... is the sense of self-congratulation you get a lot. A bit too much of that here.

or Seung-Hui Cho?

He's not quite a foreign assassin, arrived at age 8, was a permanent resident of the U.S. until his bloody rampage and suicide at age 23. He's one of our own, gone wrong.

that can claim the genesis of this brilliant book deserves to congratulate itself. It's a fine, fine piece of journalism.

Dave Cullen is obviously a sincere and dedicated reporter, but why did Joan Walsh devote so much of this interview to the debunking of the Misty story? Ultimately, who does the story hurt? Who profits by the "revelation"?

Her agenda comes through loud and clear with this phrase

" Christian-right stooge".

Walsh's bad taste mars Cullen's fine work.

and got out of there as soon as I could. I was not surprised in the least when this happened. There's some weird combination of religious fervor and repressed sexuality that permeates the air there.

A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a criminal assault or homicide, an attempted or completed suicide, or unintentional shooting than to kill or injure in self-defense. (Kellermann, AL et al, 1998 Journal of Trauma, 42:263-67)

In the U.S., 8 children and teenagers are killed, and more than 47 are injured, by a firearm every day. (CDC, NCHS, December 2006)

The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns. (Kellermann, et al, New England Journal of Medicine, 1993)

The risk of suicide is five times greater in households with guns. (Kellermann et al, New England Journal of Medicine, 1992)

A 1990 law banning the sale of "Saturday Night Special" handguns in Maryland was associated with reduced use of these guns by criminals, and a 9% lower rate of firearm homicides in the state between 1990-1998 than would have been expected had there been no law.

Policies that deny handgun purchases to individuals with prior misdemeanor or felony convictions are associated with a decreased risk of subsequent convictions. Misdemeanants who had allowed to purchase handguns prior to the passage of a California state law prohibiting such purchases had a rate of criminal offending 29% higher than that among misdemeanants who were denied handgun purchases after the law took effect.

Every day in the U.S., 8 children and teenagers are killed and more than 47 are injured by a firearm.

In 2005, 595 California children and youth under age 21 were killed with firearms and 1,554 California children and youth under 21 were hospitalized with nonfatal firerarms injuries.

One-third of U.S. children live in homes with firearms. Almost half of homes with children and firearms keep a gun unlocked.

68% of the attackers in school shootings obtained the gun(s) from their own home or that of a relative. 61% of the attackers used handguns.

Many young children, including children as young as three years old, are strong enough to fire a handgun.

In 2004, guns were used to murder:

5 people in New Zealand

37 in Sweden

56 in Australia

73 in England and Wales

184 in Canada

and 11,344 in the United States.

Thank you Dave Cullen,the more we know about an incident the greater the possibility we have for preventing a similar ones in the future.I cannot imagine the terror felt by the students nor the broken hearts of their parents and others who loved them.Too often the media,particularly television, stoke up the sensationalism and the melodrama. News consumers buy it and react with baloons, flowers and teddy bears. That is an insult to the memory of the the victims.We need to allow those who actually knew and loved the victims privacy and dignity in grieving. The media's role is not to exploit the situation but to get us the facts so that, whatever our roles are ,we can contribute to solving our society's problems.

Joan:

”Right. Uh huh. Nod nod wink wink. Sure, we considered it.”

Is it just me, or does this sound pretty unethical? So, Joan, are you saying Dave Cullen is a liar? Are you saying Dave Cullen was disingenuous to the people he told he would consider not running it?

Dave:

”So we talked about it and there was no way we could — you know, we essentially would have been covering it up. But it forced me to really think about Misty Bernall and what was going to happen to her.”

Wow. It always amazes me how thorough and ethical and truthful journalists aim to be when it comes to the lives and activities of the average person. But let it be a captain of industry or a political leader, and the bullshit just flows from the presses, with not a qualm in sight about checking or refuting outright obvious fucking lies.

And when you did release the information, did you make sure to put in some words of explanation and try to tell your audience not to attack her and call her a liar? Or did you just let it go, and throw her to the wolves, so to speak, taking no responsibility or care for this revelation might impact her and her family? Sounds like the latter, to me.

”You don't treat her like a Christian-right stooge or somebody who is trying to put something over on us.”

Wow. That says a lot.

It sounds like Dave Cullen has a fascinating book that might finally nudge America towards understanding the event enough to prevent similar tragedies in the future. (That isn't to say that I know why it happened, to be clear.) Unfortunately, over-focusing so much on the attitude of one girl's mother in this article really did a disservice to his work. Pushing him to make judgments after he had openly avoided doing so didn't make the interview more exciting; it just cast a nasty, gossipy shadow over Salon.

Since mass murders have become commonplace in the U.S., our collective concern should be behaving differently to induce cultural change. I suggest:

Don't name mass murderers in the press. Rather, refer to them as the "XXX Coward." For Columbine, there are two cowards: Columbine Coward One and Columbine Coward Two. Many of these mass murderers are motivated by infamy. Okay, let them be known for a long, long time as the XXX Coward, which is true, as only a coward would use a gun in a school against students, but no one wants to be remembered this way. Eric Harris, the Coward, might have been a psychopath, but it's cowardice that enabled him to carry weapons into Columbine and pull the trigger(s).

@ Mr. Cullen

I'm glad you dispelled the myth about the Christian martyr. It is so easy to be a martyr. If young people want to put themselves in peril for Jesus or any other ideology, they can do it in a thousand locales, such as Somalia, certain sectors of Detroit and many major cities, and so on. Admiration should be saved for the true and rare martyrs in this world.