There's been a lot of boo-hooing over the Columbine, CO shooting lately, and much of it is warranted. After all, kids died. And I don't want to downplay the severity of the tragedy. It is awful, and my hearts go out to those innocents whose lives were needlessly cut short. I certainly wouldn't want any of my loved ones to be killed by some enraged high school student. The heinous actions of the shooters obviously point an accusing finger at the lack of parental supervision these kids received (How could you not know your kids were building bombs in the garage! What did they think they were doing? Tidying up?). But many other factors played into this as well. Saying the bad parents are solely at fault is too simplistic. Even taking into account the more violent-laden society we live in doesn't fully explain the slaughter. So I'll try.

Outraged parents are looking to find a cause of this suburban anomaly. A writer at Salon Magazine astutely pointed out that if the shooting had occurred in the 'hood, it would've only been covered on page 12 in the local Denver paper because it wouldn't have surprised anyone. But since it happened in a white school, suddenly it's a morality crisis in America.

Certain overzealous types blame the carnage on video games and want to ban them because a few unstable individuals couldn't distinguish between real life and fantasy life (one of the first signs of psychosis, if I'm not mistaken).

As a former public high school student, I have another possible theory on what caused this angered outburst: Maybe, just maybe, the students that got shot—and I apologize to my parents for this unsavory choice of words—were assholes. WHAT? Am I suggesting that perhaps some of the VICTIMS of this shooting were in part responsible for, or even the cause of, their own demise? Well, like I said, maybe.

The media has depicted the victims as perfect innocents minding their own business when some evil lunatic kids opened fire on them. C'mon, I went to public school and the only kids who were that innocent rode on the short bus and wore hockey gear year 'round. If those kids had been killed, then yeah, I'd buy the blameless kids bit. But the one thing anyone who's ever been through the gauntlet of public education knows is that Darwinism—whether it's taught in the school or not—rules supreme. It's survival of the fittest at its best. The good-looking guys get the good-looking girls. The stronger kids get to extort lunch money from the weaker ones.

When I was a freshman in high school, I stood all of 5'4". And I was hardly what you'd call "stocky". I was just a skinny kid with the glasses. I was the archetypal school-bully victim (I had bullies from other schools lining up to harass me). The only thing I lacked was Einstein-like math skills. There were any number of Neanderthals at my school who, even though they didn't know what Neanderthal meant, knew they could beat me up with impunity and used that limited knowledge to make my life totally suck.

I was the butt of mean-spirited practical jokes and general, all-around juvenile torment. I was in a fight or two, but after losing them, I learned quickly that fighting back only gave them license to really vent their "I'm not a homo" self-denial frustrations—a losing proposition in my opinion. Oh, sure I could've reported their actions to my parents or the school, but then I didn't want to feel what wearing a full-body cast was like. Therefore, conflict avoidance became the way to survive between 9am and 3pm.

But, let's say these kids weren't any good at conflict avoidance. And maybe they thought taking the "Joe Weider" approach of going home, working out and coming back to kick some Bully butt wouldn't work against the entire football team. THEN what?

Well, they'd be stuck. The frustration of the situation could easily make them desperate. Combine that out-of-control feeling with a few handy firearms and pipe-bombs and you've got the makings of a small scale invasion. Sure, killing others seems extreme, but kids have been known to go as far as kill themselves to escape life's problems. Suicide has always been prevalent among troubled teens. These kids just decided to take their problems out with them.

This is not to say that I condone their actions, I don't. Only that I understand where they could have come from. When guys who have all the cards— girls, money, looks, athleticism— make life a living hell for those who don't, society can't seriously expect them to sit there and take it. This IS America, after all. Land of self-sufficient tough guys with big guns who don't get mad, they get even.

Who knows why the kids shot up the school. Did those kids deserve to die? Probably not. Would the shooters beg to differ? I think so. Something pretty bad made those kids mad enough to kill.

Still, maybe some good will come of this tragedy. Maybe the shooters will become martyrs for all the little guys who are beaten up, bullied and ostracized by the big guys. Maybe it will cause spoiled, genetically blessed pricks to think twice (okay, at all): "Hey, this guy I'm tormenting for fun might go ballistic someday and kill me if I give him one more wedgie."

That wouldn't be all bad.