The National Rifle Association has produced a film
which you are sure to find of great interest.
Let's look at it.
- It was the morning of April 20th, 1999.
And it was pretty much like any other morning in America.
The farmer did his chores,
the milkman made his deliveries,
the president bombed another country
whose name we couldn't pronounce.
Out in Fargo, North Dakota,
Carry McWilliams went on his morning walk.
Back in Michigan, Mrs. Hughes welcomed her students
for another day of school.
And out in a little town in Colorado,
two boys went bowling
at six in the morning.
Yes, it was a typical day in the United States
of America.
- Can I help you? - Uh, yeah,
I'm here to open up an account.
- Okay, what type of account would you like?
- Um, I want the account where I can, uh, get the free gun.
- Okay.
- I'd spotted an ad in the local Michigan paper
that said if you opened an account at North Country Bank,
the bank would give you a gun. - You do a CD
and we'll hand you a gun.
We have a whole brochure here that you can look at.
Once we do the background check and everything,
it's yours to go. - Okay. Well, all right,
well, that's the account I'd like to open.
We have a vault, which at all times we keep at least
500 firearms. - Five-hundred of these,
you have in your vault? - In our vault.
- Wow.
- We have to do a background check.
- At the bank here? - At the bank,
which we are a licensed firearm dealer.
- Oh, you are? You're a bank and a licensed firearm dealer.
What do I put for "race"? White or Caucasian or...?
- Caucasian. - Caucasian.
- I knew you were gonna make me spell the... Cau-ca-sian.
Is that right? - Yes.
I don't think that's the part they're gonna be worried about.
"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective
or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?"
I've never been committed to a mental institution.
What does that mean,
"Have I ever been adjudicated mentally defective"?
- It would be something involved with a crime.
So if I'm just normally mentally defective but not criminal...
- Yeah, exactly.
- There you go, Mike. - Okay. Thank you very much. Wow.
- I had one personally-- - That's a nice tension.
- It is and it's a straight-shooter,
let me tell ya.
- Wow. Sweet.
Well, here's my first question: You think
it's a little dangerous, handing out guns in a bank?
- Ten-ho!
- Each gun makes lots of battle sounds.
Just press the trigger, and listen.
- That sounds like a gun battle. Over there.
- Is it real? - Looks like real!
Hey, it sounds like real!
- Right! The Sound-O-Power military and western rifles
by Marx!
- This was my first gun.
I couldn't wait to go outside and shoot up the neighbourhood.
Those were the days. "I was born
"in Michigan
"and I wish and wish again that I was back
"in the town where I was born"
- By the time I was a teenager,
I was such a good shot
I won the National Rifle Association's
Markman award. You see,
I grew up in Michigan,
a gun-lover's paradise.
And so did this man,
the Oscar-winning actor and president
of the National Rifle Association,
Mr. Charlton Heston.
We come from a state where everyone
loves to go hunting.
- Hah. - Even the dogs.
- There were actually two of the hunters at camp.
They thought they'd get a few pictures
of the dog dressed up as a hunter
to kind of just have some fun around camp.
And one of the guys had the idea that,
"Why don't we sling a rifle on the dog's back
to make the pictures a little more interesting.
The victim was kneeling down in front of the dog
when the weapon slipped.
The one round went through the victim's shin,
the right part of his shin,
and came out through the back of his calf.
- Was the dog hauled off for any period of time by the police?
- No, it wasn't. No.
Um, in Michigan, the law basically states
that people can commit crimes that animals
aren't some... form of, uh, you know,
whatever that can commit a crime.
- An animal cannot commit a crime
or be charged with a crime in this state.
- Exactly. - Is it possible that the dog
knew what it was doing? - That, I don't know.
I really wouldn't be able to tell you that.
The dog was cute dressed up as a hunter,
there's no doubt about it. I mean, it was a funny picture,
um, you know, to look at.
It was... it was kind of neat.
- Yup, this was the kind of place I was from.
A box
of 270s. - Coming up.
There you go. - Perfect.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Sorry about that, sorry.
- So I've been discharged.
- You don't need no gun control. You know what you need?
We need some bullet control.
We need to control the bullets, that's right.
I think all bullets should cost $5,000.
$5,000 for a bullet. You know why?
'Cause if a bullet cost $5,000,
there'd be no more innocent bystanders.
[ clapping and cheering ]
Every time
somebody get shot, people are,
"Damn, he must've did something."
See, they put $50,000's worth of bullets in his ass!"
And people'd think before they killed somebody
for a bullet that cost $5,000!
"Man, I would blow your fucking head off --
if I could afford it."
I'm gonna get me another job,
I'm gonna start saving some money, and you a dead man.
You better hope I can't get no bullets on layaway.
- Not far from where Charlton Heston and I grew up
is a training ground for the Michigan Militia.
Why do you use the bowling pins?
- From a self-defence or whatever tactical standpoint,
it's a small target, which also represents
the vitals on a... on a human being,
if you ever had to shoot at one.
- The Michigan Militia became known around the world
when, on April 19th, 1995, two guys living in Michigan
who had attended Militia meetings,
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols,
blew up the federal building
in Oklahoma City,
killing 168 people.
The Michigan Militia wanted everyone to know
that they were nothing like McVeigh and Nichols.
- This is an American tradition.
It's an American responsibility to be armed.
If you're not armed, you're not responsible.
Who's gonna defend your kids, the cops?
The federal government? No, none of them.
It's your job to defend you and yours.
If you don't do it, you're in dereliction of duty,
as an American. Period.
- We're here to let them know we're here to help.
We're not the bogeymen we're made out to be.
We're here to help and defend the people of this country.
- I'm sure you guys are the kind of people
that people would like to have as their neighbour.
If somebody's in need, you're there to help them.
- Pretty much. We're all normal people. We all have regular jobs
and this is what we do on our time.
- What kind of a job do you have? - I'm a draftsman.
- How about you? - Unemployed right now.
- Frank, what do you do for a living?
- I work for a heat trading company.
I drive a truck for 'em. - Okay. How about you?
- I'm a real-estate negotiator - Real-estate negotiator!
- White collar all the way.
- You don't bring that with you, though, do you,
when you're negotiating the real estate?
- No.
- Where do you live, in suburban--
- Westland. - So what do you have
in your home? - Smith & Wesson 9-millimetre.
- Nine-millimetre? - Yeah.
- And how about you? - With hollow points.
- Twelve gage.
- Twelve gage at home? - Yeah.
- How about you? - M-16.
- At home? - Yeah.
At the ready. - I don't agree with that,
'cause you gotta worry about where your arms are going.
- I know where they're gonna go when I aim and shoot.
- Whose idea was the calendar?
- That'd probably be Christian.
- A picture's worth 1,000 words. A) it demonstrates a level
of sophistication that you wouldn't expect out of Militia;
B) you know,
we're people too. - Right.
- And we have a lot of fun with it.
- Right. - There was a fundraiser.
It showed, um, that we're not so serious, you know.
We're not these conspiracy nuts who wouldn't want our pictures
to get out. The idea... it was a fundraiser, you know...
- I've had guns, um...
pretty much since I was old enough to...
to have them. And I learned how to use them, um...
You're silly!
Uh, because being a female, number one,
I felt it was important to be able to protect myself
with the best means possible.
And one of those means is having a gun.
When a criminal breaks into your house,
who's the first person you're gonna call?
Most people will call the police because they have guns.
Cut out the middleman. Take care of your own family yourself.
If you're not going to protect your family, who is?
- We're not racist, we're not extremist,
we're not fundamentalist, we're not terrorists or militants
or other such nonsense. - We're citizens.
- We're just concerned citizens. We have a desire
to fulfil our responsibilities and duties as Americans,
and armed citizenry is part of that.
- What do you grow here? - Right now, there's tofu beans,
soy beans. Tofu-soy beans.
- You're a tofu farmer. - Yeah. Yeah, food farmer.
I'm a food farmer. - Food.
- I grow food for people to eat.
No herbicides, no pesticides on that stuff.
- Right. All natural. - Right.
- Yeah. Better. - Certified organic.
- Uh-huh. Healthier. - Yeah.
Basically, yeah.
This is James Nichols, the brother of Terry Nichols.
James graduated from high school the same year I did,
in the district next to mine.
On this farm in Decker, Michigan,
McVeigh and the Nichols brothers made practice bombs
before Oklahoma City.
Terry and James were both arrested in connection
to the bombing. [ TV news ]: U.S. attorneys
formally linked the Nichols brothers of Michigan
with Oklahoma bomb suspect Timothy McVeigh.
Officials charged James, who was at the hearing,
and Terry, who was not, with conspiring
to make and possess small bombs.
- Terry Nichols was convicted and received a life sentence.
Timothy McVeigh was executed. But the feds
didn't have the goods on James,
so the charges were dropped. - I'm just glad
to be out and free, so I can get on with my life.
- Did Timothy McVeigh ever stay here?
- Yes. Yes. He stayed here several times.
For the longest period, about three months or so, I dunno.
But, uh, he was a nice guy.
- Decent guy? - Oh, yeah.
- They didn't find anything on this farm.
- As to what,
bomb-making material? - Any kind of explosives.
- Uh, yeah, I had blasting caps, dynamite blasting caps,
dynamite fuse, black powder, you know?
For muzzle loaders and... Sure.
Diesel fuel, fertilizer, but, uh, that is normal farm stuff
that is no way connected any way whatsoever to, uh,
the Oklahoma City bombing or bomb making.
Them people - law enforcement, if you wanna call 'em that -
were here and they were shaking in their shoes.
