JOHNNY GOT HIS GUNS
The tidy single-family homes that dot the streets in the area surrounding Columbine High School are like so many pixels forming a familiar picture of American suburbia, with shiny new minivans in driveways and tow-headed toddlers in strollers. Like folks in communities around the country, residents in this corner of Jefferson County enjoy the popular cultural tradition known as garage sales. Driving to an interview with Principal Frank DeAngelis one morning, I saw hand-drawn flyers advertising garage sales taped to utility poles, beckoning me to a closer intimacy with Columbine residents. What better way to explore a community than to mingle with neighbors perusing one another’s household clutter? Spotting a bold black arrow at an upcoming corner, I took a right turn, passing an entry sign: COLUMBINE WEST, A COVENANT PROTECTED COMMUNITY. A few more flyers led me to a cul-de-sac where the sale was under way, with kitchen utensils and pillows, excess clothing and kids’ toys displayed on the driveway. The home owner chatted with another woman inside the open garage as I rummaged around. Here was something odd, I thought, as I reached for what looked like a wide, tan leather belt. It was an old ammo belt and its small loops were holding about four spent shell casings and what appeared to be half a dozen three-inch copper-tipped rifle rounds. Having shopped at hundreds of garage sales over the years, this certainly was a first. I held it up to the owner, showing surprise about finding live ammunition plopped next to her old kitchen curtains. Nonchalantly she said, “Oh, I guess I should take those out.” She didn’t, and I departed. Welcome to Colorado, where gun culture is a vibrant element of its identity as part of the Wild West.
In the days, weeks, months, and years since April 20, 1999, the Columbine attack has been dissected and researched from just about every possible angle—except for one. It is the elephant in the room, the topic that at most gets minor mention and even less serious scrutiny. Simply put, without easy access to guns, Harris and Klebold never could have killed so many people. School shootings cannot happen without guns. Period. In fall 1998, Harris and Klebold were only seventeen years old, so they brought a friend, Robyn Anderson, eighteen, to the Tanner Gun Show, Denver’s largest and oldest gun mart, where she purchased two shotguns and a 9mm carbine rifle from the dealers Ronald Hartmann and James Royce Washington with her friends’ money. She broke no law in handing over the guns to Harris and Klebold, because it wasn’t technically a sale. Anderson, who was sued by victims and their families and settled by paying $300,000 for her role, reportedly said she was comfortable going to the Tanner show because she knew the transaction would not be documented. At that time, Colorado law permitted gun dealers who were not federally licensed to sell long arms to anyone eighteen and older without conducting the background check required by federal law. The boys also bought a TEC-DC9 semiautomatic handgun from Mark Manes, an acquaintance of Phillip Duran, who worked with Harris and Klebold at a pizzeria. That handgun also originated at the Tanner show. Manes’s sale to the boys, however, was illegal, and he was convicted on felony charges of selling a handgun to a minor and sentenced to six years in prison. Duran, who steered the boys to Manes, was convicted of related charges and sentenced to four and a half years. Manes and Duran were also sued by victims’ families and settled for $720,000 and $250,000 respectively. Victims sued the dealers Hartmann and Washington and the gun show’s owner, J. D. Tanner, but they avoided liability. In Colorado as in many states, gun-rights sentiment is strong and gun-control supporters are marginally less reviled than sex predators. Weeks after Columbine, it was business as usual as J. D. Tanner held his gun show—although he did cancel one scheduled for the weekend after the attack. Tanner’s thirty-year-old show, held monthly at Denver’s Merchandise Mart, faced no public protests or disruptions. Tanner told a reporter he couldn’t explain Columbine. “Guns are not to blame, and the ready availability of them is not to blame,” he said. “It’s in the minds of the children . . . I’m not a psychologist.” His dealers, however, were reportedly upset that state legislators were entertaining gun-control measures as a consequence of the school tragedy.10
