by Tom Laughlin

     One of the most chilling comments that keeps emerging from people involved in the Columbine massacre is that “... in order to heal we must not point the finger of blame at anyone, but forgive and forget in order to find closure.” (Someone even put up two crosses on the hill for the two murderers, as if they were innocent victims – not the ones who were responsible for this heinous act.)
     Nonsense! First, there are few words that are as empty and meaningless in psychology as the word “closure.” For someone who has lost a loved one that carried part of their soul, there is no such thing as closure. They will bear the pain of that loss for the rest of their lives, and the students who lived through the massacre will be traumatized and live in terror for a very long time, filling the psychiatric beds in the therapists offices in the Denver area long after all the media attention and hoopla has died down.
     There is only one way a substantive and lasting healing can take place at Columbine High, and that is for everyone involved to take responsibility as the first step in making sure it never happens again. If those children who are the most traumatized could take part in an intense proactive campaign to end this kind of violence, they will be healed more effectively than if they just received supportive counseling several times a week.
     Unless all of these individuals and groups above have the courage to see their Shadow, and the role their Shadow had in creating this tragedy, there will be absolutely no coming together, no substantive healing, and no real change in either Columbine or Littleton, Colorado.
     On the other hand, if all the people involved, in order to understand why these school massacres occur, set up an aggressive program to prevent them based upon every individual and group taking a hard look at their Shadow, what’s going on in their unconscious, and what they knowingly or unknowingly did, or failed to do to identify homicide when it starts emerging out of the unconscious of a homicidal murderer, these children will all have died in vain, and neither the students or faculty at Columbine, or the people of Littleton, will have learned a thing.
     Here, in Part Two, we look at other people beyond Columbine HS and the city of Littleton at who must bear responsibility for this specific slaughter, others who could have prevented it, had they not been controlled by their own particular Shadow qualities.
     A. President Clinton, Congress, and the NRA: President Clinton and all the national and local politicians who by allowing the sale of assault weapons, actually encourage it, and know full well as does any child above the age of 10, that these assault weapons will be used again to massacre individuals in post offices, law firms, schools, and run-by shootings.
     Lorrie Beacham, as student at Columbine said it with unmistakable clarity, “What possible purpose can these guns have but to kill people?” There is no other purpose for their existence, and everyone knows it. They are as radically different from guns protected by the Second Amendment, guns used to hunt pheasant and deer, or necessary for self protection because our courts and law enforcement can no longer protect us, as an airplane is from a motorcycle. Both gun lovers and gun control advocates come together on agreeing that no American citizen has any need for such a murderous weapon whose sole intention is to kill a large number of people quickly and instantly in order to protect his Second Amendment rights.
     President Clinton’s behavior in this regard is especially despicable. Cashing in on the massacre – and if that seems an intemperate accusation, see for yourself – Clinton made an impassioned speech calling for new gun control laws, and those with short memories applauded him for it. But what a phony immoral gesture it was. President Clinton and members of Congress bragged openly, and repeatedly, how we should applaud them because they banned the manufacture of assault weapons. What they should have bragged about was how they conned and slickered the American people who believed in them. 60 Minutes ran a show showing that the banning of the manufacturing of assault weapons was a farce. All the gun manufacturers did was change some small irrelevant aspect of the specific assault weapon band, say a wood stock to a plastic stock, and continued manufacturing the weapon under another name – and President Clinton and the members of Congress all knew it.
     Worse, much worse, is the fact that they carefully avoided banning the sale of these assault weapons, so while Clinton and his cohorts brag how they banned assault weapons, the truth is they banned neither the manufacturing nor the sale of assault weapons, and once again the President is making a great show out of pretending to what to ban assault weapons.
     And please don’t put forward the argument that one of the anguished, very angry fathers of one of the slain students, obviously an NRA supporter, put forward defending the sale of assault weapons, namely, that if they didn’t have the guns they would have used something else to kill all those students. Wrong! They may have used some other killing weapon, but there is no possible way they could have killed as many students with a knife, a baseball bat, or a rifle without being overcome by the hundreds of students around them. It’s a silly argument, and tells us a great deal about the Shadow in the unconscious of that tormented father that he would still cling to that position in a moment his life has been shattered.
     The NRA is perhaps the most feared lobby in Washington. Not only do they have unlimited resources, they have a vindictive mentality that targets specific politicians and drives them out of office. No wonder Clinton and those cowardly members of Congress fail to vote their conscience on the banning of assault weapons then, and of course, despite all of the phony rhetoric, will not do anything meaningful to ban the manufacture and sale of these weapons immediately.
     Here is where gun lovers and the NRA can step up to the plate and become true patriots by finding an area where every right minded person can agree about guns. It’s interesting to note that the impact on guns in creating violence in our society is self evident and needs serious examination, the NRA was deliberately not invited to the White House summit on violence, though they wanted to attend, and several other representatives of gun advocate groups did attend and put forth a constructive approach to this massive problem, no one from the entertainment industry, the other industry that has an enormous impact on creating not only violent mass murderers, but violence in families and neighborhoods as well, refused to show up. Yet Hollywood is filled with people who pretend they want an end to violence, placing the sole blame on the NRA and insisting the banning of all guns will end violence, which is absurd.