They were physically shaking. Scared to death.
- Of?
- Because they thought this was gonna be another Waco.
Because certain people...
namely my ex-wife and other people,
said I'm a radical, I'm a wild man,
I got a gun under every arm, down every leg and every shoe,
every corner of the house.
You say anything to me, I'll shoot ya.
If the people find out how they've been ripped off
and... and enslaved in this country by the government,
by the powers-to-be...
they will revolt, with anger,
with merciless anger.
There'll be blood running in the streets.
When a government turns tyrannical,
it is your duty to overthrow it.
- Well, why not use Gandhi's way?
He didn't have any guns,
and he beat the British empire.
- I'm not familiar with that.
- Oscoda has a bad habit of raising psychos.
Bad habit of it.
- This is Brent.
And this is his buddy DJ.
They live in Oscoda, Michigan,
across the bay from the Nichols farm.
Eric Harris,
who would later go on to commit the massacre
at Columbine High School in Colorado,
spent part of his childhood here.
Eric lived on the air-force base in Oscoda,
where his dad flew planes during the Gulf War.
Twenty percent of all the bombs dropped in that war
were from planes that took off from Oscoda.
I asked Brent if he remembered anything about Eric.
- I never knew him, but I knew of him.
He left here before I got here. I've only lived here seven years
off and on. - He was about the same age
as you, so you must have people in your class--
- A friend of mine knows him, he was in class with him.
He's lived here all his life.
- I went to school with him and it shocked me to hear it
on the news.
That especially a kid from here would be doing that.
- I didn't last too long in high school.
I got kicked out, I got expelled.
- Why was that? - I had a run-in with a kid
one time and I pulled a weapon on him, I pulled a gun on him.
- What kind of gun? - Nine-millimetre.
I could've made a mess out of that situation.
- Could've been worse. - Could've been a lot worse.
- Could've been Eric Harris. - It could've been.
- So they kicked you out? - Yeah, they kicked me out
for 380 days or 165 days, whatever a full school year is.
- For the longest time, that's what my plan was, to move out
to Colorado. - Colorado?
- 'Cause I've got family out there.
Matter of fact, one of my uncles is a janitor
for Columbine School.
- Really? - Yeah.
- After Columbine, what was it like here in Oscoda?
- My name was second-highest on the bomb list,
because of the reputation you get in this town.
- Why? You mean they did a list of--
- Of suspects. - Of students who potentially--
- Yeah. - ...would call in a bomb threat
after Columbine? - Yes.
- And you were number two on the list?
- I was second or third on the list, yeah.
- Why is that? - Because the whole fact is,
like I said, this town really gets people down.
- Yeah, but why did they single you out?
- Because I was a troubled kid. - You were in trouble in school?
- Oh, yeah. Why did they put you
number two on their list, after Columbine,
of the students that could be a threat?
Come on, there must be a reason. - Well, okay. The thing is,
I have a thing, it's called the "Anarchist Cookbook."
It shows you how to make bombs and stuff like that.
If there's anything that went wrong,
they're gonna come to me first.
And I don't need that. - Just 'cause you owned a copy
of the book? - Just because I own a copy--
- Never made a bomb yourself? - No. Oh, I've made 'em.
It was nothing big; it wasn't even as big as a pipe bomb.
It was just... some make it like a little tennis-ball bomb
or something like that.
Out of the "Anarchist Cookbook," the latest thing I built...
I think, would have to be... I think I made it, like,
about a good five-gallon drum of napalm.
You know, homemade napalm.
- Kids knew that you were doing this?
- Yeah. - So you were number two, then,
on the list. - Right.
- Who was number one? - I don't know.
They never told me that name. Which kind of made me mad.
'Cause I didn't make it to number one.
I know it's kind of silly, but I guess
it'd been kind of an ego thing, knowing that I was number one
at something in Oscoda, even if it was a bomb-threat list.
- Do you believe it was right
to blow up the building in Oklahoma City?
I'm not saying you did it. - No. No, no, no.
- I'm just saying: was it right? - Why was it "blowed up"?
That's a good question. Why was that building "blowed up"?
And who blew it up? - But if someone did it,
it would be wrong. - Yeah.
- It is wrong to take the lives of those people.
- Yeah.
I use the pen. 'Cause the pen is mightier than the sword.
But you always must keep a sword handy, for when the pen fails.
I sleep with a .44 Magnum under my pillow.
- Come on... That's what everyone says.
Is that true? - It's true.
- If we were to go-- - The whole world knows that.
- ...look under your pillow right now, would we see a .44 Magnum?
- Yeah. - Honestly?
Would you take us and show us? Right now?
He took me into his bedroom, but told the cameraman
to stay out. Sure enough,
there was a .44 Magnum under his pillow.
There it is. Okay. Is it loaded?
- Aye-yay-yay.
- Okay. I believe you.
NICHOLS HAS COCKED THE GUN AND PUT IT TO HIS TEMPLE.
[ laughing ] Don't do that!
You put the gun to your head. - I know!
- Jeez! - I'm not gonna get hurt!
- This is loaded. - It's loaded, it's safe.
You've got to pull the trigger, pull the hammer and shoot it.
- Mm, put the hammer back. - No one has a right to tell me
that I can't have it. That is protected
in our constitution. - Where's it say a handgun
is protected? - No, gun. We should...
Every citizen-- - It doesn't say "gun"!
It says "arms." - Arms. What is arms?
- Could be a nuclear weapon. - It's not these-- That's right,
it could be a nuclear weapon! - You think you should have
the right to have weapons-grade plutonium here on the farm?
- We should be able to have anything--
- Should you have weapons-grade plutonium?
- I don't want it. - But should you have the right
to have it if you did want it? - That should be restricted.
- Ah! Ah, so you do believe in some restrictions.
- Well, there's wackos out there.
"Happiness is a warm gun
"Bang bang shoot shoot" [ TV news ]: The town of Virgin,
Utah, has passed a law requiring all residents to own guns.
- Cary McWilliams proudly displays the target
he used to pass his shooting test.
But the thing is, he can't see it.
He's blind.
Cary has had a love affair with guns
since he first got his hands on an M-16 as a teenager.
- I'm actually most comfortable with assault rifles.
- Woo-hoo!
- This is a great place to raise your children.
A really great place to raise your kids.
Very close-knit community we have here.
Everybody looks out for everybody.
- Good people. - Good people.
- This just happens to be a place where two young men
made very bad, very wrong decisions.
And there's been international notoriety as a result of it.
Other than that,
I don't know that Littleton is a lot different
than a whole lot of other suburban communities.
Economic Development P.R. Video
- Good morning, Mr. Edwards, members of the board.
I'd like to report that I've found the perfect location
for our new corporate office, South Metro Denver.
You can see,
I don't need these. Because South Metro Denver
has about the same amount of sunshine and precipitation
as Southern California. It's so incredible,
you're just gonna have to see it for yourselves.
How's this look, Mr. Edwards?
Denny Fennel Home Security Consultant
- We're south of Denver, in a community called Littleton,
and this house is pretty much
your average middle-class suburban home.
The burglar or the rapist is still here
in the neighbourhood somewhere.
And so citizens sometimes think that...
I have people tell me all the time--
- Where exactly is the burglar or rapist right now?
If I was to try and stab you through this, right here,
you're gonna have to be really close. Right?
- And here's the bottom line on this.
- What if I had a spear?
- Now, downstairs is where the safe-room was constructed,
and this is a solid-core door, a very heavy door.
And now, the criminal has to break through this door,
so you've created another barrier.
- An axe would do it. - An axe would do it.
I think that Columbine did a couple of things.
One is that it changed how we talk. That's the first thing.
- How's that? - Well, for instance,
if I say "Columbine," everybody knows what it means.
I don't have to explain to you that Columbine...
- Is... What's wrong? - Nothing, I just...
- What's wrong? - I-- I just...
sometimes Columbine bothers me. I'll be fine. Just a minute.
- That's okay, that's okay. - Um...
There... there's something, um...
something overwhelming about that kind of... viciousness,
that kind of predatory action, that kind of indiscriminate, uh,
killing.
World's Largest Weapons Maker
- This facility, where we're located right now...
Evan McCollum Lockheed Martin Public Relations
and two other major facilities where our employees work
are either in or very near Littleton.
So we have over 5,000 employees at these facilities,
quite a number of whom live in Littleton,
many of whom have children who attend Columbine High School.
I suppose in one way you could say that what happened
at Columbine High School is a microcosm, uh...
of what happens throughout the world.
- You know the signs that we see around here,
the ones that say: "We Are Columbine,"
is that how you, Lockheed Martin, feels,
that you're the biggest employer here in Littleton,
you're the biggest weapons- maker? "We Are Columbine."
- I think we probably embody that spirit,
that, yeah, we're all members of this community
and that it behoves us to help one another and to reach out
to assist one another, yeah.
- He told us that no one in Littleton,
including the executives
at Lockheed, could figure out why the boys at Columbine
had resorted to violence.
- Why would kids do this?
Uh, some of the root of that probably has to do
with their anger about various issues
and we became aware of a program
that provides anger-management training.
And so we made a $100,000 contribution
to the Jefferson County schools to use this training
in the schools. We hope to help both teachers and students
learn alternative ways to deal with anger.
- So you don't think our kids say to themselves:
"Well, gee, Dad goes off
to the factory every day and, you know,
he built missiles." These are weapons of mass destruction.
What's the difference between that mass destruction
and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?
- I guess I don't see that connection,
that specific connection, because the missiles
that you're talking about were built and designed to defend us
from somebody else who would be aggressors against us.
