The Other Columbine Survivor
Via Frank Miniter at Americas1stFreedom
At 11:29 a.m. on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two high school students entered the Columbine High School library. Two teachers, two librarians and 52 students were hiding there.
When they walked into the school’s library, Harris yelled “Get up!” so loudly it can be heard on a 9-1-1 recording at 11:29:18 a.m.
“Fine! I’ll start shooting anyway!” Harris shouted when nobody stood up. He fired a shotgun twice at a desk, not knowing that a student named Evan M. Todd, a 15-year-old sophomore, was hiding beneath it. Todd was hit by wood splinters but not seriously injured.
Todd would hide there for seven minutes before the students-turned-murderers would find him.
Todd now says those seven minutes haunt him even more than what happened when the killers found him. They disturb him so much he has felt compelled to speak out in an effort to find solutions.
“When I was in high school and people came to talk, the students in attendance were always whispering or not paying attention,” he says, “but when I speak about Columbine, students always sit quietly. They feel the seriousness of this. So I try to give them the most honest answers I can.”
After years of speaking out, Todd recently had begun moving on with his life, allowing the speaking opportunities to fade. Then a killer targeted all those children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.
“It brought it all back,” Todd says. “I just want to tell people—just grab them and make them listen—that creating fake ‘gun-free’ zones doesn’t work. Someone needs to be able to physically stop a killer. This means that good people need the right to bear arms.”
The story has been told a thousand times by now, yet it still elicits a strong reaction.
It is still a polarizing issue and we should be glad that people like Todd are taking a stand for gun rights.
Compelling spokespeople like Todd are a huge factor in stopping the anti-gunners from demonizing gun ownership to the point of no return.
Todd could have blamed the police, the school, violent video games, or any number of other things.
Instead, his experiences have taught him the true problem is unnecessary legislation which keeps people from having the means to protect themselves.
The article goes on to offer further examples of how good people bearing arms makes so much more sense than gun restrictions.
Ultimately, it is freedom which stops killers.