Principal Frank DeAngelis might reasonably be expected to have strong feelings about gun control. But he doesn’t. “Robyn Anderson, she was eighteen and she actually went down to a gun show and purchased the guns,” DeAngelis says. “And so those laws were in place, so you question some of those laws. If there would have been tougher laws—she wouldn’t get the guns. But some of these others they purchased were purchased illegally from someone else in the community, and that’s where there’s a question of guns laws. If Klebold and Harris wanted to get guns—and I truly believe this—whether you talk about Washington, D.C., and things, if kids want guns they’re gonna get guns. It’s not the law-abiding citizens. Criminals are gonna get the guns.” The flaw in this reasoning is that Harris and Klebold were not “criminals,” even if they’d burglarized a van. They were emotionally disturbed teenagers, not gun-toting drug dealers, and there is a vast difference. It may be true that in our gun-infested culture, criminals will always get guns. It’s also true that gun-control laws make it more difficult for everyone to get guns. The Brady Law requires federally licensed gun dealers to document purchases by conducting background checks on buyers, a significant hurdle for anyone—not just criminals—who does not want to leave a legal paper trail. The law’s loophole permits dealers who are not federally licensed to forgo the process. For Tom Mauser, gun-control laws are speed bumps on the way to dangerous gun use. “In terms of, could they have gotten [guns] somewhere else? The fact is they didn’t,” he says. “It’s the law of odds. How many obstacles are you going to put there? We had a very easy way for someone to buy guns without any records. And that’s what they used. That’s the point. They could so easily get them at the gun show.” For Principal DeAngelis, a neutral stance on guns might be part of surviving what could have been a career-ending disaster.
“I think that Frank says, ‘Well, there’s different points of view,’ because he has to. Anybody who’s in a public position has to be so concerned about how they address the gun issue because the gun lobby is so powerful in this country, and they punish people who step out of line,” says Mauser. “So, if Frank DeAngelis suddenly became a gun-control advocate, I think his job would be at risk. Seriously. How dare you? This isn’t about guns, and you shouldn’t be going there.” We met for breakfast at La Peep, a diner-style restaurant not far from the high school, which was crammed with Saturday morning patrons. Mauser is a Pittsburgh native who made his way to Colorado long ago, married Linda, and raised Daniel and his younger sister. A year after Daniel’s death, they adopted a baby girl from China. Tom works for the state Department of Transportation, where he developed a stand-up persona for all the public presentations he does related to his job. Sort of a wry, Bob Neuhart–style humor with a quirky slide show. “It’s all about timing,” he explains. “You say something about how important safety is, and then click on a picture of a highway worker in a full suit of armor, with the cones next to him and holding a ‘slow’ sign. Things like that.” After Daniel’s death, Tom found a new public persona, speaking out about guns, and he wasn’t kidding around anymore. He’d supported gun control before Columbine, and that year for the first time he’d become active. He wrote letters to his state legislator opposing pro-gun measures, like the concealed weapons bill, in the statehouse. Then came what he calls “an omen.” Shortly before the attack, Daniel was doing research on gun laws for his debate team and talked to Tom about the loophole in the Brady Law—the very one that Harris and Klebold exploited to obtain guns from the gun show. For a grieving father, Daniel’s senseless death was a call to arms for full-throttle activism on gun control.
“What really primed me was the fact that those laws were being promoted,” he says. “On the day of Columbine, the governor of Colorado came to the school and I confronted him. I said, ‘Hey, Governor, here you were promoting these gun laws.’ He said, ‘This isn’t the appropriate time for this.’ He didn’t know I was a victim at that point. But in particular, I was watching a little of the news coverage of Columbine afterwards. I was hearing some of the things that were said, and it was just flabbergasting. ‘If teachers had been armed, this wouldn’t have happened.’” Then, ten days later, Tom’s friend Margie called to say the National Rifle Association was coming to Denver for its national convention. The gun lobby shortened its convention to a one-day event for board business and a few other festivities, eliminating the massive gun show that was the popular draw. But a lot of people, including Denver’s