Societies and countries and governments do things
that annoy one another.
But we have to learn to deal with that annoyance
or that anger or that frustration in appropriate ways.
We don't get irritated with somebody
and just 'cause we're mad at them, uh,
drop a bomb or shoot at them, or fire a missile at them.
[ What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong ]
1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran.
U.S. installs Shah as dictator.
1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala.
200,000 civilians killed.
1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.
1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile.
Democratically-elected President Salvator Allende assassinated.
Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed.
5,000 Chileans murdered.
1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador.
70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.
1980's: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets.
CIA gives them $3 billion.
1981: Reagan administration trains and funds "contras". 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
1987: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington.
U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega.
3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
1991: U.S. enters Iraq.
Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
1998: Clinton bombs "weapons factory" in Sudan.
Factory turns out to be making aspirin.
1991 to present: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis.
U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
2000-01: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."
Sept.11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.
[ end of What a Wonderful World ]
[ screaming ]: Oh my goodness! Oh my word!
- South of Denver in Littleton, on the grounds
of the U.S. Air Force Academy,
there sits an actual B-52 bomber.
The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims
that this plane killed Vietnamese people
on Christmas eve, 1972.
It was the largest bombing campaign of the Vietnam War.
Just outside Denver is Rocky Flats
the largest plutonium- weapons-making factory
in the world,
and now a massive radioactive dump.
A few miles away, buried inside a mountain,
is NORAD, which oversees our nuclear missiles,
many of which dot
the Colorado landscape.
And once a month, Lockheed transports one of its rockets,
with its Pentagon payload,
through the streets of Littleton,
passing nearby Columbine High School
on its way to an air-force base
on the other side of Denver.
The rockets are transported in the middle of the night,
while the children of Columbine are asleep.
[ gunfire ]
Largest one day bombing by U.S. in Kosovo war
- Twenty-two NATO missiles
fell on the village of Bogutovac near Kraljevo.
Deadly cargo was dropped upon the residential part
of the village.
- We're striking hard at Serbia's machinery of repression,
while making a deliberate effort
to minimize harm to innocent people.
- On the hit list were a local hospital and primary school.
- We all know there has been a terrible shooting
at a high school in Littleton, Colorado.
I hope the American people will be praying for the students,
the parents and the teachers.
And we'll wait for events to unfold
and then there'll be more to say.
- Jefferson County, 911.
- There's some boy at Columbine High School, someone killed...
- Do you know if anybody's injured?
- Yes. - They've got pipe bombs,
pipe bombs...
- You're shitting me. - I'm not.
- Student hit in the spine at Columbine.
- Okay. - We've got...
- He's shot in the head. - He's shot in the head?
- Deputy cashier's office. - We have automatic weapons,
okay? - Yes.
- All right. Can you get us lots and lots of paramedics?
- So he's still under an attack? - Yes, sir, the school is.
- We got a couple of kids out in the hall that are shot,
so they're trying to get to them. Do not let anybody else in
until we tell them. - Jefferson County 911.
- Hi, it's Izzy Povich at NBC News.
We're calling about the school shooting.
We're on the air live right now on MSNBC.
Can you-- Is that something you could just, literally,
patch through to my desk,
or you could tell us on the air? I could put you through
right now-- - I understand that...
- Now they said he's gone to the library;
he stayed in the building.
He's gone into the library and he's in the building.
- Hi, this is Stephanie Gold from Dateline. How you doing?
- Good, how are you? - Fine, thanks.
- I love your show. - Oh, I'm so glad. Thank you.
- I watch it every night. - Thank you.
- Jefferson County 911. - Yes, I'm a teacher
at Columbine High School. There is a shooter here with a gun.
He just shot out a window. - Has anybody been injured?
- Yes! And the school is in a panic
and I'm in the library. I've got students down.
Under the tables, kids!
Heads under the tables! I saw a student outside!
Okay,
I was on hall duty, I saw a gun! "What's going on out there?!"
He turned the gun straight at us and he shot, and my God,
the window went out.
The kid standing there with me, I think he got hit.
- We've got help on the way, ma'am.
- Oh God! - Stay on line with me.
- Oh God! [ gunfire ]
- I think he's shooting in the library right now.
He's firing shots from the library.
- Firing shots in the library. - ...our way.
Do we need to leave? Okay, hold on.
- ...inside the cafeteria
I'm gonna have to try and get outta here and call you back.
- I called in before, trying to find out
where I'm supposed to go and they put me on hold
for freaking ever! - Hi, it's Wendy at CNN still.
- Hi. We're just taking names and numbers for the press.
- Fox has somebody from your office on now--
- We've talked to a bunch of people
and we can only do so many,
we got so many more calls coming in.
- I gotta get to my daughter at Columbine.
I've been trying for an hour, I can't get anywhere near there...
- Sir, okay, calm down, okay?
- I think we're entitled to information as parents
on where our children are! - We have a lot of units
out there right now. - I can't get anywhere near it.
I wanna find out
how to get in touch with my daughter.
How do I get information on my daughter?
- I don't have that information right now--
- Why in the hell not? It's been over an hour!
- My son is Eric Harris,
and I'm afraid that he might be involved
with the shooting at Columbine High School.
- Involved how?
- He's a member of what they're calling the "trench-coat mafia."
- Have you spoken to your son? - No, I haven't.
Have they picked up anybody yet? - They're still looking
for suspects. Your son is with who? What gang?
- They call them the "trench-coat mafia". I just heard that term
on TV. - Stay low, because if you try
to leave, I don't want you to get shot.
Stay very low and quiet.
Low and quiet...
- Everybody just stay quiet.
- When the shooting was over, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
had killed 12 students and one teacher.
Dozens of others were wounded by the over-900 rounds of ammo
that were fired. It is believed that the guns that they used
were all legally purchased at stores and gun shows.
And many of the bullets were bought
at the Littleton K-Mart just down the street.
- Harris's diary also detailed ideas about hijacking
an airplane and crashing it into New York City.
Some may characterize that as fantasy...
- In the end, they turned the guns on themselves.
- And then he came into the library,
shot everybody around me, then put a gun to my head
and asked if we all wanted to die and...
- We started hearing shots in the hall
and then they came in and they all told us
to get under the desk and we all got under the desk
and then they started coming in the library and opening fire...
- I just started screaming and crying and telling them
not to shoot me. And so he shot the girl,
he shot her in the head in front of me.
Then he shot the black kid, because he was black.
- I have only five words for you:
From my cold, dead hands.
[ cheering ]
- Just 10 days after the Columbine killings,
despite the pleas
of a community in mourning,
Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally
for the National Rifle Association.
- Good morning. [ crowd ]: Good morning.
Thank you all
for coming and thank you for supporting your organization.
I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today.
I have a message from the mayor,
Mr. Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver.
[ booing ]
- No, no, no, no, no.
He sent me this,
and it says: "Don't come here. We don't want you here."
I said to the mayor, "This is our country.
As Americans we're free to travel wherever we want
in our broad land." [ applause ]
Don't come here? We're already here.
[ cheering ]
- I am here today...
because my son Daniel would want me to be here today.
If my son Daniel was not one of the victims,
he would be here with me today.
Something is wrong in this country...
when a child...
can grab a gun... grab a gun so easily...
and shoot a bullet...
into the middle of a child's face, as my son experienced.
Something is wrong.
But the time has come to come to understand
that a Tech-9 semi-automatic 30-bullet weapon
like that that killed my son,
is not used to kill deer.
It has no useful purpose.
It is time to address this problem.
- We have work to do, hearts to heal,
evil to defeat and a country to unite.
We may have differences, yes,
and we will again suffer tragedy almost beyond description.
But when the sun sets on Denver tonight,
and forever more, let it always set on we the people,
secure in our land of the free and home of the brave.
I, for one, plan to do my part.
Thank you.
[ cheering and clapping ]
- Or like when they had their convention in Colorado,
a week, whatever, the month after Columbine,
that was just stupid. Just don't do that.
Of course you have "the right to," but what are you doing?
Upsetting a whole city full of people, why would you do that?
- This is Matt Stone. He grew up in Littleton
and has fond memories of Columbine.
- Yeah, Columbine, it's just a crappy school
in the middle of a bunch of crappy houses.
- Matt and his friend Trey Parker
found a way to take out
their anger of being different in Littleton
and turn it not into carnage, but into a cartoon.
"Just another Sunday morning In my quiet...
"Mountain town"
[ music ]
"You can see your breath Hanging in the air
"You see homeless people But you just don't care
"It's a sea of smiles In which we'd be glad to drown
"It's Sunday morning In our quiet little
"White-bread redneck mountain town"
- Columbine is a normal high school--
- Yeah. - ...in a normal suburb--
- Yeah. - ...you know, basically.
- Yeah. Painfully, painfully, painfully normal.
Just absolutely, painfully, horribly average.
Littleton in general is...
I remember being in sixth grade and I...
had to take the math test to get into Honors Math
in the seventh grade. And they're, like,
"Don't screw this up. Because if you screw this up,
you won't get into Honors Math in seventh grade.
And if you don't get in in seventh grade,
you won't in eighth grade, then not in ninth grade.
And 10th and 11th grade and you'll just die poor
and lonely." And that's it, you know?
You believe, in high school - and a lot of it is kids,
but the teachers and counsellors and principals
don't help things. They scare you into conforming
and doing good in school by saying: "If you're a loser now,
you're gonna be a loser forever."
So that with Eric and Dylan, people called them "fag."
They're like, "You know what?
