Why the Crossbow?

While I was reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, I had assumed that Kevin had murdered his victims using a gun, like all of the other school shootings mentioned in the book. Accordingly, I was surprised to find out he had used a crossbow, and wondered why Lionel Shriver would choose to use such a weapon in her novel, when (as far as I know) one has never been used for a school rampage before. I came to the conclusion that its purpose was twofold: to prevent the book’s central focus on Kevin to be overtaken by the issue of gun control, and to demonstrate that murders like these have and probably always will take place.

As Eva points out on page 361, Kevin’s choice of a “mere crossbow” was to prevent him from being “one more poster boy for gun control” and “ensure to the best of his ability that Thursday would mean absolutely nothing.” It’s almost pro forma that school shootings are followed by a reinvigoration of the gun control debate in America. Someone always says that if the kid just didn’t have access to guns, he wouldn’t have gone on this kind of rampage, or at the very least it wouldn’t be as deadly. But Kevin’s use of the crossbow neatly sidesteps this rationale: here is a boy with no access to guns, who uses a “mere crossbow” to commit one of the deadliest shootings on record. It does not completely translate Thursday into an event with a meaning of “absolutely nothing” – but with no gun to focus on, the scrutiny and blame falls more heavily on the boy holding the weapon: Kevin.

 The focus on Kevin and his innate psychopathy, as well as the litany of other school shootings, leads to the conclusion that shootings like these will always be a tragedy of the human race. As Kevin is born, angry and twisted, so are other children. A school shooting is not a unique event, but rather one that has been played out time and time again. If it isn’t a gun, it will be a crossbow or another weapon. It’s not the guns that are to blame but the boys like Kevin who are holding them.