Columbine wasn’t the first. One in 1997 killed three students and wounded five others at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. A 1998 massacre at a middle school in Jonesboro, Ark., left five dead and 10 wounded. But no earlier burst of gun insanity shattered the national psyche like the carnage on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., outside Denver. Columbine was more than the deadliest assault till then on a high school in the United States. The possible impact that violent video games and internet trawling had on adolescent minds came wrenchingly to the forefront of debate.

Source: New York Times April 14, 2019 22:30 UTC