If I'm a fag, now I'm a fag forever."
And you wish someone just could've grabbed them and gone,
"Dude, high school's not the end of...
A year, a year and a half, was it? I don't even know.
You just move out-- - No, no, they were two weeks
away from graduation. - Yeah, you're done.
It's amazing how fast you lose touch with all those people.
They just beat it in your head as early as sixth grade:
"Don't fuck up. 'Cause if you do,
you're gonna die poor and lonely.
You don't want to do that." You're, like, "Fuck,
whatever I am now, I'm that forever." Of course,
it's completely opposite. All the dorks in high school
go on to do great things and all the really cool guys
are all living back in Littleton as insurance agents.
Almost person to person, it's completely that way.
If somebody could've told them that,
maybe they would've have done it, but...
- I guess we'll never know why they did it,
but one thing adults should never forget:
It still sucks being a teenager.
And it really sucks going to school.
- What's your view on high school?
- Uh, I love it.
Columbine Student Video
Uh, I learn, I get picked on by bastards who hate me,
and the principal's a dick.
- All right. What causes school violence?
- Uh... him.
- Him? - Yeah.
- Yes, and after Columbine, it really sucked
being a student in America.
[ TV news ]: Since last spring's shooting,
at Columbine High, schools nationwide
have extended zero-tolerance policies,
suspending and expelling students for all kinds
of behaviour considered unruly,
or warning signs of violence to come.
This second-grader in Illinois was suspended for 10 days
for bringing a nail clipper to class
"That's a weapon," his school said.
- An elementary school suspended a first-grader
for pointing a chicken strip at a teacher in the cafeteria.
The eight-year-old was fooling around with a friend
at lunch last week when he pointed a breaded-chicken finger
at a teacher and then said: "Pow pow.
- He pointed a folded piece of paper shaped like a gun,
and told his classmates he was going to kill them
during a game of cops and robbers.
- If this isn't a warning sign, then what is it?
- This Virginia high-school student spent a month
out of classes, originally sent home
for dying his hair blue. - A high-school honour student
from Michigan could be expelled later today
in a school-board hearing.
Seventeen-year-old Jeremy Hicks wore a Scottish
bagpiper's outfit to his junior prom that included
a plaid kilt, a feathered hat and a traditional knife
known as a "skein dhu."
- This T-shirt
landed a high-school student in court.
She wanted to start an anarchy club.
- The little time-bombs that are out there ticking,
waiting to go off. And there are many of them in every community.
- Students in at least seven different states
have been suspended or arrested
for talking about or planning plots of their own.
- It's almost like guerrilla warfare.
You don't know from which direction
the enemy will be coming.
Marketing video from Garrett Metal Detectors
- Having a well-conceived and strictly enforced dress code
can dramatically improve the safety of a school,
and can ensure a positive learning environment
for everyone.
As this student's appearance demonstrates,
having a lax policy about dress makes it easy
for a student to conceal a weapon
and makes it difficult to identify intruders on campus.
A dress code can reduce weapons violations,
relieve tensions between gangs, reduce disciplinary infractions
and generally improve the atmosphere of the school.
Our policy requires that students tuck in their shirts,
making the beltline visible at all times.
Our students may not wear baggy pants
or colours or insignias that are commonly associated
with gang activity.
This policy was a collaborative effort.
- Yes, our children were indeed something to fear.
They had turned into little monsters.
But who was to blame?
All the experts had an answer.
- Angry, heavy-metal subculture.
- Where were the parents? - Violent movies.
- "South Park." - Video games. - Television. - Entertainment.
- Satan. - Cartoons. - Films. - Society. - Toy guns.
- Drugs. - Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson.
[ all ]: Marilyn Manson.
- Marilyn Manson has cancelled the last five dates
of his U.S, tour out of respect for those lost in Littleton.
But the singer says artists like himself
are not the ones to blame.
- This is perhaps the sickest group ever promoted
by a mainstream record company.
"I'm not a slave
"to a god
"that doesn't exist"
- After Columbine, it seemed
that the entire focus on why the shootings occurred
was because the killers
listened to Marilyn Manson.
Two years after Columbine,
Manson finally returned to Denver.
- The Oz Fest at Mile High Stadium
brings shock-rocker Marilyn Manson to Denver tomorrow.
- There were protests from the religious right.
But I thought I'd go and talk with him myself.
- When I was a kid growing up, music was the escape.
That's the only thing
that had no judgements. You can put on a record
and it's not gonna yell at you for dressing the way you do.
It's gonna make you feel better about it.
- Some will be so brash to ask if we believe
that all who hear Manson tomorrow night
will go out and commit violent acts.
The answer is "no." But does everybody
who watches a Lexus ad go and buy a Lexus?
No. But a few do.
- I definitely can see why they would pick me,
because I think it's easy to throw my face on a TV,
because I'm, in the end, sort of a poster boy for fear.
Because I represent what everyone's afraid of,
because I do and say what I want.
- If Marilyn Manson can walk into our town and promote hate,
violence, suicide, death, drug use
and Columbine-like behaviour,
I can say, "Not without a fight, you can't."
- The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, uh...
violence in entertainment and gun control.
And how perfect that that was the two things
that we were gonna talk about with the upcoming election.
And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky
and we forgot about...
The president was shooting bombs overseas,
yet I'm a bad guy because I sing some rock'n'roll songs.
And who's a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson?
I'd like to think me, but I'm gonna go with the president.
- Do you know the day that Columbine happened,
the United States dropped more bombs on Kosovo
than any other time during that war?
- I do know that and I think that's really ironic,
that nobody said, "Well, maybe the president had an influence
on this violent behaviour.
Because that's not the way the media wants to take it
and spin it and turn it into fear.
'Cause then you're watching television,
you're watching the news; you're being pumped full of fear.
And there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder.
You cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate.
If you have bad breath, they're not gonna talk to you.
If you got pimples, the girl's not gonna fuck you.
It's a campaign of fear and consumption.
And that's what I think that's it's all based on,
is the whole idea that: keep everyone afraid,
and they'll consume. And that's really as simple
as it can be boiled down to. - Right.
If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine
and the people in that community,
what would you say to them, if they here right now?
- I wouldn't say a single word to them.
I would listen to what they have to say.
And that's what no one did.
- I'm Nicole Shleif. - And I'm Amanda Lamontagne.
- And you went to Columbine? - Yes.
- And you were with Eric and Dylan?
In their class? - Yeah,
we were in their bowling class. - In their bowling class?
- Yes. - What's bowling class?
- Just an elective you can take for a gym credit.
- Where's the educational value of this, though?
- Um... I guess there isn't really any.
- No, there's not.
- I learned how to bowl a lot better, that's for sure.
- What were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold like?
- Weird. - Yeah?
- I mean, not very social.
- I didn't really know who they were.
- Not very social, just kinda kept to themselves.
- How good a bowlers were Eric and Dylan?
- When we played them,
all I remember is they were just, like, crazy.
They would just chuck the ball. - Chuck it down there.
- Throw the ball down; didn't really care how they bowled.
- Yeah, they didn't really care about their scores.
Deputy Sheriff Steve Davis - What were the suspects doing the morning of attack?
I told you that I'd heard that they were bowling;
that's the only thing I'm aware of.
- So did Dylan and Eric show up that morning
and bowl two games before moving on
to shoot up the school?
And did they just chuck the balls down the lane?
Did this mean something?
- Um, I guess they went to their favourite class.
- Why wasn't anyone blaming bowling
for warping the minds of Eric and Dylan
to commit their evil deeds?
Wasn't that just as plausible as blaming Marilyn Manson?
After all,
it was apparently the last thing they did
before the massacre.
But wait a minute. There's lots of bowling going on
in other countries.
And don't they listen to Marilyn Manson in Germany,
the home of sinister Goth music?
- Some Gothic festival. "Ah"
- Don't they watch the same violent movies in France?
Most of the violent video games are from Japan.
Many people in America believe
that it's the break-up of the family unit
that's caused so many wayward youth to turn to violence.
- I'll save you the trouble. I'll run away and kill myself!
How would you like that? You can't keep me here!
- But statistics show
that there are more broken homes and divorce
in Great Britain than in the U.S.
- It's official: Fergie's marriage has ended.
- Liberals contend that it's all the poverty we have in America
that causes all this violence.
But the unemployment rate in Canada
is twice what it is here. Of course, most people say
it's because we Americans have a violent history,
a violent past. Cowboys and Indians,
the Wild West,
a history of conquering and bloodshed.
Well, if that's all it takes to end up
with such a violent society
like we have in America, how do you explain this?
GERMANS EXTERMINATE 12 MILLION
JAPANESE OCCUPATION OF CHINA
FRENCH MASSACRE IN ALGIERS
BRITISH SLAUGHTER IN INDIA
Yet in spite of all this,
how many people are killed by guns each year?
In Germany:
In France:
In Canada:
In the United Kingdom:
In Australia:
In Japan:
In the United States:
- But that, to me, brings up an important question:
Then what is so different about Americans?
Tom Mauser Father of Columbine victim
Are we homicidal in nature?
Because in Europe and Australia,
most other free-world countries, they don't have this.
They don't have people who snap and go on murderous rampages.
- Well, no, they're just like us. They have the occasional person
that snaps and kills a lot of people.
How about a British soccer riot? Those aren't Quakers there,
- Every time that I bring up comparisons
with other free-world countries, what I hear is:
"Oh, our culture is so different. We're so different."
And as you said, they have violent video games,
they have violent movies, they have alienated youth,
they - like us - don't have prayer in schools.
