Brown felt coverage of the shooting underrecognized the role which bullying played and that others at Columbine were downplaying the hostility present at the school.

No Easy Answers focuses on bullying as the proximate cause of Columbine, criticising other common hypotheses such as media violence or anti-religious sentiment.

Its status as a memoir by the friend of a mass murderer is the subject of much of its critical analysis, which recognizes it as a substantial addition to the corpus of Columbine-related literature, but criticises its prose and its focus on bullying to the exclusion of other explanations.

After smuggling a number of improvised explosives onto campus, most of which failed to operate, Harris and Klebold shot and killed twelve students and one teacher before turning the guns on themselves.

[4] The Columbine shooting had significant effects on education, policy, copycat crime,[5] and media and cultural portrayals of school violence.

[18][19][20] He felt coverage of the shooting underrecognized the role which bullying played[15] and that others at Columbine were attempting to "rewrite history" by downplaying the hostility present at the school.

A year prior to the massacre, Brown's parents had reported threats made by Harris against their son to the Jefferson County sheriff's office.

[24] He criticises responses to Columbine based around media violence or gun control, arguing that the former represents an existing demand for such works rather than producing one, and notes that Harris and Klebold were already unable to legally purchase weapons in Colorado.

Harris made death threats against Brown on his personal website, which discussed his homicidal ideations and attempts at building pipe bombs.

When talking to the media in the aftermath of the shooting, Brown focused on bullying and the degree to which he considered the school itself "responsible for creating Eric [Harris] and Dylan [Klebold]".

He describes the school's religious environment as hostile to non-Christians, including to his own Taoist leanings, but distinguishes Scott as "def[ying] every expectation [he] ever had of a Christian".

[28] Brown castigates attempts to view Columbine through an ideological lens, such as Christian coverage of the deaths of Scott and Cassie Bernall, or accusations of racism in the shooting of Isaiah Shoels, the one black victim.

He draws attention to the disruption Stone's claims had on his life, including suspicion from people who already felt his friendship with Harris and Klebold implicated him.

[18][31][32] Brown criticises frameworks where the attack was spurred by cultural factors such as violent video games or media, as well as ideological interpretations such as the presentation of victims like Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall as Christian martyrs.

[33] The version of Columbine High School depicted in No Easy Answers was described by two reviewers as "nothing short of horrific", with severe and persistent bullying that authorities overlooked or participated in.

Brown contrasts this with some statements by other students and teachers in the shooting's aftermath, who—from his point of view—downplayed bullying and depicted Columbine as a healthy social environment.

Evan Todd, a football player at Columbine who was wounded in the shooting, made a statement to Time Magazine that the school was a "clean, good place except for these rejects", who were "a bunch of homos, grabbing each other's private parts" and deserved bullying as subjects of "disgust".

Todd presented bullying at Columbine as a positive, arguing that students who were socially nonconformist or perceived as gay deserved mistreatment.

Peterson and Hoover also posited that a generation gap complicated the investigation of Brown's report, with authorities failing to recognize the seriousness of Harris's online threats.

Peterson and Hoover describe No Easy Answers as "meaning-making", conceptualizing it as essentially part of a public grieving process rather than as an attempt to conclusively explain Columbine.

[15][18][31] Reviews of No Easy Answers upon its release called attention to its content and style; a staff writer for Publishers Weekly described Brown's conversational prose as being "as if he were being questioned by a talk show host".

[18] While reviewers made note of the prominence of bullying in No Easy Answers, several argued that it was insufficient as a full explanation for why school shootings occurred.

He stated in a Salon.com interview in 2004 that he had "come to terms" with Harris and Klebold's actions and wished to focus on other elements of his life, such as his role as a webmaster for a youth-focused internet forum.

The subculture's framework contrasts No Easy Answers with that of works published later or by writers with less personal connection to Columbine, which are believed to be less factually accurate or to "demonize" the shooters.