Give a Boy a Gun (12 page)

—Dustin Williams

The weird thing is this year I actually started to make friends with some of the quote, unquote “popular” girls. I'm not really sure why. I think maybe it happened because I don't judge people and they were sick of being in a crowd where they were judged all the time. Like, how cool is your car and how many free minutes do you get on your cell phone? I mean, who cares?

But sometimes they forget. Like the whole judgment thing is so ingrained in them they can't help it. I have a friend who has lots of piercings and he wears black all the time and he likes heavy metal. I was with him one day in the hall, and my “popular” friends gave me these looks. I saw them later and they were like, “How could you talk to
him? How could you even acknowledge his presence?” They just couldn't shake it.

—Emily Kirsch

Our school puts a significant emphasis on sports. I'm in the English department, and you can imagine how it feels when you hear that they've hired a private plane for $25,000 to take the team to a game. Do you have any idea how many classroom sets of Guterson, Shakespeare, and Lowry that would buy? But you also have to understand that a lot of these boys would be lost without athletics. They are simply never going to be scholars. This is the playing field where they've chosen to compete, and unfortunately it's a lot more expensive than an English classroom. These boys are not studious; many of them will not go to college. A great season here may be the highlight of their life. But even if it isn't, the lessons they learn about work and discipline on the team will serve them well in whatever they do. It just may be that for these boys those lessons are more important
than Shakespeare's sonnets.

— Dick Flanagan

At my old school you didn't have this feeling that one crowd was so totally in power and better than all the rest. It was great if you were a super soccer player, but it was pretty cool if you could make your own movie, or draw or act or play the guitar really well. And it was just dumb to put someone down because they got good grades. But here, it's like the only thing that matters is sports. You get straight A's and people dump on you. It doesn't make sense.

—Chelsea Baker

Running a school is like running a business. I know this may sound crass, but you're producing a product. In our case, that product is a high school senior who is prepared to go on in the world and be successful in the community. So, in a way, you can say that we have to produce a product that the community approves of, that they will buy into. Sure, I would love to be Edward James
Olmos in
Stand and Deliver
and produce a bunch of kids who value calculus over athletics, but if that's not what the community wants, I'll be out of a job.

—Allen Curry

Being on the football team made you special, and some guys definitely took advantage of that. They'd be late for class or curse right in front of a teacher, even in front of an administrator, and nothing serious would happen. Some of these guys acted like they ruled the school. It affected the way a lot of kids looked at us, especially the younger kids. It was like, “Hey, if I make the team, I can get away with that stuff too.” Be honest, deep down inside, who doesn't want to be in the spotlight? Who doesn't want to see their picture in the
Middletown Reporter?
It was a real temptation, and if you wanted to take advantage of it, you could have a great life. Believe me, it was a lot harder not to get a swelled head than to let yourself have one.

— Dustin Williams

They talked about guns and they talked about bombs. Gary and I were in McDonald's once and someone left a newspaper on the table, and there was something about bombing an abortion clinic in it. So Gary's like, “How do they do it?”

And I'm like, “How do they do what?”

And he says, “Make those bombs.”

So I go, “Maybe they go to bomb school.”

A couple of days later he said he wanted to go to the public library. And I'm like, “What for?”

And he's like, “I want to look at some books, maybe go on-line.”

And I'm like, “You can do that at home.”

In 1990 the Colt firearms company was on the brink of going out of business. One of the reasons was that federal officials had banned the production of the company's AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. Hundreds of jobs would be lost if the company closed. The state of Connecticut used state pension funds to purchase 47 percent of the company and save it from going bankrupt. Colt used the money to market a new, slightly modified version of the assault rifle, now called the Sporter.

But he says he has to do it at the library. I think he said something about not wanting anyone to trace it back to his computer. He could be a little strange.

We're in the library, and I'm over by the magazines, looking at all these stupid pictures of skinny, perfect girls with perfect hair and skin. It makes you wonder why all the rest of us don't just crawl in some hole and do the world a favor and die. Anyway, Gary comes by with this big grin on his face, and I go, “What?”

And he's like, “Not here. Outside.”

We get outside and he starts laughing, like, “You can't believe this, Allison. I found everything I need to know.”

“Need to know about what?” I ask.

And he goes, “About making a bomb. Right in the good old library.”

I'm not sure which he thought was cooler:
the fact that he found the information, or the fact that he found it in the library.

—Allison Findley

“It is the wisdom and judgment of the [Connecticut State] General Assembly that the Sporter is an assault rifle—it's just the AR-15 with a different name.”

—Rep. Robert Godfrey

Everyone's painting this picture of Brendan being the leader and Gary following, but there's another side to it. Especially where those pipe bombs are concerned. Brendan wasn't mechanical. I mean, he just wasn't interested in that kind of thing. But Gary loved building stuff. He really had a talent for it. I remember going to his house for a birthday party and seeing what he'd done with LEGOs. He'd made LEGO robots and programmed them with his computer, so if they walked into something, they could turn around and go in another direction. It was pretty awesome. You hear the police reports about how well constructed and intricate those pipe bombs were. I guarantee you, that
was Gary's work.

—Ryan Clancy

“We say we want to regulate assault guns; then we go out and buy an assault gun factory. . . . The whole darn thing is so hypocritical it's hard to imagine.”

—Rep. David Oliver Thorp

I had to take him to the hardware store and over the state line, where they sell fireworks. When we got to the [fireworks] stand, that was probably about the most excited I'd ever seen him. He wanted to know which ones had the most gunpowder. They told him, and those were the ones he bought.

—Allison Findley

Brendan and Gary had this big announcement they wanted to make. They were going to announce it on Saturday. So Allison drives up and Gary's in the front seat and Brendan's in the back, and we just take off. Listening to music, smoking, cruising. We probably drive for more than an hour and a half, until we're way out in the middle of nowhere. Then we go down some dirt road, and we're at this cabin. I thought Gary said it was his uncle's, but anyway, no one's around.

So Gary opens the trunk and takes out this green duffel bag and all these big sheets
of colored paper, like the kind you do school projects on. And we all go tromping off into the woods. The thing is I have no idea what's going on. I'm like, “So what are we doing today? An art project?” And they're not telling me. It's an announcement, you know? I'm supposed to wait.

We get to some place that Gary likes, and he stops and says, “Okay, we'll do it here.” Next thing I know, he's taking pushpins out of the duffel bag, and we're supposed to pin all these sheets of paper up to these trees. Like we're making a multicolored room in the trees that's all paper walls. This probably takes an hour itself. And then Gary has to very carefully number all the sheets and make notes in a notebook. I have no idea what this is about, but so what? It's as good as doing anything else, I guess.