media stories often reference Harris, Klebold, and the massacre whenever another school shooting occurs.
Background
On April 20, 1999, two Columbine High School seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 students, one teacher, and injured 23 others. About 49 minutes after the shooting began, Harris and Klebold committed suicide in the library, where most of their victims died. At the time, it was the deadliest shooting at a high school in American history. The shooting was the most covered news story of 1999, and third most followed by the American public of the entire decade, surpassing the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., the Kosovo War, and the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.
Effects on schools Following the Columbine shooting, schools across the United States instituted new security measures such as transparent backpacks, metal detectors, school uniforms, and security guards. Some schools implemented the numbering of school doors to improve public safety response. Several schools throughout the country resorted to requiring students to wear computer-generated IDs.
Schools also adopted a zero-tolerance approach to possession of weapons and threatening behavior by students. Some social science experts feel the zero-tolerance approach adopted in schools has been implemented too harshly, with unintended consequences that create other problems., zerointelligence.net
In addition to this, the shooting also affected student speech rights. School officials became more concerned about student expression, especially if it was violent or threatening. Some students believe these changes put their First Amendment right to free speech at risk, while other students believe their right to safety while on school grounds is more important. There have been legal battles over the zero tolerance approach. Different judges have had varying interpretations of what constitutes a genuine threat and how much discretion school officials should have in regulating student speech. This has made it a complex issue for schools and courts to balance safety and freedom of expression.
Police tactics Police departments have reassessed their tactics and have since trained for Columbine-like situations after criticism over the slow response and progress of the SWAT teams during the shooting. First responders face numerous challenges when entering situations like this. In a similar incident, a Police Department had to deal with over 1500 misleading calls to the dispatch center during the first two hours of the incident, an example of the difficulties that law enforcement officials face in managing misinformation and distractions during active shooter incidents.Seebock, J. J. (2018). Responding to high-rise active shooters (Master's thesis). Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
Training has been increased and now includes quick deployment rules while schools are rethinking emergency policies. The Pacifica Police Department has created a tactical playbook that gives planning and equips responders with strategic direction for coordinating responses between agencies when facing mass violence.
Police followed a traditional tactic at Columbine: surround the building, set up a perimeter, and contain the damage. This protocol was usually utilized in hostage situations to prevent putting officers or bystanders in danger, with the goal of establishing contact with the perpetrator(s) and attempting to calm the situation or negotiate with them. The contain-and-wait approach has been replaced by a tactic known as the Immediate Action Rapid Deployment tactic. This tactic calls for a team to advance into the site of any ongoing shooting, but even with just a single officer if more are not available. In fact, the majority of active shooters are stopped by a single officer. Police officers using this tactic are trained to move toward the sound of gunfire in formation and neutralize the shooter as quickly as possible. There has been widespread adoption of high-strength body armor and patrol rifles by police departments across the United States in response to the increased active shooter threat. Their goal is to stop the shooter at all costs; they are to walk past wounded victims, as the aim is to prevent the shooter from killing or wounding more. Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, has stated: "The active protocol has proved successful at numerous shootings...At Virginia Tech alone, it probably saved dozens of lives."
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office actively sought to deter incitement to commit such copycat attacks. On 2 February 2022, with immediate effect, the Russian Supreme Court declared the "Columbine" movement as a terrorist group. While the motivation for the ruling is unknown, terrorist activity in Russia is punishable by a sentence of life imprisonment.
Influence on other shootings The Columbine shootings influenced subsequent school shootings, with several such plots mentioning it. According to psychiatrist Edwin Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a legacy of the Columbine shootings is its "allure to disaffected youth." Sociologist Ralph Larkin examined twelve major school shootings in the US in the eight years following Columbine and found that in eight of the twelve shootings "the shooters made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold."
A 2015 investigation by CNN identified "more than 40 people...charged with Columbine-style plots." A 2014 investigation by ABC News identified "at least 17 attacks and another 36 alleged plots or serious threats against schools since the assault on Columbine High School that can be tied to the 1999 massacre." Ties identified by ABC News included online research by the perpetrators into the Columbine shooting, clipping news coverage and images of Columbine, explicit statements of admiration of Harris and Klebold, such as writings in journals and on social media, in video posts, and in police interviews, timing planned to an anniversary of Columbine, plans to exceed the Columbine victim counts, and other ties.
