When Kimveer Gill opened fire earlier this month at a junior college in Montreal, Canada, killing one person and wounding 19 others, it was a bloody reminder that the Columbine killings of 1999 still resonate.
Yet we seem no closer to understanding what motivates Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, or Gill, or the teens who plotted to attack a Kansas high school on the seventh anniversary of Columbine, or another teen from North Carolina who killed his father and fired on his former high school after e-mailing the principal at Columbine. Teens in Wisconsin were arrested two weeks ago for allegedly plotting a Columbine-like killing spree.
What pushes them from feeling as outsiders - surely an emotion experienced by innumerable teens and young adults - to taking up arms and opening fire on innocent students?
One student at Montreal's Dawson College, where the recent shootings took place, said authorities should have recognized Gill's potential for violence after reading his Web postings. Those postings, on a Goth Web site, were transparently violent and malevolent. But are they reason enough for police to pull him in for questioning?
Stifling such postings because they could be a prelude to acts of violence places an onerous burden on the operators of such sites. How can they differentiate between harmless ramblings and murderous threats? The operators of the site on which Gill left his postings reject any responsibility and say there's no evidence the Web site influenced him.
Likely to draw more attention is the fact that Gill was a fan of an online computer game with the chilling title "Super Columbine Massacre."There is argument over whether that and other such games, in which startling violence is perpetrated, contribute to real-life acts. Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost says people like Gill don't kill because of what they read, hear, or play. How can we be sure without getting inside their minds?
The game's creator also disavows any responsibility for the actions of Gill, claiming that the game's purpose is actually to give insight into the Columbine killers. But that's an entirely disingenuous argument that barely merits consideration. And it doesn't get the game's creators off the hook. A game in which players take on the roles of the Columbine killers doesn't bring psychic insight, just a sick vicarious thrill.
At what point do some video games cease being entertainment and start being incitement to violence? How far should authorities go in monitoring Web sites and acting on postings that suggest the possibility of actual violence? Gill lived with his parents - so what can families do to intercede, if anything?
And how can we identify, help, and stop young people for whom the massacre of school children evokes not horror but fascination and emulation?
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