Why Dylan didn't shoot at anyone first time around in the cafeteria?

Well, Davey boy describes it as "Dylan losing his nerve" while the aussie dude on the "Cleaning Columbine" youtube channel speculates it was just a recon mission and Dylan just wanted to see what's with the bombs (are they smoking, did someone put them out etc I guess).

Well, I think niether Cullen nor the CC aussie guy can prove it either way (neither can I) but I think I see a 3rd possible explanation:

Dylan entered the cafeteria, pointed his Tec at someone and nothing happened. He then realized the TEC had jammed again and he's facing a room full of students without a functional weapon. So he quickly moves away trying not to let people know anything went wrong and runs to Eric, hoping nobody jumps him. Then he reloads or cleans the jam while Eric covers him.

That's my theory. Its just speculation, but I think it would explain both why Dylan doesn't fire at anyone and why he seems to have so quickly have ran to Eric after looking into the cafeteria.

Yeah, I don't think he wanted to draw everyone's attention too soon.

I agree with Cleaning Columbine. Dylan didn't know why the bombs hadn't gone off, and it makes sense he would check on them. The bombs where always the first option and priority, shooting was a secondary measure.
It also doesn't make sense that Dylan would have lost his nerve, given that he had just shot Lance Kirklin. By the time he went into the cafeteria he was already a killer, if he had lost his nerve it would have lost it when he was killing Kirklin, not right after.

Until recently, I didn't know he had so much trouble with his tec 9. If only all of their guns could have jammed and failed.

radaddio wrote:

Until recently, I didn't know he had so much trouble with his tec 9. If only all of their guns could have jammed and failed.

Almost all did. I think the stevens shotgun was the only one that didn't jam or malfunction even once. But it took a long time to reload and had just 2 rounds.

The TEC-9 malfunctioned at leats once, with the 50 round clip. Eric's carbine jammed on a round during the ecchange with Gardiner. I can't rememebr where that slug was found, but it seems there was one slug from Eric's shotgun that got mangled and seems Eric had to manually dislodge it from teh gun at some point without firing it (have no idea, maybe he just fumbled with laoding? Who knows). So that just leaves the stevens shotgun.

HUMANE55 wrote:

I agree with Cleaning Columbine. Dylan didn't know why the bombs hadn't gone off, and it makes sense he would check on them. The bombs where always the first option and priority, shooting was a secondary measure.
It also doesn't make sense that Dylan would have lost his nerve, given that he had just shot Lance Kirklin. By the time he went into the cafeteria he was already a killer, if he had lost his nerve it would have lost it when he was killing Kirklin, not right after.

Dylan didn't kill Lance Kirklin. He may have thought he did though

He didn't shoot anyone in the hall either, except Stephanie Munson, which doesn't seem like shooting to kill. It is possible that the Lance Kirklin shooting, his first, unnerved him. He didn't shoot anyone else until after Eric asked him, "Are you with me?"

Yeah, but my point was that by the time Dylan went into the cafeteria, the point of no return had already been crossed, and if he was going to freak out, or lose his nerve, or anything else, it would have most likely happened when he was shooting Lance Kirklin.
Still, there are a million ways to analyze the details and we will never know the right answer, so who really knows?

I'm probably coming across as ignorant but how is it known that he actually aimed or "swept" his gun across fleeing students in the cafeteria? I haven't read every single page of the 11k so forgive my question. Did the cameras not pick this up even after the tape change?

lasttrain wrote:

He didn't shoot anyone in the hall either, except Stephanie Munson, which doesn't seem like shooting to kill. It is possible that the Lance Kirklin shooting, his first, unnerved him.  He didn't shoot anyone else until after Eric asked him, "Are you with me?"

That's always the big question - Did Dylan decide not to shoot to kill, or was he just a poor shot? Given that he did kill several people point blank or near point blank, I'm leaning to the latter explanation. The TEC-9 is an unreliable gun, but once it fires its said to be rather accurate at short ranges.

waste of ammo, the bombs were going to take out that entire room in a short period of time.. or so he thought.. I wish that part of the CCTV wasn't removed, I always wanted to see Dylan walk in and see how people reacted.