Want to make a film on a tough but relevant topic without big time Hollywood backing? So does Columbine survivor Sam Granillo. Over the past four years, he's raised about $30,000 for Columbine: Wounded Minds, a journey into healing the mental scars of those directly affected by Columbine...

You might not think to use the same word to describe Columbine survivor Samuel Granillo, comedienne Whoopi Goldberg and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

But now you can: Kickstarter.

From first-time, amateur filmmakers to the Hollywood establishment, Kickstarter has become a viable funding mechanism for projects at any level. Since its...

In light of the Aurora theater shootings, I have a piece out in the Washington Post on five myths of mass shooters, the first being that "Shooters are Insane."

"Whether [suspect] [Holmes] could invoke an insanity defense will hinge on whether it can be proved that he had...

Amid the tears and reflections, anniversaries surrounding major events often emerge with a storyline.

At least that's the way I've seen the April 20, 1999 Columbine High School shootings, where I was one of the first reporters on scene and ten years later published the book Columbine: A...

Just as headlines from the February 27 Chardon High School shooting begin to fade, the New York Times website carries two articles on what both appear to be adult shootings.

On Thursday, two people were killed at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical...

"Columbine killer Eric Harris wanted to haunt survivors from beyond the grave with flashbacks and drive them insane, he said in a video diary before the killings," - that's how my recent Op-Ed in the Denver Post begins. "As we approach Columbine's 13th anniversary in April, more than...

Chardon High School has at least a couple key things in common with Columbine that might help explain Monday's shooting.

Three students from Chardon, in northeastern Ohio, are dead and two are injured, according to news reports. The suspected shooter has been identified as TJ Lane. According to the

Shots were heard round the world when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School before turning the guns on themselves on April 20, 1999.

Almost 13 years later, Illinois gets to vote on a legacy of the world's most iconic school...

Well, at least two secrets of Columbine.

I will be speaking on Sunday at a Colorado Authors book festival in Denver (free admission). They have given us each six minutes to speak before answering questions, and selling and signing books. Speaking for myself, while it will only be...

Intersections between the Columbine and Norway killings are barely being touched upon so far, but at least one concerns the fiery issue of gun control.

Reporters, understandably, are focused on getting out the details before trying to make sense of them. The New York Times is...

The first shots fired at the Columbine killers came from a deputy sheriff already stationed at the school: school resource officer Neil Gardner. Gardner was not one of the hundreds of law enforcement officers who responded to the campus on April 20, 1999 from across the Denver metro...

Wednesday is the 12-year anniversary of the Columbine shootings. It does not have the massive hype that attended the 10-year, or the one-year. But having covered the shootings from the first hours, I have noticed that almost every Columbine anniversary has its own personality.

Sometimes it is characterized by...

It's hard to read about Saturday's Dutch mall shooting and not wonder about the copycat effect.

Just Thursday a 23-year-old man shot and killed 12 (up from the original 11) in a school in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

In the Netherlands, Reuters reported,

"Dressed in...

HIV and the Third World may be unusual aspects in a Columbine-style school shooting that occurred in Brazil Thursday.

CNN.com and the New York Times appear to agree on most of the story fundamentals: a former student of the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School,...

And the verdict is... schizophrenia.

I thought it would be interesting to survey the various diagnoses to see what experts and others were saying. And I thought there would be a range of opinions, which might point up the futility of such an exercise, but also be a good starting...

Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner shared an unusual legal background, known as diversion, with the Columbine killers, as recounted in the New York Times. It may also be a window into the character trait of these mass shooters.

"In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his...

The suicidal twins from Australia showed us that once again, it comes back to Columbine. Or, as columnist Mike Littwin in the Denver Post put it, "The enduring lesson of Columbine is, of course, that it never goes away."

The story of the 29-year-old sisters promised to be...

While in San Diego I thought, what better thing to do than meet up with the godfather of surfing, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz? Doc is 89, and we almost had to nix our meeting because he was sick.

But when I got to his sunny apartment up the coast from San...

Amidst the rampage that found him firing on colleagues Connecticut shooter Omar Thornton called his mother. "I just killed the five most racist people," he said.

Yet Thornton, who eventually killed himself, first shot and killed eight people. Two others were injured.

So why did Thornton, a...

Maybe the most obvious connection between Columbine and today's shooting at the Hartford Distributors liquor business in Connecticut that reportedly left at least eight dead is that the suspects committed suicide afterwards.

Committing suicide at the end of such rampages is commonplace, and even school shooters...