Give a Boy a Gun (17 page)

You can start over. I wish I could be there with you, but I'm past the point of no return.

Love forever,
Gary

I hid behind the refreshment table. There were three of us there. The other two were preppy, semipopular kids. The kind who hang around on the fringes of the popular clique and get invited in when they need a crowd, like to a game or a dance or a big party. Those two were scared !&*#less. I really think they believed that if Brendan and Gary found them, they'd shoot them.

—Allison Findley

I told them to stop shooting at the ceiling. That a ricocheting bullet could kill someone as easily as an aimed one. One of them instantly fired off another burst. He had to know that the ricochets could have hit him as easily as anyone else. I had to assume he didn't care. I think I'm a reasonably good
judge of kids' moods. I can tell when they're putting on an act and bluffing. Believe me, these boys were not putting on an act.

— Dick Flanagan

You want to hear something ironic? The school is about twenty years old, and I recall that there was some argument over the size of the gym when the building designs were first considered. Some people felt it was too large and they were spending too much money on it. But you want to know why I think no one was seriously hurt by a ricocheting bullet? Because that gym is so darn big.

—Allen Curry

I remember wondering why they didn't start shooting kids right away. And I thought,
Oh, no, killing us isn't the point. They have some
stupid message they want us to hear first

— Deirdre Bunson

“Bill [Kinkel, Kip's father] . . . hoped buying Kip a legally registered rifle, taking him to a shooting range and seeing that he was taught to use it properly might actually mitigate against the boy's unrelenting fascination with firearms.”

—Rolling Stone
, 9/17/98

Why did they bring flashlights and snacks? Because they weren't planning just to kill those kids. They were going to make them suffer. Just like those kids had made us suffer.

—Allison Findley

I've got pretty broad shoulders, but my arms are short because I'm stocky and not all that tall. Plus they're pretty bulked up from lifting [weights]. It's actually not that easy for me to cross my hands behind my back. They put a tie around my wrists, but it wasn't all that tight. I had some wiggle room.

— Paul Burns

Was I surprised when I heard about it? Yeah, for like a second, but not really. Look at it as a form of torture. Day in and day out. Society makes you go to school, and then the society in school tortures you. You realize there's no way out. Everyone has a breaking point.
Sooner or later everyone will snap. Maybe if Brendan and Gary hadn't snapped, someone else would have.

—Ryan Clancy

The first bomb went off while they were still tying everyone up. It sounded like it came from outside. Someone asked, “What was that?” and Brendan said it was a warning that they didn't want anyone bothering them. The kids were already so scared they were crying and whimpering. But that bomb just added a whole other dimension of fear. It was one of the many moments that night when I was sure we were all going to die.

—Beth Bender

It was awful. They made us crawl on our stomachs into the center of the gym. The floor was dusty and you had to put your face on it. Then one of them kept an eye on us while the other made some of the girls get up and go sit with their backs to the doors. I wasn't surprised they picked girls. They wouldn't have dared let boys stand up.

—Deirdre Bunson

They were talking about what they were going to do with Sam. And they were talking loud because they wanted everyone to hear. They wanted him to roll over on his back so they could shoot him in the knee. They didn't want to shoot him in the back of the knee, because they weren't sure if that would cripple him or not. They wanted to shoot him in the kneecap. They wanted to make sure he'd be ruined for life.

—Paul Burns

They kept kicking me in the head and the arms and ribs. My hands were tied behind my back, and there was nothing I could do. It hurt worse than anything that ever happened on a football field. They wanted me to roll over so they could shoot me in the knee. I just didn't want to give in. All I could think about was next year's football season. It couldn't end this way. It just couldn't.

— Sam Flach

Try to picture this: fifty or sixty kids lying
facedown on that hard gym floor with their hands tied behind their back. Crying, whimpering, blubbering, calling out for mercy, pleading to be let go. It was like these guys were hunters and we were a bunch of seals, and they were trying to decide which ones to slaughter first.

—Dustin Williams

I've been a hunter and gun collector all my life, as well as a dues-paying member of the National Rifle Association for close to thirty years. But when I think that it was my guns that those boys used. That those were my bullets they fired. . . . Sure, you can say that if they hadn't stolen them from me, they would have stolen them from someone else, but they didn't. Those were my guns. And now I have to live with that.

—Jack Phillips

It was hard for me to keep an eye on both of
them, but each time I thought they weren't looking, I'd try to work my hands free. I was pretty sure I could get them loose.

—Paul Burns

“The day of the shootings [in Oregon], the
Eugene Register-Guard
featured a homey little human-interest piece about the wonderful benefits of firearm education.”

–
Rolling Stone
, 7/9/98

[The bullet wound] hurt like the dickens. I kept expecting to black out or taste blood in my mouth, but strangely, other than the pain, I felt okay.

—Allen Curry

You couldn't see much. You'd try to lift your head and look around, but after a while your neck muscles would go into spasms and you'd have to put your head back down on that disgusting floor.

— Deirdre Bunson

They shot Sam in both knees. You heard the shots and you heard Sam scream. Some of the teachers started shouting, but they were drowned out by more shots, and the sound of the bullets ricocheting all over the ceiling
again and more lights shattering. Gary and Brendan yelled at the teachers to shut up. They weren't just out to get the jocks. They were out to get everyone.

— Dustin Williams

Before 1980 one medical center in Los Angeles had never admitted a single child for gunshot wounds. From 1980 to 1987 the center admitted thirty-four.

I was lying a few feet from Deirdre. She went nuts when they shot Sam in the knees. I really believe she stopped caring about herself. She screamed at Brendan and called him a bastard. She called him a scared little worm and dared him to put down the gun. She went, “Then we'll see how tough you are.”

Everyone tried to lift their head to see. I saw Brendan step toward her. Deirdre stopped talking. He knelt down and pressed the barrel of the gun against her cheek. She cried out and jerked away. I think the barrel was hot, and it must have burned her face.

I remember what he said: “Hey, cheerleader, think I give a crap about whether you think I'm tough or not? I already know I'm not tough. You want to know how I know? Because you and your A-hole friends have reminded me
every single day since I moved here.”

He pressed the barrel of the gun right into the back of her neck. It was really sadistic. Deirdre started to whimper and begged him not to shoot her. Gary came over and said something about Deirdre having an accident. They both started to laugh. One of the teachers—Mr. Flanagan, I think—yelled at them, and they fired another shot into the gym floor. I felt the vibration against my cheek.

Brendan cursed and said he'd missed. Gary pointed out that he may have missed, but he'd made a nice hole in the wood.

—Paul Burns

After the autopsies, the newspapers said they hadn't been on drugs, but if you ask me, they were acting like totally whacked-out maniacs. They ran around laughing and shooting up the gym floor. You could hear the wood cracking and splintering. I just kept praying they'd run out of ammunition.