What is so radically different? What is it about us?
- What is it? - What is it?
I don't know.
- Now, it's time for...
Hi, boys and girls. Ready to get started?
Once upon a time, there were these people in Europe
called pilgrims and they were afraid of being persecuted.
So they all got in a boat and sailed to the New World
where they wouldn't have to be scared ever again.
- Oh, I'm so relaxed. - I feel so much safer.
- But as soon as they arrived, they were greeted by savages.
They got scared all over again. - Injuns!
- So they killed them all. Now, you'd think
wiping out a race of people would calm them down, but no.
Instead, they started getting frightened of each other.
[ both ]: Witch! - So they burned witches.
In 1775,
they started killing the British, so they could be free.
And it worked. But they still didn't feel safe.
So they passed a 2nd amendment, which said every white man
could keep his gun. - I loves my gun, loves my gun.
- This brings us to the genius idea of slavery.
You see, boys and girls, the white people back then
were also afraid of doing any work. So they went to Africa,
kidnapped thousands of black people, brought them to America,
and forced them to work very hard for no money.
And I don't mean no money like:
"I work at Wal-Mart and make no money."
I mean zero dollars. Nothing, nada, zip.
Doing it that way made the USA
the richest country in the world.
So did having all that money and free help
calm the white people down? No way. They got even more afraid.
That's because after 200 years of slavery,
the black people now outnumbered the white people in many parts
of the South. Well, you can pretty much what came next.
The slaves started rebelling. There were uprisings
and old masters' heads got chopped off
and when white people heard of this, they were freaking out.
They going: - I want to live!
Don't kill me, big black man.
- Well, just in the nick of time came Samuel Colt, who,
in 1836, invented the first weapon ever that could be fired
over and over without having to reload.
And all the settlers were, like: - Yee-hah!
- But it was too late. The North soon won the Civil War
and the slaves were free to go chop the old masters' heads off.
Then everybody was, like: - Oh, no, we're gonna die.
- But the freed slaves took no revenge.
They just wanted to live in peace.
But you couldn't convince the white people of this.
So they formed the Ku Klux Klan and, in 1871,
the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization,
another group was founded: the National Rifle Association.
Soon, politicians passed one of the first gun laws,
making it illegal for any black person to own one.
It was a great year for America. he KKK and the NRA.
Of course, they had nothing to do with each other;
it was a coincidence. One group legally promoted responsible
gun ownership; the other shot and lynched black people.
That's the way it was till 1955, when a black woman
broke the law by refusing to move to the back of the bus.
White people just couldn't believe it.
- Huh? Why won't she move? - What's going on?
- Man, all hell broke loose. Black people everywhere demanded
their rights. White people had a major, freaky-feel meltdown
and they were all, like: - Run away! Run away!
- And they did. They all ran fleeing to the suburbs,
where it was all white and safe and clean. And they went out
and bought a quarter-of-a-billion guns.
And put locks on their doors, alarms in their houses,
and gates around the neighbourhoods.
And finally, they were all safe and secure and snug as a bug.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
- Because if you turn on the evening news,
America still seems like a pretty scary place.
- Who is he? Is he dangerous? What's he up to?
- What are you trying to pull, man?
- Remember all the Y2Kscares?
Weren't we told that our very society was about to collapse
because somebody forgot
to type in a couple of digits on the computer?
- There's gonna be mass chaos and confusion.
- Tonight, the countdown begins.
All day, store director Rick Smith
watched consumers get Y2K ready. - Batteries sell extremely well.
The lamp oil, generators.
- After sending the country into a panic,
the clock struck midnight...
And nothing happened.
Or how about those killer bees
that were going to attack America?
- We're almost certain they'll arrive this year.
- Shmidt expects the Africanized bees to reach Texas this year,
cross into Arizona in about two to three years.
He's concerned because the killer bee is overly aggressive.
- They will follow you for half a mile.
- The bees never came.
Remember the first time you heard
that someone had hidden a razor blade in an apple at Halloween?
Before long,
kids were not permitted to go out in the dark on Halloween
and go trick-or-treating at strangers' homes.
- Many people say they won't give out candy treats on Halloween.
It's too dangerous and they're too scared.
- Well, guess what?
There never was any razor blade in the apple.
In fact, only two kids
in the past 40 years have been killed by Halloween candy.
And both of them were poisoned on purpose by relatives.
- Bye.
[ reporter]: It was like a scene from a horror movie.
This man was mowing his lawn when a fox darted out
of the woods and attacked his riding-mower.
- A warning about a popular weight-loss supplement.
What you don't know may kill you.
- You ride them every day, but in an instant,
an escalator can mangle you or a loved one.
- We reveal why you may be riding on stairway to danger.
- You might want to take some extra precautions:
keep a low profile, don't go around dancing
with a bunch of Americans in the streets.
Make sure that you don't draw a lot of attention to yourself
and the fact that you're American.
- Nation's top doctor says one in five Americans
suffers some form of mental disorder.
The surgeon general David Satcher pleads with people
to seek help now.
- The media, the corporations, the politicians,
have all done such a good job of scaring the American public,
it's come to the point where they don't need to give
any reason at all.
- Today, the Justice Department did issue a...
a blanket alert.
It was in recognition of a general threat we received.
Uh, this is not the first time
the Justice Department have acted like this.
I hope it's the last.
But given the attitude of the evildoers, it may not be.
- I just love these boulevards down here, though.
You don't get this in most of L.A.
South Central Los Angeles
- How come whenever I'm out here, though,
I turn on the 11-o'clock news and I hear, you know:
"Tonight in South Central, drive-by shooting."
Or: "Tonight in South Central..."
Prof. Barry Glassner Author, "The Culture of Fear"
...this, that or whatever. I mean, they're not making that up, are they?
- No, they're not making it up, but they're choosing
what they're covering. If you turn on the TV, on the news,
what are you gonna hear about?
Dangerous black guys, right? Unnamed black guy who, you know,
accused of some crime or... - Right.
- You're gonna see pictures of black guys doing bad things,
and hearing stories about black guys doing bad things.
And we've heard this our whole lives.
- Now, the suspect is a black male in his twenties.
We are told he has a large afro, sideburns,
he was wearing a silver chain at the time.
- Police say the suspect is a black man.
Six foot one, 160 to 180 pounds, about 35 years in age.
- Suspect is a black male, age 16 to 18.
- The suspect is African-American.
Police believe-- - Police say--
- The black man-- [ several ]: Suspect--
- The suspect is a black male - A black man.
[ various voices ]: A black... black... black...
- A black man.
- Susan Smith drowns her two children.
She tells people a black guy... - Correct.
- Stole the car and stole the kids.
And everyone, at first, bought it.
- Some guy jumped into her car, with her two kids in it.
Then he took off. That's a black guy, she says.
- Black male? - Yes, Ma'am.
- And I told them I loved them. I hollered I loved them
And it's just a tragedy.
- The anonymous urban - which means usually black -
male, comes by and does this.
It's the excuse for all kinds of things.
- Charles Stewart, a lawyer in Boston...
- Right, exactly. - ...kills his pregnant wife,
says a black guy did it; everybody buys it.
- The suspect described as a black male about six feet tall.
Chuck and Carol Stewart were robbed at gunpoint
as they left a Lamaze class.
It seemed the ultimate urban nightmare.
- You know, the thing I love about this country of mine,
is that whether you're a psychotic killer
or running for president of the United States,
the one thing you can always count on
is white America's fear of the black man.
- We've heard the stories on the news and in the papers
and they have killed people.
Killer bees, also known
as "Africanized" bees.
- I'm scared. I'm really worried.
- Rose Shipley never expected a nest of Africanized killer bees
to shack up across the street from her.
- But I'm terribly allergic to them and so are my grandkids.
- They're originally from southern and eastern Africa.
Dr. Warrick Care brought some to Brazil in 1956
and tried to mate them
with the European bee, the kind that we're used to.
But they got loose and moved to the southern United States.
- The main difference between a traditional honey bee
and an Africanized bee is the bee's aggressiveness.
If I was to do this to an Africanized bee's hive,
I could have several hundred stings in a matter of minutes.
- Danny Self raises the kinder, gentler European bees,
and he's done the research.
- The only way that you can tell
the two of them, is doing measurements on the body parts.
- Quite frankly, the black community has become
entertainment for the rest of the community.
- Meaning what?
Arthur Busch County Prosecutor - Flint, Michigan
- The entertainment being that the crime of the day -
you know, "If it bleeds, it leads" -
gets to be the front story and then that becomes the perception
and the image of an entire people.
Which couldn't be further from the truth, in my opinion.
In fact, you'll find, I think,
most African-Americans are quite adverse to gun possession.
In suburbia, I think,
there's some notion that there's going to be an invading horde,
come from either the city or from someplace unknown,
to savage their suburban community.
To me, not only is it bizarre, but it's totally, uh...
unfounded.
And these pistols, curiously enough,
weren't being taken off kids in the city of Flint,
but were being taken off of kids out in the out-county area,
in the suburban communities. And--
- I didn't think that's what you were gonna say.
I thought you were gonna say that it's all these black kids
in the inner-city schools that had these guns.
- No, that's...
We've never really had many problems with guns in the city.
Not to say that we haven't; we've had some.
But that's never been the biggest problem.
The biggest problem has been the gun possession
by these adolescents in suburbia.
- How'd you get a gun?
- I stole mine. I stole it from a friend of mine.
His dad owns a bunch of guns.
- What we're you doing with the stolen guns?
- We went down to Detroit and started selling them.
'Cause I can get, like, a buck fifty a pop for a 9-millimetre.
