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Teenage gunmen spilled the blood of
children before Columbine - in Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi and
Oregon. After Columbine, more blood was shed in Minnesota and
California, in Germany and Finland.

      But none of those tragedies cast a shadow as long or dark as the
rampage at Columbine High School, where 13 people were gunned down
10 years ago Monday.

      Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors at the suburban Denver
school, detonated homemade bombs and opened fire with shotguns, a
rifle and a semiautomatic handgun on April 20, 1999. They killed a
teacher and 12 students and wounded 23 others before committing
suicide.


      The massacre shocked the country like no other. It was the worst
school assault in American history at that time, and it came in the
wake of a half-dozen others. It played out on live television,
watched by millions. And it represented the violent destruction of
a cherished American idea: that schools in the suburbs and the
countryside were havens of peace and safety.

      "It's the iconic shooting," said Katherine S. Newman, a
professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.
"It defined the social category of a rampage school shooting."


      Americans were on edge about school violence before Columbine.
During the previous two years, at least 16 students and teachers
had died in school shootings in small American cities and towns:
Bethel, Alaska; Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.;
Edinboro, Pa.; Fayetteville, Tenn.; and Springfield, Ore.

      All the killers were teenage boys, except one, an 11-year-old
boy.

      Without those earlier shootings, Columbine would have been seen
as "a terrible, bizarre aberration, not to be repeated,"' said
James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University.


      Columbine created fear that things were spinning out of control.
      "So much of the angst, the anxiety and response, was already in
motion when Columbine happened," Fox said.


      Harris and Klebold had planned to detonate bombs inside
Columbine's packed cafeteria at lunchtime and then pick off fleeing
survivors, the sheriff's investigation showed. Most of their bombs
failed to explode, but the gunmen began firing, killing some
students outside the school and others inside.

      They had plotted the attack for months, but their reasons remain
a matter of speculation. Psychologists and journalists who pored
over investigative reports have published books portraying Harris
as a cunning, hateful psychopath and Klebold as a deeply depressed
and suicidal teen.

      Investigators released thousands of documents under court orders
prompted by media lawsuits, but other evidence has never been made
public. That includes depositions by the gunmen's parents. A judge
in 2007 ordered those statements sealed for 20 years.

      Traumatic images of the Columbine shooting played out on TV
screens across the nation: frightened students streaming out of the
school, a wounded boy struggling to escape through a window, ranks
of heavily armed SWAT officers waiting for permission to go in.

      The coverage went on for hours. SWAT teams didn't enter
Columbine until 47 minutes after the attack began - a delay that
was harshly criticized and led to new law-enforcement tactics
nationwide. Five hours passed before deputies declared the school
under control.

      Cable news channels were just spreading their wings and live
coverage of breaking stories was coming into its own, said Al
Tompkins, a former TV news director who teaches classes in
broadcast and online news at the Poynter Institute.

      "Unlike some of the shootings that were only covered in the
aftermath ... millions of Americans watched as it unfolded, which
obviously has a much greater effect on the American psyche than if
you watch some footage on the 11 o'clock news," said Fox, the
criminologist at Northeastern.

      Compounding the horror was the shock that the shootings happened
in a fairly typical American suburb.

      "We couldn't understand how this could happen in any place
other than urban schools," said J. William Spencer, an associate
professor who teaches sociology at Purdue University.

      The illusion of safety had begun to weaken with the Alaska
school attack in early 1997. At Columbine, it collapsed.

      "It was no longer possible to disassociate - 'Oh, that's
something that happened at some faraway town in some other
state,"' Muschert said. "People started to have the perception
that 'it could happen here."'


      Harris and Klebold's rampage made a lasting impression on other
troubled young men.

      Twenty-three-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people at
Virginia Tech University two years ago Thursday, left a video
referring to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan."


      Matthew Murray, 24, who killed four people that year at a church
and a missionary training school in Colorado, compared himself to
Harris and Cho in an Internet posting.

      Eighteen-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who in 2007 killed eight
people at a high school in Tuusula, Finland, wrote e-mails about
Columbine and put posts on a Web site dedicated to Harris and
Klebold.

      Like Harris and Klebold, all three shooters committed suicide.

      "Subsequent shooters who have been fueled by a kind of
competitive urge cite Columbine first, foremost and always,"
Newman said.


      Survivor Patrick Ireland, the student seen on TV escaping
through the second-floor library window, is weary of the school
being a benchmark for tragedy.

      "I hate it when people say, 'Oh, another Columbine-like
(tragedy) or Columbine-esque tragedy,"' said Ireland, now 27 and
married and working for the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network.

      "Columbine is a school. The shooting was an event that happened
and a lot of people have been able to overcome so many things from
that," said Ireland, who has regained mobility with few lingering
effects from gunshot wounds to his head and leg.


      Columbine's hold on the American psyche will weaken when today's
adults, who remember the attack so vividly, give way to a new
generation, Newman said.


      At Columbine High School, the generational shift has already
begun. This year's graduating seniors were 8 years old at the time
of the massacre. The freshmen were 4.


      Cindy Stevenson, superintendent of Jefferson County Public
Schools, which includes Columbine, said the events of 1999 don't
seem to weigh on Columbine today.


      "I can only tell you my impression as I watch the kids," she
said. "It feels like any other high school in our district."

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Teenage gunmen spilled the blood of
children before Columbine - in Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi and
Oregon. After Columbine, more blood was shed in Minnesota and
California, in Germany and Finland.


10 years later, Columbine's hold remains strong

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