Why they killed

A chilling Slate article by Dave Cullen reports that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did not kill twelve classmates and a teacher five years ago, at Columbine, because they were angry at being made fun of by jocks or because they were Goths who got just a bit too into the whole death thing. The idea is that Klebold apparently was a suicidal little shit with a hot temper (never a good combination), and Harris was a psychopath (not in the pop-cultural sense in which any person who kills is a psychopath, but in the actual clinical sense). About writings on Harris's website, Cullen has this to say:

"These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority."

Harris was, in all likelihood, going to snap sometime, somewhere. It happened in high school:

"Harris was not a wayward boy who could have been rescued. Harris, they believe, was irretrievable. He was a brilliant killer without a conscience, searching for the most diabolical scheme imaginable. If he had lived to adulthood and developed his murderous skills for many more years, there is no telling what he could have done. His death at Columbine may have stopped him from doing something even worse."

This is scary, scary stuff.