Give a Boy a Gun (3 page)

—Brett Betzig

The day [Brendan] found out he was moving he just looked terrible. I mean, at school he looked all pale and hollow and bent. I almost thought someone in his family had died. He really didn't want to go.

—Julie Shore

Though violent movies, music, and video games are popular in many countries, few allow their citizens to own handguns.
In 1996, handguns alone killed 15 people in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,390 in the United States
.
(Rolling Stone
, 6/10/99)

The Lawlors were private people. Except for that one time with Samantha in my kitchen,
she hardly ever said anything about [Brendan]. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but you had the feeling that if something was wrong, they preferred to deal with it alone and not tell the whole neighborhood. Not that I ever had a reason to believe anything was wrong, other than what I already told you. But I do know that Brendan was very unhappy about moving. That's a hard age to leave your friends.

—Kit Conner

During the first half of the twentieth century the army trained soldiers to shoot at targets with bull's-eyes. The targets were changed to human forms after it was discovered that soldiers sometimes couldn't shoot back in war even if their lives were threatened.
Military psychologists have noted that video games mimic military training designed to break down the inhibition against shooting human beings
.

Brendan seemed kind of lost when he first moved [to Middletown]. It was the middle of the school year, and here comes this minivan packed to the roof, and about an hour later the moving truck shows up. The moving guys started bringing furniture into the house, and the family was kind of going back and forth too. It must have been a weekend, because I went somewhere with one of my friends and his mom. I remember leaving my house and seeing Brendan out in front of his house. He just stared at me. No hello. No wave. No nothing. I think I kind of nodded at him and then got into the car and left.

A little later I come back. I'm getting out of the car, and Brendan comes out of the house and heads straight toward me carrying three tennis balls. So we start to talk, and he's
asking me what school I go to and what grade I'm in and did I like this [video] game and that. You know, kind of feeling me out. And all the while he's juggling these tennis balls. It struck me as a little bizarre.

— Dustin Williams, a neighbor of Brendan's in Middletown

I don't think he said a thing for the first two weeks. The only reason I even noticed him was because I sat in the back and he was back there with me in science and English. The way he looked, it was, like, wide-eyed — like a rain-forest dweller dropped into the middle of New York City. I bet three-quarters of the class didn't even know he was there.

— Ryan Clancy

We started talking in the hall. I mean, I was hyperaware of him because he was new and I was new, and your antenna is up for things like that. Like feeling all alone and trying to connect with someone you have something in common with, no matter what. It's like
your boat just sank and you're in the water grabbing desperately for anything that floats.

— Emily Kirsch, a former friend of Brendan's

I've always made a special effort with those [students] I sense are in distress. Believe me, no one comes into this school in the middle of the year without a lot of distress. After the first day of class I took [Brendan] aside and told him I knew it would be hard to adjust and that he should take his time and not worry too much. And I remember the way he looked at me. As if I'd caught him completely by surprise. He may have even blinked back tears.

—Julia Reingold, a teacher of Brendan's at Middletown Middle School

Here's this cute boy who didn't say a word for the first three weeks, but once he started talking, it could be hard to shut him up. At first all he could talk about was how big the school was and how much he missed all his old friends and his old school. I mean, I
didn't mind it so much, because I felt like I was about the only person he had to talk to, and, frankly, I was in the same boat. But after a while it did start to get kind of repetitious, and I told him so. It was like day and night. After that, he never said a thing about his old friends or his old school.

—Emily Kirsch

Each day fourteen children under the age of nineteen are killed by guns. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1996)

I tried to think back to what it was like in eighth grade. It was different. I mean, it got really cliquey. But I think Brendan and I felt like, “That's okay, we're new here. They just have to get to know us.” But it didn't work that way. They got to know us, but nothing changed. Instead, this whole jock and cheerleader and designer name thing just got stronger and stronger. They were like the Sun, and the rest of us were all these little planets stuck in orbits around them. After a while I think a lot of us didn't even want to be in that [popular] crowd. All we wanted was to be left alone.

— Emily Kirsch

Things in school definitely changed in eighth grade. At least for us guys on the team. Maybe it was because we knew we'd be in
the high school next year. Maybe it was that some of the guys were starting to get bigger. Sometimes Coach Bosco would come over [from the high school] and watch us. You know, like he was scouting us for next year. It made us feel important. All of a sudden we were aware that we were at the brink of a bigger world. Of course, it was just high school. But to eighth graders that was a big deal.

— Dustin Williams

I don't think Brendan and Gary really clicked until around the middle of eighth grade, but once they did, it was like a lock. When I was hanging with them, I was definitely the third wheel. They were okay about it, but it was pretty obvious that I was just a visitor to whatever part of their private world they wanted me to see.

—Ryan Clancy

“Dylan Bennet Klebold grew up in a house without guns, even toy guns.

“ ‘Tom [Dylan's father] was adamant,' said . . . a former neighbor. . . . ‘[He said,] “We don't need guns in the house; we're not going to play with them.”'”

—
New York Times
, 6/29/99