![]() Cover of first edition | |
Author | Todd Strasser |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing |
Publication date | September 1, 2000 |
Media type | |
Pages | 208 |
ISBN | 978-0689811128 |
Give a Boy a Gun is an epistolary novel for young adults by Todd Strasser, first published in 2000. The novel describes the events and social circumstances that lead up to, and form the aftermath of, a fictional school shooting. The story is presented in the form of segments of transcribed post-incident interviews with students, parents, teachers, and community members, compiled by Denise Shipley, a journalism student who is the stepsister of one of the shooters. [1] The interviews provide a variety of viewpoints on the incident – some sympathetic, others hostile. Interspersed through the book are footnotes providing statistical information about guns and gun violence.
The plot has some similarities to the real-life Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999, although Strasser began research on the book before the Columbine shooting. [2] The book was the first book relating to school shootings published after Columbine. [2]
Brendan Lawlor and Gary Searle are students at Middletown High School. [3] Gary has lived in town since second grade, while Brendan is a new arrival. The two quickly become friends. They are subjected to verbal and physical bullying by football players at Middletown, which teachers and parents fail to notice, downplay, or outright ignore.
As time passes, both boys become darker and angrier, experimenting with explosives and withdrawing from most social activities. Eventually the boys begin to obsess over the possibility of acting on their violent impulses. Gary experiments with developing a powerful homemade bomb. Gary and Brendan steal semi-automatic guns from a neighbour. Meanwhile, students are excited about an upcoming dance to be held in the school's gym.
On the night of the dance, Brendan leaves a cryptic message for his friend Emily, warning her not to attend because there will be trouble. Masked, Brendan and Gary enter the gym just after the dance begins. They shoot out the lights before restraining the attendees with cable ties. Gary booby-traps the doors with bombs so they will explode if anyone tries to open them.
The pair approach the football team's quarterback, Sam, who has been one of their main tormentors. After some debate, they decide to shoot out his kneecaps so he will be unable to play football ever again. [4] Gary and Brendan fire their guns randomly around the gym, scaring students and injuring others. Another football player, Dustin, manages to get free and unties some others. After Gary's on-and-off girlfriend Allison shows up, Gary commits suicide while Brendan is beaten into a coma by some of the students freed by Dustin. Brendan suffers irreversible brain damage from the beating and those responsible are arrested and put on trial for attempted murder.
The book ends with Denise Shipley, Gary's stepsister, wondering if Gary knew if there were other options besides violence. She swears she will always treat others with respect and teach others to do the same. She also shares her belief that semi-automatic weapons should be outlawed and handguns should be only in the hands of law enforcement.
The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and later the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, and the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine still remains both the deadliest mass shooting and the deadliest school shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.
A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings have taken place elsewhere in the world.
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Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. Harris and Klebold killed 12 students, one teacher, and wounded 24 others. After killing most of their victims in the school's library, they died by self-inflicted gunshot wounds. At the time, it was the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.
Rachel Joy Scott was an American student who was the first fatality of the Columbine High School massacre, in which 11 other students and a teacher were also murdered by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who then committed suicide.
Rage is a psychological thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, the first he published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1977 and then it was collected in the 1985 hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books. The novel describes a school shooting, and has been associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, King allowed the novel to fall out of print, and, in 2013, he published a non-fiction, anti-firearms violence essay titled "Guns".
The Red Lake shootings were a spree killing that occurred on March 21, 2005, in two places on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. That afternoon, 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend at their home. After taking his grandfather's police weapons and bulletproof vest, Weise drove his grandfather's police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School, where he had been a student some months before.
The Wave is a 1981 young adult novel by Todd Strasser under the pen name Morton Rhue. It is a novelization of a teleplay by Johnny Dawkins for the movie The Wave, a fictionalized account of the "Third Wave" teaching experiment by Ron Jones that took place in an Ellwood P. Cubberley High School history class in Palo Alto, California. The novel by Strasser won the 1981 Massachusetts Book Award for Children's/Young Adult literature.
W. R. Myers High School is located in Taber, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1950, it is the town's only public high school. Students at W.R. Myers range from grade 9 to grade 12. Taber's middle school, D.A. Ferguson, shares a Cafeteria and a band room with W.R. Myers. The school has about 480 students and 50 staff members both teachers and others. W.R. Myers has had a large success in Sports and Music, creating a name for itself in Western Canada. The Basketball team and the WR Myers Fighting Rebels Football team has brought much success to the school.
The Pine Middle School shooting was a school shooting that occurred in Reno, Nevada, United States, on March 14, 2006. The shooting was perpetrated by then fourteen-year-old student James Scott Newman who shot and injured two 14-year-old eighth grade classmates with a .38-caliber revolver that had belonged to his parents. Newman was arrested and charged as an adult on charges of attempted murder, use of a deadly weapon and use of a firearm by a minor but later pleaded guilty to different charges of two counts of battery with a deadly weapon, in which he had received sentencing as a juvenile. James Newman was sentenced to house arrest until he completed 200 hours of community service.
Neshaminy High School is a public high school in Middletown Township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the only high school in the Neshaminy School District, serving students in Middletown Township, Lower Southampton Township, Hulmeville, Langhorne, Langhorne Manor, and Penndel. In 2022, the school enrolled 2,677 students in grades 9 through 12. "U.S. News & World Report" ranked the school 117 out of 718 Pennsylvania high schools in 2022.
Todd Strasser is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. Rue.
Nineteen Minutes (2007) is the fourteenth novel by the American author Jodi Picoult. It was Picoult's first book to debut at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. This novel follows the unfolding of a school shooting, including the events leading up to the incident and the aftermath of the incident.
April Showers is a 2009 American independent drama film written and directed by Andrew Robinson. It stars Kelly Blatz, Daryl Sabara, Ellen Woglom, Illeana Douglas, Janel Parrish, and Tom Arnold. It is based on the Columbine High School shootings, of which Robinson is a survivor. The film was shot at Plattsmouth High School in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, in May 2008.
Columbine is a non-fiction book written by Dave Cullen and published by Twelve on April 6, 2009. It is an examination of the Columbine High School massacre, on April 20, 1999, and the perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The book covers two major storylines: the killers' evolution leading up to the attack, and the survivors' struggles with the aftermath over the next decade. Chapters alternate between the two stories. Graphic depictions of parts of the attack are included, in addition to the actual names of friends and family.
The Oakland Elementary School shooting was a school shooting in 1988 in Greenwood, South Carolina, United States, in which 19-year-old James William Wilson Jr. shot and killed two students and wounded seven other students, a teacher, and a gym coach at Oakland Elementary School. He shot people in the cafeteria and in a classroom. Wilson had a history of mental illness.
Heathers is an American black comedy television series, created by Jason Micallef, that premiered on October 25, 2018, on Paramount Network. Its first season, a modern-day reboot of the 1989 film of the same name written by Daniel Waters, stars Grace Victoria Cox, James Scully, Melanie Field, Brendan Scannell and Jasmine Mathews. The series follows high school student Veronica Sawyer and her conflicts with a self-titled clique consisting of three fellow students who share the name Heather. The series was intended to be an anthology, with each season taking place in an entirely different setting from the original film.
The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods, and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes.
No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine is a 2002 non-fiction book by Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt about the Columbine High School massacre. Brown was a student at Columbine High School at the time of the shooting and a friend of the perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The book recounts Brown's experiences growing up as close friends with Klebold, his time as a student at Columbine, and his experiences with media, police, and school authorities following the shooting.