Strasser's Writing Style
The book's format is bits of interviews after the tragedy all put together in order of events to tell the story of how it happened.
Strasser's idea for the book
This book is based on the tragedy at the Columbine High School. Columbine is a school in Colorado. It was a normal school until one day two students who have been bullied, came to school and was shooting everybody including themselves. There were fifteen deaths including themselves and twenty four injured.
Facts (Found on the bottom of some pages in the book.)
~The presence of a gun in a home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.
~More than 50 percent of male youths say it would be easy to obtain a gun.
~Approximately 750,000 deaths by firearms have occurred in this country since 1960.
~Five percent of students say they've seen another student with a gun.
~In 1995 more than one million guns manufactured outside U.S. were imported to this country.
~Each day people wielding guns kill 64 people, rape 33 women, rob 575 people, and assault 1,100 more.
~As parents, teachers, and other adults look for ways to rach out to young people, some see common thread in the disapointments anf isolation students experience when they lose a sense of place, lose a parental figure, or lose a girlfriend. - Chrustian Science Monitor, 5/26/99
~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 poeple in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,390 in the United States. (Rolling Stone, 6/10/99)
~Each day 14 children under the age of 19 are killed by guns. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1996)
~Each year 2.5 million new handguns are sold in this country.
~"I went to three [high schools], and in none of [them] did I feel a moment safe. High school was terrifying, and it was the casual cruelty of the popular kids that made it hell." -a posting on the Internet
~"The big thing about firearms is that they do give the weak a way to defend themselfs against strong." -William Ruger Sr., president of Ruger, a manufacturer of semiautomatic weapons, Making of Killing
~More than 50 percent of male youths say it would be easy to obtain a gun.
~Approximately 750,000 deaths by firearms have occurred in this country since 1960.
~Five percent of students say they've seen another student with a gun.
~In 1995 more than one million guns manufactured outside U.S. were imported to this country.
~Each day people wielding guns kill 64 people, rape 33 women, rob 575 people, and assault 1,100 more.
~As parents, teachers, and other adults look for ways to rach out to young people, some see common thread in the disapointments anf isolation students experience when they lose a sense of place, lose a parental figure, or lose a girlfriend. - Chrustian Science Monitor, 5/26/99
~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 poeple in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,390 in the United States. (Rolling Stone, 6/10/99)
~Each day 14 children under the age of 19 are killed by guns. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1996)
~Each year 2.5 million new handguns are sold in this country.
~"I went to three [high schools], and in none of [them] did I feel a moment safe. High school was terrifying, and it was the casual cruelty of the popular kids that made it hell." -a posting on the Internet
~"The big thing about firearms is that they do give the weak a way to defend themselfs against strong." -William Ruger Sr., president of Ruger, a manufacturer of semiautomatic weapons, Making of Killing