     Just as cars do not kill, but people driving those cars while breaking the law, such as speeding or driving while drunk kill, so too, the NRA and gun advocates insist it is not a gun that’s the problem, but the violent psyche or criminal nature of the one using it, and of course this is self evident, and everyone can come together on this point – and everyone can agree that if there were laws that dealt severe sanctions to not only those who used a gun in a crime, but to those who sold such guns illegally, including the manufacture and sale of assault weapons, sidewinder missiles, and other weapons who have no value but to kill human beings, and these laws were truly enforced, there would be a significant drop in these kind of massacres and gun deaths immediately.
If the girlfriend who bought the illegal guns for Klebold and Harris, and don’t for a second try to con me that she didn’t know why they wanted them, and the man at the pizza parlor who helped them get weapons, as well as the people who sold these weapons, if they were sold illegally – if all of these people went to prison for at least 15 to 25 years, these mass murderers with assault weapons would virtually disappear.
     Assault weapons is one of several components of our prevention program, and one that both gun owners and those who want to ban guns can come together and make an immediate change in our society.
     B. Clinton, Congress and Hollywood: Clinton, on the heels of the Columbine massacre, calls for a summit to prevent violence in our society – a summit that everyone knows is a callous charade. Senator Lieberman calls for hearings on violence, including the role the entertainment industry plays in creating violence – another sanctimonious charade that is just exploiting the Columbine High School massacre and posturing for next year’s elections. Hollywood thumbs its nose and refuses to attend the summit or appear at the hearings. Why? Because it knows that neither the Congress nor the White House will dare lift a finger to do anything about the tremendous impact violent movies have on our society today. Why does Hollywood know this? Because the biggest source of funding for Presidential and Congressional candidates is Hollywood, and there is no way Clinton, Lieberman or any other member of Congress is going to do one single thing to hold Hollywood responsible for the serious and lasting role it causes in creating an ever more violent society at every level. Where does President Clinton go right after the summit? To a fundraising dinner in Hollywood where he raises $1 million for the Democratic Party. At the summit, Clinton calls for a “study” to see if movies really do have an impact on society and are a contributing cause to violence. A great stall. A great way of putting off dealing with the issue while pretending to really want to make a difference. Every mother, truck driver, and grocery clerk knows the enormous impact Hollywood has on creating a violent culture, and I would be happy to sit down before any Congressional committee, board of experts, or my friend, Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America who says he doesn’t know if these movies are a major cause of violence because he doesn’t have any definitive evidence – and I would show Jack or anyone else in ten minutes in a way that everyone would agree demonstrates clearly why movies are a major cause of violence.
     Hollywood, television, the media, and the makers of unbelievably sick, bloody, violent video games all have an enormous responsibility for not only what happened at Columbine and all of the previous school and business massacres, and will happen again very shortly, as well as a significant contributing role in all the violence that will take place today in our communities and in our homes, especially spousal abuse and batterings.
     C. Religious Leaders: When people are undergoing the unendurable pain and suffering that comes with the death of a loved one, anything that will help them in their agony is useful and to be supported. But, in the long run, if we are to make sure there are not more Columbine High Schools, religious leaders must take a hard look at the role they play in indirectly allowing this tragedy to occur. Though their role is indirect, it is very real.
     It boggles the mind to hear religious leaders of every persuasion continue to talk of God’s goodness and love and insist that God is everywhere, omnipresent... but in the next breath deny that God was present in the school cafeteria and library. Our current knowledge of God and religion falls miserably by the wayside when we try to explain how a good and loving God could allow such evil to happen. If any one of those were witnessing an adult man kicking a small dog, or repeatedly slapping the face of a six year old child, our nature would force us to intervene, either directly or by calling the police. We could not bear to watch that suffering and not try to stop it. Why should a good and loving God be any different? And all of the explanations put forth to explain these kind of tragedies are pitifully inadequate.
     All of the things that happen to us against our will are a Superior Force. Whether one calls it God or devil, it is a Superior Force that comes seemingly from no where , whether it be a cancer, an addiction, a wiping out of a family by a drunk driver, or a mass murderer. God is that Superior Force in our life, and it is urgent that caring thinking people carefully examine why God allows these things to happen.
     A hint: What happens to a person is characteristic of him or her. Each of us represents a pattern and all the pieces fit. One by one as his life proceeds, they fall into a pattern according to some predestined design, according to the blueprint in each of our individual unconscious, a pattern of behavior that a fundamentally different view of how the human personality is formed and functions, and the role God plays in creating everything in that blueprint, good and evil, why God allows it, and what we can do to transform it.
     In the final analysis, the understanding of violence and evil in the individual and in the world demands a new understanding of the unconscious and its Shadow components and their relationship to God.     
The program we have developed is too complex to go into here. Suffice it to say that there has never been a mass murder, and suicide note, that was more loudly proclaimed to hundreds of students and responsible adults, parents, faculty, therapists, the police, and could have been prevented had these people a greater knowledge of the human psyche. This knowledge is essential if we are to prevent any future massacres, and the only way to get it is by seeing who is responsible at Columbine High and what we can do about it.

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