- Oh, really. Who were you trying to sell them to?
- Anybody that would really want 'em. Gangs and stuff like that.
- Gangs in the city of Detroit? - Yeah.
- Black? - Uh, predominantly. Yeah.
- Yeah. So now you're out now, you're okay.
- Yeah, I'm free now. I'm completely clear.
- You can keep selling guns. - I can't keep selling guns.
It's getting too risky. Everybody knows me up here.
People want guns, drugs or alcohol, they come to my house
and that's just too much.
- Yeah, too much hassle. - Yeah.
- My favourite statistic in all the research I did discovered
that the murder rate had gone down by 20%. The coverage -
that is, how many murders are on the evening news -
it went up by 600%.
- The American people are conditioned by network TV,
by local news,
to believe that their communities are
much more dangerous than they actually are.
For example, here, in this community,
crime has decreased every year for the past eight years.
Yet, gun ownership, particularly handgun ownership,
is on the increase.
- Crime rates have been dropping, dropping, dropping.
Fear of crime has been going up, up, up.
How can that be possible? It doesn't make any sense.
But it makes perfect sense when you see what we're hearing
from politicians and seeing in the news media.
- So we're, uh, we're right here
on the corner of Florence and Normandie.
It's kind of Ground Zero for the L.A. riots.
- Right.
- You know, if a couple of white guys
would go down and walk around South Central,
they're gonna get killed.
Which I can tell you is a common perception.
The odds that something's going to happen to us
are really, really slight.
Minuscule. - Right. Okay.
- But you know, if you look up there,
you get a different symbol of the Hollywood sign.
It means something very different
than the corner of Florence and Normandie.
For most Americans and most of the world,
it means glamour and Hollywood, except that we can't see it.
- I can't see the Hollywood sign. Where is it?
- Right. You can't see it because of something that's probably...
much more dangerous for us right now,
which is the stuff we're breathing.
- The pollution that's blocking the Hollywood sign,
we're breathing this.
That's far more dangerous than all the other stuff the media's
telling us to be afraid of. - Right.
- As we left the corner of Florence and Normandie,
I noticed that a number of helicopters
had appeared in the sky.
Within seconds, the news media
started to arrive. - So what's the story here?
- I'm waiting. I thought you would know.
- No, I don't know anything.
- The Sergeant just told me there's a guy with a gun.
But they're not sure. That's all they told me.
Since there's no action, I'm not getting my camera down.
- I just happened to see the chopper, going to another story.
- What story are you going to? - It's a near-drowning.
- It's a drowning? - A near-drowning.
- How about a story about how you can't see
the Hollywood Hills because of the pollution?
Could you maybe do a story on that tonight?
- Pollution, that's rather good. I find that good.
You can't see it. You can't see anything around here.
- If you have to choose between a guy with a gun
and a near-drowning of a baby - you could only be one place--
- I go with the gun. - You go with the gun, always.
Is it all over, here? It's all over? All over?
- Not yet, not yet. - Looks like it.
- Just wait for these sergeants down here to come down,
'cause they got all the details.
- Okay. Hey, I was just wondering -
I just got here to L.A. today - I can't see the Hollywood sign,
down on the hills there, down Normandie.
You can't see the sign 'cause of the pollution.
- Right. - Is there anybody you can arrest
for polluting up the air? - Absolutely not.
- Nobody? - No.
- Why is that?
Why is that, Sergeant?
- He's fighting!
- For over a decade,
there has been one show on American television
that has consistently brought black and white people together
in an effort to reduce our fears
and celebrate our diversity.
That show is Cops.
I went to see a former producer of "Cops"
and executive producer
of World's Wildest Police Videos:
Mr. Dick Herland.
- Look "liberal" up in the dictionary
and I think my picture's in there somewhere,
- So then, you know, why not be compelled to do, you know,
a show that focuses on, you know, what's causing the crime,
as opposed to just chasing the criminals down?
- Because I think it's harder to do that show.
I don't know what that show would be.
Anger does well, hate does well, violence does well.
Tolerance and understanding and trying to learn to be
a little different than you were last year does less well.
- Does less well in the ratings. - Oh yeah.
- Maybe because we, in the television business,
because we tend to demonize black and Hispanic people,
then those watching it at home are going:
"I don't want to help those people.
I'm not going to do anything to help them.
Because I hate them now, because they may hurt me."
You know what I'm saying? - I know what you're saying,
I'm not sure that's what we're doing.
I'm not sure we're demonizing
black and Hispanic people, uh... particularly.
I don't think we show black and Hispanic people
as being criminals.
I'd like to say not more often,
but probably they are more often.
But I certainly don't think... We're certainly not trying
to demonize black and Hispanic people.
- We show them on the news, we show them on TV,
as pretty scary people.
- Yeah.
And I agree. I'd like to see that reversed
as much as possible. I...
- Start tonight. - Well, the thing is,
I don't know how to start tonight.
I don't know how to tell that story.
If I was smart enough to do that...
- I'll pitch you one. - Okay. All right.
- Um... um...
Do a show called not Cops but Corporate Cops.
"Corporation man Hey Corporate man
"We're coming out to get you better run while you can
"We're coming out to get you better run while you can"
- Uh... I love the idea.
I don't think it would make very interesting reality TV.
Unless we can get those people to get in their SUVs
and drive really fast down the road away from the police.
- But I'm telling you, everyone in America
who's got just your basic, everyday job
is gonna love watching the boss
being chased down the street with his shirt off,
thrown to the ground
and a knee to the neck. I tell you, that is gonna get ratings.
- Yeah, I'm with you. And if I can find a police outfit
that would prosecute corporate criminals appropriately
and would go after them appropriately... In other words,
what you do to a man who's just stolen a lady's purse
with $85 to it,
than you need to do an appropriate response
to a man who has just stolen $85 million from indigent people,
then, boy, we're gonna be out there filming that.
But as a matter of fact, when police go after the guy
who's just stolen $85 million,
they treat him like he was a member of the city council -
as he may or may not be - and it's not exciting television.
If you could get that guy to take his shirt off...
- Right.
- Yeah, and throw his cellular phone at the police
as they come through the door,
try to jump out that window, then we'd have a show.
- You watch violence on TV in a place like Canada
and you know it's not happening next door.
You watch it here, and you know it is happening next door.
- Right. - I think that's...
I don't know what the difference is,
but there's a big difference. - Yeah, but why isn't...
Why isn't it happening in Canada?
Why aren't there, you know, 10,000 murders a year?
- I don't know, but I want to go to Canada to retire,
or something, 'cause it sounds like where we want to be.
I'd like to find out what that difference is. Wouldn't you?
- Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to find out.
Where are you supposed to be right now?
- School. - School.
- Aren't you worried about what you're not learning?
- Nah, I'm mostly helping everybody else in the class.
Then I barely get to do my work. - How about you? You're not
worried about your education? - Well, I've got the textbook.
- Why do you think we have so many, uh...
gun murders in America? - Uh...
I have no idea. People must hate each other or something.
- Oh, you mean Canadians don't hate each other?
- Well, we do but we don't go to the point of shooting somebody
just to get revenge. - What do you do?
- I don't know. Tease them, maybe.
Make fun of them, ridicule them. - Throw eggs at them.
- How many gun murders in Sarnia this year?
- None. - Last year?
- I believe we had one, at the time.
- The year before that?
- I can't recall what we had in the way of--
- Maybe one in the last three years?
- Probably, yes. - Mm-hm.
- Very low. Very low for this city.
- Well, of course, there's no murders here
because there's only 70,000 people
and it's the kissing capital of the world.
So I went down the river to another Canadian city
that was five times as large as Sarnia:
Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit.
I was sure there'd be more murders in Windsor.
Ever hear of anyone being shot by a gun in Windsor?
- No. No.
- You remember any murders here?
- Uh, there was one a long time ago. Probably--
- How long ago? - Oh...
- In your lifetime? - In my lifetime,
probably around 15, 20 years ago, there was one murder.
- In fact, this Windsor policeman told me
that the only gun murder
he could recall in Windsor in the last three years
was committed by a guy from Detroit,
who had a stolen gun from Minnesota.
With nearly 400,000 people in the Windsor area,
there were simply no Canadians shooting other Canadians.
I thought it might be time
for some fun facts about Canada.
I hit the streets of New York to find out what
the average American thought about our friendly neighbour
to the north.
- Canadians don't watch as much violent movies as Americans do.
- That's wrong.
Hordes of young boys, all throughout Canada,
eagerly await the next Hollywood bloodbath.
- Then one of the guy gets his leg taken off.
- Oh, wow! - And there was a lot of girls,
and naked at one point. - I like that stuff.
- What movie did you see tonight? - Sixth Day.
- With Arnold Schwarzenegger? - Yeah.
- Did it make you want to come out here
and play this shoot-'em-up game?
- Well... yeah.
- There's no poverty in Canada like there is here...
in the States.
- Wrong again.
Mayor Mike Bradley Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
- Actually, we've also had a much higher unemployment rate.
When Michigan rate was running at 4%, we were still at 8-9%,
We seem to have an institutional unemployment rate.
- I think there'd mostly be white people in Canada.
- Hmm... that's strange, 'cause when I'm in Canada,
I see black people everywhere.
And yellow people, and brown people...
and 13% of the country is non-white.
So the Canadians are
pretty much just like us. And the reason that they have (Toronto, Canada)
so few murders has to be because they've got
so few guns.
What kind of guns do you own? - Uh, I hunt.
I own rifles and shotguns, and I own pistols.
