20 years after the Columbine massacre, the United States remains armed to the teeth

It was an attack that could have been an exception. In exchange, his brutality became the routine. The mbadacre at Columbine High School in the state of Colorado, which took place on April 20, 1999, two decades ago, was 15 dead and 24 wounded, was just the example for many others. Y the weapons, root of this unreason, continue to reach the hands of Americans without major restrictions.

Columbine was not the first attack in an American school, but it was the deadliest since 1966. And the one that caused a veritable marathon of madness in the media that was launched to give information that confused and shocked the recipients without being able to verify that it was true. They spoke of satanic rites, a supposed secret organization called "the mafia of Gabardine" and the fact that everything was caused by the music of Marilyn Manson. The access of the population to weapons, little and nothing has been talked about.

On April 20, 1999, it was reported that it would be another day at Columbine School in Jefferson County, Colorado. At 11:10 am, nearly 500 boys and teachers were in the dining room. There are another 300 people in the library, gymnasium and maintenance sectors. And a group of boys takes the opportunity to hide and smoke a cigarette. In the dining room, there are bags distributed by the gallery in which nobody repairs.

Nine minutes later, Richard and Rachel, two fifth-grade boys, chatted absently in one of the side doors of the building. They hear a sound and when they look up, they see a tube of metal that has fallen very close to them. It was a homemade bomb that did not explode. A moment later, they appear Two strange teenagers dressed in long coats on the groundor They are hiding a rifle and a shotgun cut. They are barely 20 meters from Richard and Rachel, who recognize them. They are companions: Eric Harris, 17, and Dylan Klebold, 18. Without giving them time to react, the young people shoot. Rachel falls dead with four bullets in the body. Richard was given eight, he bled for almost three hours, but he survived. At this moment, three more students leave the door and Eric and Dylan shoot at them. One dies instantly, the other two are wounded and manage to escape.

Inside the school, shots are heard and a dangerous race occurs. At 11:23, police receive the first call from a student asking for help. This desperate recording in which you hear a backlash will become one of the most heartbreaking testimonies of the murder. In a few minutes close to a thousand police officers surround the institute.

A group of children and teachers take refuge in the library. Eric and Dylan walk down the central hallway until they enter the library. Later, we learned that there were 56 people there. Witnesses testified that the floor of the square and several shelves were drop of blood.

Fifteen minutes later, the attackers enter the dining room and start shooting at the bags they left hours earlier. They were full of homemade bombs that did not work. There are small explosions that ignite the sprinklers. The water falls and the dining room begins to flood; Eric and Dylan continue to shoot at full speed. About 30 students manage to escape by the emergency exit. They are the first to give information about the attackers and what was happening.

Two minutes after noon, SWAT agents, the special police unit, decide to enter the building. They are divided into two groups, one pbading through the main door, the other through an emergency door. At that time, one of the most widespread media actions takes place. Injured student Patrick Ireland, victim of a panic attack, is projected through the second floor window of the library. He was lucky that there was a group of policemen and firefighters down there who managed to stop him and cushion the fall.

Officers walk down the long corridors of the building and find corpses, bleeding wounds and children hiding in the recesses of the stairs and bathrooms. Cries are heard, gunshots explode more and more far and sporadic until they stop. The police continue to check each room and take out the guys who come out in a row with hands raised, terrorized and in tears. Finally, at 14:50, the SWAT agents find the perpetrators of the horror in the basement. They are dead. Eric and Dylan committed suicide.

The count of the victims begins. There are 15 dead and 24 seriously injured. It's a miracle. It could have cost hundreds of dollars if the bombs that the attackers had hidden in the bags that they had left the night before in the dining room had exploded.. The TV channels broadcast live all the scenes in a horrified country. Vice President Al Gore addresses the country and expresses the pain felt by all. The questions also begin: what is the parents' responsibility? Nobody realized that these guys were bothered? How is it possible that two teenagers had access to this arsenal?

The investigation revealed that Eric and Dylan had been planning the action for some time. About five months earlier, they went to one of the many gun shows that cross the country permanently and where most civilian-owned supplies are purchased in the United States. They did not manage to sell the guns they wanted to buy, and then they asked Firt Duran, a companion at the pizzeria where they were working the weekend delivery. He bought them by buying them in a village arsenal. Another man taught them how to make tube pumps.

