Give a Boy a Gun (8 page)

But at what point is the process of suppressing our animal instincts complete? Seven years of age? Fourteen? Twenty-one? In other words, do we expect too much of teenagers?

— F. Douglas Ellin, a biology teacher at Middletown High School

I suppose I'm as much at fault as anyone. But it's not like football players are monsters. Kids have been getting into fights and picking on one another since forever. I don't know why Brendan and Gary did what they decided to do, but to say it was all because some football players picked on them has to be a gross oversimplification.

— Dustin Williams

There is an unwritten law here about the
treatment of athletes, especially those athletes on the teams that have a chance to go to the playoffs and bring the school recognition and enhance its pride. In our case, that's football and wrestling. The [unwritten] law states that you may discipline a student athlete up to a point. But it must be an absolutely extraordinary situation for you to do anything that would impinge on that athlete's ability to play for his team. To do so would be to invite the worst kind of scorn, not just from the football coaches, but from the administration, other teachers, and the town at large. Do a few of the athletes know this and take advantage of it? What do you think?

— Beth Bender

With the trend toward two parents working and spending less time at home, the responsibility for raising children and instilling them with values rests more and more on the shoulders of the schools. We are no longer supposed to teach just academics; we are now supposed to rear, nurture, coddle,
protect, encourage, discipline, and teach good hygiene and eating habits. If you're a teacher with six classes of roughly thirty kids each, how exactly are you supposed to do that?

—Allen Curry, principal of Middletown High School

My mother says I'm a pack rat. I save everything. I don't know why, I just do. Gary, Brendan, Allison, and I would get into a chat room and shoot the breeze, and if I thought it was interesting, I'd save it onto a Zip drive. As soon as the cops found out, they got a warrant and came in here and took it all away, but my dad went to court and got some of it back after the cops made copies. After what happened, I went back and started to look at some of the stuff. I thought this one was pretty interesting. Brendan is TerminX. Gary is Dayzd. Allison is Blkchokr, and I'm Rebooto.

—Ryan Clancy

TerminX:
Burns called me a nerd 2day
.

Blkchokr:
Feeble

Rebooto:
That's the best he could come up with!

Dayzd:
Know what he'll call a nerd 10 years from now?

TerminX:
Boss

Rebooto:
LOL!

TerminX:
It's BS
.

Blkchokr:
Y?

TerminX:
Jocks go 2 college and play on teams
.

They're heroes
.

Rebooto:
They get hot babes
.

Dayzd:
They get babes hot
.

TerminX:
They study accounting and pre-law
.

Then they screw up their knees and their career is over. But it doesn't matter
.

Blkchokr:
Y not?

TerminX:
Because they're still winners
.

Dayzd:
We're losers, with good knees
.

Rebooto:
Unless U lose Ur knee
.

Dayzd:
Or Ur knee comes loose
.

TerminX:
They become partners in accounting firms and law firms, and everyone wants 2 work with them because they were heroes in college
.

Blkchokr:
Some go into pro sports
.

TerminX:
It's incredibly rare
.

Dayzd:
About as rare as some nerd actually being Ur boss
.

Mom, I could never tell you how unhappy I was. I knew there was nothing you could do to help, and life has been hard enough on you already. I'm truly, truly sorry that I'm going to put you through so much pain, but I hope that in a year or two you'll get over it. Maybe you could move away and change your name and even have a new kid.

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

We talked all the time about getting back at the jocks. For every time they called you a faggot. For every time they bodychecked you into a wall. And every teacher who saw it happen day after day and never did anything more than tell those morons to stop horsing around. We would tie them up and use pliers to pull their fingernails off. We would gouge their eyes out and castrate them. We would burn their noses off with propane torches. I know it must sound sick, but that's how pissed we were. You had these guys breaking the rules and beating on you, and no one tried to stop them.

—Ryan Clancy

Brendan learned I had weapons in the house, because he saw me carrying the case to the car one day when I went [to a gun show]. A
few days later he came over and asked about them. I opened the case and let him hold a few. He was certainly surprised at how heavy some of them were. I think he said something to the tune of “I can't believe they're real.”

—Jack Phillips, a neighbor of Brendan's

I will kill every friggin' one of them. It's gonna be Columbine all over again, only better. Harris and Klebold did it right. Blow the friggin' school, then blow yourself away. I wish I could have met them. Maybe we'll go underground after Middletown. Help other outcasts kill the A-hole jocks at their schools. Or die trying. This is the new revolution. This is John Friggin' Brown telling the country we've had enough of this crap. This is one for the history books. Keep fighting until they bring you down in a hail of bullets. Mark my words, Littleton was just the beginning
.

—an E-mail from Brendan to Gary

According to federal estimates, there are about 280 million people and 240 million guns in America.

The first gun Brendan got he bought from this kid in school. The thing is, if you know anything about this stuff, [the gun he bought] was a piece of crap. I think it was made in Brazil or someplace. Brendan said he paid a hundred [dollars] for it, and I heard someone say that the kid who sold it to him had bought it for, like, thirty. But Brendan didn't care. All he cared about was having that gun.

—Ryan Clancy

Brendan was changing. Definitely getting darker and angrier, although sometimes he'd be the old Brendan, funny and charming and goofy. It was probably about a month after they did the swirly on him when he called up and said he wanted to go up to the park. Usually we'd just sit under a tree near the parking lot and talk and drink, but this time there was someplace he really
wanted to get to. You could tell there was something on his mind. We got into the park, and he was like, “Let's go up on the hill.” It's a big hill, and Gary and I were really huffing and puffing. I have to quit smoking. We got up there, and he took this gun out of his pocket. Like, first we thought it was a toy, then Gary thought maybe a starter's pistol. Brendan said it was real, and I asked what he was going to do with it. I won't use the words he used, but basically he said he was going to blow away some kids at school.

—Allison Findley

Virtually all of the semiautomatic pistols manufactured in Brazil are exported because Brazilian law forbids civilian ownership of such guns.
(Making a Killing)

My dad has a 9 mm Glock he keeps on a shelf in his bedroom closet. It's got that nice black finish like the ones you see on TV. When we used to go on camping trips, he'd put it in the glove compartment of our car. The thing is I know some kids who really
have arsenals—like rifles, shotguns, and pistols. I'm not talking about their fathers. I'm talking about them. Although their fathers have lots of guns too. So when Brendan showed me this gun he'd bought, I was pretty much, are you for real? I think he thought I was surprised he had a gun, but I was like, “Give me a break, that's not a gun, it's a toy.” Man, I wish I hadn't said that.

—Ryan Clancy

Among students who said they carried a gun, 53 percent said they had obtained the gun from home or family; 37 percent obtained the gun “off the street.”