- Mm-hm. So how many guns total? - Uh... Probably about seven.
- Seven guns? - Yeah.
- Do you have a gun? - I have a few.
- How many guns do you have? - Half a dozen.
- You could name how many people that own guns, that you know?
Two, three, a dozen? - More than that.
- There's a tremendous amount of gun ownership.
We're a large country geographically.
We grew up with hunting and fishing being a tradition.
- In Canada, with a population of just around 30 million -
there's about 10 million families -
and the best estimate is somewhere in the region
of seven-million guns.
- Wow!
Canada was one gun-loving,
gun-toting, gun-crazy country!
Where can you get a gun? - Uptown, any time I want.
- I see you're a Glock owner.
Where can I get a Glock in Canada?
- Most gun stores'll sell 'em to you
if you have the proper permits and stuff.
- In fact, despite all their tough gun laws,
take a look at what I,
a foreign citizen, was able to do
at the local Canadian Wal-Mart.
Where's the ammunition at? - Where's the ammunition?
- Yeah. - Back here.
What kind are you looking for? - You know, like, bullets.
That's right.
I could buy as much live ammunition as I wanted to
in Canada. You take American?
Do you lock your doors?
- No. - Are you afraid of anything?
Sarnia, Canada
- Nah, not really, no. - Do you lock your doors at night?
- No. - You don't lock your doors?
- No. - Well, what do you...
Are you afraid of anything? - Not really.
- Have you ever been broken into? - Yes, I have. Yeah.
- What happened? - They broke into my home.
I wasn't there. They broke in,
they stole some booze and cigarettes and they left.
So I figure it must've been some teenagers
out to have a little bit of fun. That's all they took, though.
Just some booze and some cigarettes.
- Have you ever been a victim of crime?
- Yes. - What kind of crime?
- Uh, I've had people walk in while I've been sleeping
and vandalize my home and steal from me.
- And that didn't want to make you lock your doors at night?
- No. No.
- As an American with three locks on his doors,
I found this all a bit confusing.
Even here, in Toronto, a city of millions,
people just didn't lock their doors.
So you don't lock your doors but we, Americans, do. Why is that?
- You must be afraid of your neighbour.
- Do you ever leave your doors unlocked at home?
- Yeah. - Yeah, you do?
Where do you live? - Right around here.
- Toronto? - Around here.
- You leave your doors unlocked? - Yeah.
- You'd think, as Americans,
that the lock is keeping people out of your place.
We, as Canadians, see it more as, uh...
when we lock the door, we're imprisoning ourselves inside.
- You don't want to do that.
- Not really, no.
We don't want to... No.
- I decided to go unannounced to a neighbourhood in Toronto
to see if this unlocked-door thing was true.
Oh, hi. I'm sorry. Just checking.
[ dog barking ] Oh, hello!
- Oh, hi. - Hi.
- Nobody locks their doors.
Nobody locks their doors in this town.
- You want to lock? - No, no, no.
Do you like living here? - I like it very much.
- Yeah? And the T-shirt? - The T-shirt too.
- This door was wide open. And you're not afraid?
- Should I be afraid? - I don't know. You live here.
- I don't think I'm afraid. - You're not, are you?
Thank you very much. - All right. No problem.
- I'm sorry about the intrusion. - No, no problem.
- Thank you for not shooting me. - No problem at all.
- Bye-bye. - Okay.
- As an American,
I gotta say this all seemed kind of strange.
Until I looked up at the TV
in the bar and noticed what they watched
for their evening news.
- They're friends of ours.
We'll certainly listen to them courteously and carefully,
but you don't just make war just 'cause someone says so.
- The Canadians weren't being pumped full of fear.
And their politicians seemed to talk kind of funny.
Mayor Mike Bradley Sarnia, Canada
- ...making sure they have good daycare, assistance for their parents
when they're elderly and need to be in an old-age home,
that they have proper health care that insures
that they won't lose their business or their house
because they can't afford their medical bills.
That's how you build a good society.
No one wins unless everyone wins. And you don't win
by beating up on people who can't defend themselves.
And that's been the approach, unfortunately,
that's been spreading with some of the right-wing governments
across North America. They pick onto people
that can't defend themselves and at the same time,
they're turning around and giving financial support
and tax breaks and tax benefits to people that don't need them.
- Where are the indigents in the city? Where do they live?
- Uh... indigent... uh...
- You act like you've never heard the word before.
- There's... We don't have that problem here, really. It's...
- So I asked him,
"Could you at least take me to a Canadian slum,"
and well...
this is what a ghetto looks like in Canada.
Is this the same mentality that says, with Canadians, if someone
gets sick, they should actually be able to have health care?
- Yeah. - Oh, definitely.
- Yeah. - Yup.
- Why?
- Because!
- Human rights. Everyone's got the right to live.
- You just came out of the emergency room?
- Yes, I did.
- How much did you have to pay for your treatment?
- The bill is covered by our hospital plan.
- You're telling me you didn't have to pay anything?
- No, I don't.
- I have family that lives in the States.
They used to live in Canada and moved over there.
And it's so different. - They get afraid more easily.
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, very much so.
'Cause everybody reacts over there just like that.
They don't stop and think.
First reaction is pull the gun out. "You're on my property."
You know, like...
I don't know. It's just different over here.
- Where do you live? - Detroit. (Windsor, Canada)
- Come over to Canada here for the night?
- Right.
- People are more open-minded here, a bit more welcoming.
- Feel any difference when you cross over to this country?
Be honest, now, come on. - It's a lot lighter.
- The segregation over there is definitely much more--
- In the United States. - ...more intensified
in the States, yeah. - Yeah.
- So you can... You can feel it.
- Almost like they just let you be.
- That's Canada for you.
- Every time I turn on the TV in the States,
it's always about a murder here, a gunfight, hostile position...
- I just think the States, their view of things is fighting.
That's how they resolve everything.
If there's... there's something going on in another country,
they send people over to fight it and...
- They are the most powerful country in the world, though.
- Canada's more just, like, "Let's negotiate,
let's work something out." Where the States is,
"We'll kill you and that'll be the end of that."
- Um, if guns were... If more guns made people safer,
then America would be one of the safest countries in the world.
It isn't. It's the opposite.
- I heard that 911 call, you know, on TV someplace.
It was horrible. It was just...
- 'Cause he kept asking, "Where's the shooter?"
She said, "He's gone. I need some help."
- The little girl was in there too?
- She was on the floor, yes.
- And the police and the medics came, or...
- By the time the medics were here...
The medics had just come in and I remember him stepping in
and taking over the room. He said, "You have to leave."
- All right. - And then when the meds come in,
when the police come in, you're no longer in control.
They take over the building. - Was she still alive then?
- Her lips had become totally blue.
- Back in my hometown of Flint, Michigan,
a six-year-old first-grade boy, at Buell Elementary,
had found a gun at his uncle's house,
where he was staying because his mother was being evicted.
He brought the gun to school and shot another first-grader,
six-year-old Kayla Rolland.
With one bullet that passed through her body,
she fell to the floor and laid there dying
while her teacher called 911 for help.
No one knew why the little boy
wanted to shoot the little girl.
As if the city had not been through
enough horror and tragedy
in the past two decades, it was now home
to a new record: the youngest school shooting ever
in the United States.
On the morning of the shooting,
it only took the helicopters and satellite trucks
a half-hour to show up.
- They check in the truck.
You know, we're doing one in 30 minutes again.
- This evening, about seven o'clock,
will be a public memorial service. Hundreds of people
will mourn the loss of little Kayla, a tiny little girl
who loved pizza, teddy bears,
and who was taken away from us much too soon. Gina?
- Good morning, Christine. The funeral home now passing out
tens of thousands of these pink ribbons
to support the young girl's family.
Today will be an emotional day and has been already,
remembering little Kayla.
Jeff Ross, Fox-2 News.
- Nice job.
- Yeah, Michelle, we're having technical problems, okay?
Well, don't talk to me about it, call our sat truck.
I need a haircut, man.
I'm a pig. A rug.
Here we go.
Some too choked up even to speak about it.
There's a memorial service scheduled here
for seven o'clock tonight.
We're live in Flint, Michigan, this afternoon.
Jeff Ross, Q-13 Reports.
Thank you. - Thank you.
- Want some hairspray?
- I kind of need it, don't I? - Yeah, you do,
- I got some...
- I have some. I just didn't put it in. I didn't have a chance.
I have hurricane-proof hairspray.
This man prayed for Kayla then let the balloon go.
I say we have the colour picture,
not the black-and-white.
Plenty of media here that covered Columbine.
You know, there are some networks, especially,
that go from, unfortunately, tragedy to tragedy.
And, uh, I feel bad for them. Because that's all they see...
The tragedies.
We're just trying to crunch right now
for the five and the six.
Today, we're feeding CNN and Fox, so...
- The national media had never visited Buell Elementary,
or the Beecher school district in which it sat,
or this part of Flint ever before.
And few, if any, of these reporters bothered to visit it
even when they were here now.
If they had ventured just a block away from the school
or the funeral home, they might have seen
a different kind of tragedy that, perhaps, would contain
some answers as to why this little girl was dead.
For over 20 years, this impoverished area,
in the hometown
of the world's largest corporation,
had been ignored as completely as it had been destroyed.
With 87% of the students living below
the official poverty line,
Buell and Beecher, and Flint, did not fit into
the accepted and widely circulated story line
put forth by the nation's media.
That being the one about America
and its invincible economy.
The number-one cause of death among young people
in this part of Flint was homicide. The football field,
at Flint-Beecher, was sponsored by a funeral home.