The then president, Bill Clinton, took advantage of the moment of horror caused by the mbadacre to reopen the debate on the right to bear arms "consecrated" in the second amendment of the US Constitution. Teachers have launched a campaign for more checks in schools. Hillary Clinton, the first lady, took the case as a staff member and spent the next two years fighting for Congress to pbad a more restrictive arms law. But nothing has happened. Some patches to current laws, metal detectors in school entrances and documentary "Bowling for Columbineby Michael Moore.

Over the next five years, another 100 students died in the country, victims of a shooting in a school.. The government has invested almost $ 3 billion to strengthen the security of educational institutions without giving better results. The public discussion forgot about the weapons and focused on the motives. They remain a mystery beyond the fact that they were two problem boys, fascinated by guns and racists – like many others in this Midwestern region of the United States. Together they had stolen a van, but the episode was very confusing and they only received a fine and a few nights at the police station. A family near the Eric area had denounced him for threatening his son, although he was caught by the police as "a brawl between boys". They watched many videos of the Gothic counterculture or dark and they fantasized about wars and killings in role playslike many other boys his age at this time. According to psychological reports, Klebold would have suffered from love and depression. Harris believed himself superior to his peers and sought to recognize the inferiority of all others. Perhaps another explanation could have been found in the "Underground Videos" recorded by Eric and Dylan before committing suicide. But the police never made them public for fear of being imitated.

The subsequent badysis indicates that They planned the slaughter for more than a year. In a notebook, Eric and Dylan wrote that they wanted to bring about an act of violence that would defeat the 1995 attack by Timoty McVeigh in Oklahoma City. This one, which remains the most deadly terrorist attack perpetrated by an individual in the United States, made 168 dead and 800 wounded. But unlike McVeigh, politically motivated, Harris and Klebold were only looking to end their lives in a slaughter.

Since 1994, no arms control bill has been introduced in Congress.. In February, the House of Representatives finally pbaded a bill to expand the background check by the federal government to all gun buyers and most transfers, eliminating space for sellers unlicensed firearms not to conduct background checks. It is unlikely that the Senate will make a law and if President Donald Trump did, he has already announced that he would veto it. The lobby of the National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful in the world and invests huge sums of money to maintain the right to bear arms. There are no precise figures on the number of guns held by civilians, but it is estimated that there are approximately nine out of ten citizens. The Congressional Research Service estimated, in a 2012 study, that there were about 310 million weapons on a population of 321 million. And every year, about 40,000 people die in shootings.

"It is not so much the total number of voters who support the extreme vision of gun rights and they are supportive of guns, it is more than this group is politically mobilized from An incredible way, "says Philip Cook, author of"The debate on firearms"These are people who send permanent messages to their congressional representative, make a contribution to the cause and mobilize whenever a president tries to impose stricter control." And Amnesty International warns that & # 39; "in the United States, they do not protect the people". individuals and communities at increased risk of gun-related violence in violation of international human rights law. The right to live without violence, discrimination and fear has been overcome by the feeling of possessing a virtually unlimited variety of guns. "

Murders in schools and public events already seem to have happened "American psyche"It is considered something of the usual, inevitable." When a reporter asked Paige Perry, 17, if she had imagined that she could one day live in horror from a mbadacre of 10 clbadmates in her Santa Fe school In May 2018, he replied, "Yes, I have waited a long time for this to happen, it happens everywhere and here, there are also boys who say all the time that they will go to school and kill us all until they've done it. "

The most violent reaction, which managed to move Washington's politicians a bit, came after the February 2018 shootout at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. There are 17 people died. The students organized several marches and arrived with a brutal act in front of the White House. They managed to get out on the main television programs and on the covers of magazines with their rhetoric "anti-firearms". In the mid-year legislative elections, the Democratic candidates who supported them won in their constituencies and regained control of the House of Representatives. But nothing is enough. The pressure of the arms industry is still as strong as when President Dwigth Eisenhower denounced in 1961 the "industrial military complex"When the prime minister of New Zealand acted immediately and with great determination to ban badault rifles after the mbadacre of two mosques in Christchurch last month, many Americans have expressed their shame." the same culture they could do in just a few hours and we have been trying for years without anyone listening to us, "said Tom Mauser with bitterness, one of the parents who lost his son there 20 years in Columbine.