Terrorist

Has anyone read Columbine by David Cullen?

Harris and Klebold were different in a lot of ways from other mass shooters

Their real plan was a mass bombing, like Timothy McVeigh. But the bombs that they built failed to detonate

Also, they recorded the so-called Basement Tapes, which was basically their manifesto, but the FBI destroyed the videos after showing them to a few journalists

This was to prevent the tapes from inspiring and radicalizing others, but that clearly didn't work. Suppressing that information was a huge mistake

How many killers has Ted Kaczynski inspired? Not many, because there is no ambiguity as to his motives and only a few people can relate

But with Columbine, it became a blank canvas where any alienated individual could project their own frustrations: incels, people with a history of psychosis, social outcasts

Harris and Klebold were none of those things. They were relatively popular at their school. Klebold was suicidal and Harris just really wanted to kill people

I think that if things had gone down differently, if this was primarily known as a bombing incident, if the FBI had just released the materials the killers left behind, and if the media didn't speculate endlessly about possible motives and causes, that Harris and Klebold would not be seen as heroes to the disturbed young people that tried to imitate them in the decades after