In 2015, journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker magazine proposed a threshold model of school shootings in which Harris and Klebold were the triggering actors in "a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant's action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before."
FBI former profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole said on CNN during the 20th anniversary of the massacre in 2019, and during the manhunt of Florida teenager Sol Pais, that she opposed the release of the Basement Tapes because of the call made by Eric Harris to other would-be shooters to "join him in infamy". She also highlighted that it was most likely males to be obsessed by the shooting and that the case of Sol Pais was rare due to her being female.
Notable cases
The first copycat may have been the W. R. Myers High School shooting, just eight days after Columbine, when a 14-year-old Canadian student went into his former school in Taber, Alberta at lunchtime with a sawed off .22 rifle under his dark blue trench coat and opened fire, killing one student. A month after the massacre, Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, had a shooting which Attorney General Janet Reno called a Columbine "copycat". A friend of Harris and Klebold, Eric Veik, was arrested after threatening to "finish the job" at Columbine High School in October 1999.
Another case occurred in 2002 in Germany, where a former student, Robert Steinhäuser, sought payback against teachers, possibly for his expulsion, killing 16 people before shooting himself. He had previously researched the Columbine massacre.
Another example is the 2007 Jokela High School massacre in Finland. The perpetrator, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, took significant inspiration from the Columbine perpetrators. During the shooting, he wore a T-shirt reading "Humanity is Overrated" similar to the shirts worn by Klebold and Harris at Columbine. He was also in online chatrooms dedicated to idolizing the Columbine shooters, and made multiple YouTube videos referencing them.
In 2001, Charles Andrew Williams, the perpetrator of the Santana High School shooting, reportedly told his friends that he was going to "pull a Columbine," though none of them took him seriously. In 2005, Jeff Weise, who also wore a trench coat, killed his grandfather, who was a police officer, and his grandfather's girlfriend. He took his grandfather's weapon and squad car, driving to his former high school in Red Lake and murdering several students before killing himself. During the shooting, in an apparent reference to Columbine, he asked one student if they believed in God.
The perpetrator of the 2006 Dawson College shooting wrote a note praising Harris and Klebold. Convicted students Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik of Pocatello High School in Idaho, who murdered their classmate Cassie Jo Stoddart, mentioned Harris and Klebold in their homemade videos, and were reportedly planning a "Columbine-like" shooting. The perpetrator of the 2006 Emsdetten school shooting praised Harris in his diary.
In September 2006, a student at East High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin informed school staff of a plot to carry out a "Columbine Style" attack on the school. A search of the involved students' homes yielded weapons and improvised explosives. Two students served time in prison for conspiracy to commit first-degree intentional homicide. A third student was given a lesser sentence for conspiracy to damage property with explosives.
In a self-made video recording sent to the news media by Seung-Hui Cho prior to his committing the Virginia Tech shootings, he referred to the Columbine massacre as an apparent motivation. In the recording, he wore a backwards baseball cap and referred to Harris and Klebold as "martyrs."
Steven Kazmierczak, the perpetrator of the 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting, referenced fascination about Harris and Klebold, admiring how they planned to use propane bombs to create chaos.
In 2011, Tristan van der Vlis shot and killed six people in a shopping mall in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands before taking his own life. He was obsessed with the Columbine shootings. The date he chose for his attack was April 9, Eric Harris' birthday, and he started shooting at 12:08 pm, the approximate time that Harris died by suicide.Reconstructie van een drama: wat dreef Tristan tot zes moorden in winkelcentrum Ridderhof?, Carla van der Wal and Marco Gerling, Algemeen Dagblad, 3 April 2021 (in Dutch)
In June 2014, a married couple, Jerad and Amanda Miller, shot and killed two Las Vegas police officers and an intervening civilian before being confronted by police. Jerad Miller was fatally shot by an officer while Amanda Miller died by suicide shortly afterwards. They both talked about committing "the next Columbine" and idolized Harris and Klebold, according to a neighbor's account.