Who would have thought that low pay saved lives?
He got a good look at the boys' writings only in the past couple of years. Among the revelations: Eric Harris was financing what could well have been the biggest domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil on wages from a part-time job at a pizza parlor.
"One of the scary things is that money was one of the limiting factors here," Cullen says.
Had Harris, then 18, put off the attacks for a few years and landed a well-paying job, he says, "he could be much more like Tim McVeigh," mixing fertilizer bombs like those used in Oklahoma City in 1995.As it was, he says, the fact that Harris carried out the attack when he did probably saved hundreds of lives.
"His limited salary probably limited the number of people who died."
Had they had the money and training, Columbine would have actually killed far more people than the Oklahoma City Bombing. They had enough explosives in the school to blow up the entire cafeteria during lunch time, and bring the upstairs library down on top of the students inside who might have survived the initial blast. On top of that, they had rigged their cars with explosives and positioned them in the right location to blow up large numbers of first responders and people fleeing the building. If they had known what they were doing, and had more money to buy weapons and explosives, they could have easily taken down the entire school, killing most of the students. At a large school like Columbine, the death toll would have been closing in on the WTC attack if they had been successful.
It has come out that most of the information that we were told about the case was completely false. That's not surprising, and no less surprising will be the tendency to disregard the fact that regardless of what caused this incident, public schools tend to be a breeding ground for the sort of behavior that can drive an unstable teen over the edge. The public schools create a Lord of the Fliesesque environment wherein the primary source of socialization is other kids, and not adults. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they have also tended to exacerbate mental problems in unstable teens like the majority of school shooters.
"His limited salary probably limited the number of people who died."
Not to mention his limited intelligence, his limited emotional stability, his limited experience and his limited accomplishments in anything in his life.
He would have been a lot more successful if only he had razor sharp crab claws instead of hands... and laser beam eyes... yeah...
This guy was nothing like that Captain of Industry, Timothy McViegh.
Fortunately for his victims, the only thing he had in common with McVeigh was a desire to kill. If he had had more money and more intelligence, it would have ended much differently.
my point is to disparage the author for making a claim about alternate universe outcomes that is completely unprovable. As if there is not enough anti-gun hype going around, this guy has to dredge back some from Columbine.
... dredge it back and make it more scary by adding to it make-believe elements that did not exist in the real version.