America’s Unending Tragedy
LITTLETON, Colo.—Evan Todd, then a sophomore at Columbine High School, was in the library on the day 19 years ago when Eric Harris appeared in the doorway, wielding a shotgun. Harris fired in his direction. Debris, shrapnel, and buckshot hit Todd’s lower back; he fell to the ground and ducked behind a copy machine. Harris fired several more shots toward Todd’s head, splintering a desk and driving wood chips into Todd’s left eye.
Todd listened for several more minutes as Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates, taunting them as they screamed. Todd prayed silently: “God, let me live.”
Then Klebold pulled back a chair and found Todd hiding underneath a table.
He put a gun to Todd’s head. "Why shouldn't I kill you?" he asked.
“I've been good to you,” Todd said.
Klebold looked at Harris. “You can kill him if you want,” Klebold told his teenage co-conspirator.
No one knows why—indeed, no one knows the “why” behind such violence—but that’s when Harris and Klebold left the library. Todd got to live.
Thirteen people did not, though. Today, that’s why Todd supports allowing teachers to have guns in schools. Teachers shouldn’t be to be armed, he says, but if they already have a concealed-weapons permit, and they’re already comfortable using a gun, why not let them have it with them in school, the place they are most of the day,