The kids at Beecher have won
13 state track championships,
but they've never had
a home track meet.
Because around the football field,
all they have is this dirt ring.
Years ago, someone here named the streets,
in this part of town, after all the Ivy League schools,
as if they had dreamed of better days
and something greater for themselves.
- The children are doing well.
The faculty and staff are doing well.
But we don't forget.
We don't forget.
Just don't want this happening to anybody else, you know?
It's... [ She sighs ]
- I know.
I know. I don't want it to happen to anybody else either.
- Hmm... - It's okay. It's okay.
It's okay.
I'm sorry. - That's all right.
[ Charlton Heston ]: ...from my cold, dead hands!
[ cheering ] - Just as he did
after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up
in Flint to have a big pro-gun rally.
- Freedom has never seen
greater peril nor needed you more urgently
to come to her defence than now.
- Before he came to Flint, Heston was interviewed
by the Georgetown Hoya about Kayla's death,
and even his own NRA website talked about it.
- We wanted to let the NRA know that we haven't forgotten
about Kayla Rolland.
How could they come here? To me, it's like they're rubbing
our nose in it. I was shocked
and appalled that they would come here.
- Heston was asked by a local reporter why he came to Flint
after the tragedy at Buell,
and what did the NRA have to say
about six-year-olds using guns.
- We spend $20 million every year
and then we teach you... to five and six-year-olds,
we say, "If you see a gun, don't touch it,
leave the room, call an adult."
- And then Moses himself showed up.
- Right here in the city of Flint?
- Right here in Flint.
- Were there people that wanted you to try this child,
Arthur Busch County Prosecutor, Flint, Michigan
or even try him as an adult? - Oh... Oh, yeah.
There were people from all over America that wrote and called
and sent mail and... It was amazing to me, um...
groups that were affiliated with the NRA -
groups, you know, people that I call "gun nuts" -
writing me and telling me what a horrible thing it was
that I had admonished homeowners in our country
to be careful about bringing weapons into their home.
They wanted this little boy hung from the highest tree.
I mean, there was such an undercurrent of racism
and hate and anger.
It was ugly.
- That's a picture that the little boy that was involved
in the Buell-school shooting...
Once he was brought back here to our office,
about 15 minutes after the shooting took place,
I gave him some crayons to kind of occupy him a little bit.
Michael Caldwell Police Detective
He came over and drew that picture for me.
Because at the time, I had pictures right behind my desk
that my children had drew for me and he wanted to draw me one.
- This is what he drew for you. What did he say this was?
- That's him at his house.
- That's him at his house, right here.
And why did you decide to hang on to it?
- Because of the gravity of the situation and what had occurred
and he asked me to hang that behind my desk,
so I put it in a frame and that's where it'll stay.
- Tamarla Owens was the mother of the six-year-old boy.
In order to get food stamps and health care for her children,
Tamarla was forced to work as part of the state of Michigan's
Welfare-to-Work Program.
This program was so successful
in tossing poor people off welfare
that it's founder,
Gerald Miller, was soon hired
by the number-one firm in the country that states turned to
to privatize their welfare systems.
That firm was Lockheed Martin. With the cold war over
and no enemy left to frighten the public,
Lockheed had found the perfect way to diversify
and the perfect way
to profit from people's fears,
with an enemy much closer to home:
poor black mothers
like Tamarla Owens.
- We've got a one-parent family and the mother's travelling 60 miles.
Sheriff Robert Pickell Flint, Michigan
An hour, an hour and a half away to go to work
an hour, an hour and a half to come home.
How does that help a community? But that's part of the state...
you know, making parents responsible, making them work--
- Welfare to work. - Welfare to work.
That's a program that ought to be stopped
because it really has no merit.
I think it adds more to the problem
than it does to solve it.
- Really? - I do.
- You're the sheriff and you feel this way.
- I do, I do. I wish I could put two parents in every home
and make every parent equally responsible,
but I can't do that.
But we're not doing anything by taking one parent
and putting them on a bus and sending them out of town
to make $5.50 an hour.
- This is the bus that she was forced to ride every day
in order to work off the welfare money
the state had given her.
She, and many others from Flint who were poor,
would make the 80-mile round-trip journey every day,
from Flint to Auburn Hills, in Oakland County,
one of the wealthiest areas in the country.
Tamarla would leave
early in the morning and return late at night,
rarely seeing her young children.
- What's the point in doing that? Where does the state benefit?
Where does Flint and Genesee County benefit from that?
We have a child dead. I think that may be, in part,
part of the problem.
We drove the one parent out.
Now, you or anybody else that can tell me
that that best serves the community,
I shake my head and wonder why.
- How long you been riding the bus?
- I've been working here
just about three years now. - About three years?
- Yeah. My brother... I got my brother working here,
half of my neighbourhood works out here.
Just about everybody I know personally works in the mall.
In Flint, doing the same thing I'm doing now,
they only pay minimum wage in Flint. I come 40 miles
to make three or four dollars more an hour.
- How much do you make an hour? - I make 8.50 now.
- Is that enough to pay the bills?
- No.
- So did you know Tamarla Owens,
the woman whose son shot the little girl?
I think she rode this bus. - I knew her a little bit.
Not real good. - Nice lady?
- Yeah, she was okay. She came to work every day, did her job.
She worked two jobs, so... - She worked two jobs?
- She was trying to make ends meet.
"We're going hopping We're going hopping today
"Where things are popping...
- This is Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill,
where Tamarla worked one of her two jobs.
"On the Bandstand Bandstand"
- I think she worked in this room here, as a bartender,
fountain-person making drinks, making shakes, desserts.
- Was she a good employee? - Yeah, she was.
She also worked at the Fudgery, in the mall here.
- Dick Clark is an American icon,
the man who brought rock'n'roll into our homes every week
on American Bandstand.
- Every part of your life, you can link up
to a part of music, usually. So, as Dick says,
"It's the soundtrack of our lives."
Music's the soundtrack of our lives.
- His restaurant and the Fudgery, here in Auburn Hills,
applied for special tax breaks because they were using
welfare people as employees.
Even though Tamarla worked up to 70 hours a week
at these two jobs
in the mall, she did not earn enough to pay her rent.
And one week before the shooting,
was told by her landlord
that he was evicting her.
With nowhere to go and not wanting to take
her two children out of school, Tamarla asked her brother
if they could stay with him for a few weeks.
It was there that Tamarla's son
found a small 32-calibre gun and took it to school.
Tamarla did not see him take the gun to school,
because she was on a state bus to go serve drinks
and make fudge for rich people.
"Bandstand"
I decided to fly out to California
to ask Dick Clark what he thought about a system
that forces poor, single mothers to work
two low-wage jobs to survive.
I'm doing a documentary on these school shootings
and, you know, guns and all that.
And in my hometown of Flint Michigan, which you know,
this little six-year-old shot a six-year-old--
- Get in the car, Dave! Watch your arm, watch your arm.
- Oop, sorry, sorry. - I'm sorry, we're really late.
- Anyways, but the mother of the kid who did the shooting
works at Dick Clark's All-American Grill...
- Forget it. - ...in Oakland County...
- Close the door. - A Welfare-to-work program--
- Close the door. - These people are forced...
Dick, no... - Bye-bye. Come on, move over!
- I want you to help me convince the governor of Michigan...
It's a Welfare-to-work pro... These women are forced to work!
They've got kids at home. Dick!
Ah, jeez!
In George Bush's America,
the poor were not a priority.
And after September 11th, 2001,
correcting America's social problems
took a back seat to fear,
panic and a new set of priorities.
- One way to express our unity
is for Congress to set the military budget,
the defence of the United States,
as the number-one priority and fully fund my request!
- We've been selling a lot of chemical suits,
with the gloves and the hoods.
And we've been selling a lot of gas masks.
- I'm trying to get one for myself and my puppy.
[female reporter]: Denis Marks and his wife
have been stocking up supplies.
- Weapons, ammunition...
[ male reporter]: Wal-Mart says after September 11th,
gun sales surged 70%,
ammunition up 140%.
In Dallas, they're already taking potshots
at Osama bin Laden.
- In the months following the 9/11 attacks,
we, Americans, were gripped in a state of fear.
None of us knew if we too would die
at the hands of the evildoers,
or who might be sitting
next to some crazy guy trying to light his shoes on fire.
The threat seemed very real.
- Sounds a little paranoid but I'm not gonna take the chance.
Just trying to protect myself and my family.
- Our growing fears were turned
into a handsome profit for many.
- Mike Blake has seen
a 30% increase in sales at ADT
over the last month.
Most of the people he talks to are still a little uneasy
over the September 11th terrorist attacks.
- How are we afraid of all these things, it's because
a lot of people are making a lot of money off of it
and a lot of careers off of it.
And so, there's vested interests,
a lot of activity to keep us afraid.
- And what better way to fight box-cutter-wielding terrorists
than to order a record number of fighter jets
from Lockheed?
Yes, everyone felt safer, especially with the army
doing garbage detail on Park Avenue.
And the greatest benefit of all of a terrorized public
is that the corporate
and political leaders can get away with just about anything.
- I've never seen a better example
of cash-and-carry government
than this Bush administration and Enron.
- There were a lot of things that I didn't know
after the World Trade Center attack,
but one thing was clear: whether it was before or after
September 11th, a public that's this out of control with fear
should not have a lot of guns or ammo laying around.
- Well, I was shot with a Tech-9.
- Nine millimetre?
- Yeah. Yeah, I was, uh...
I guess it was supposed to be semi-automatic,
but it kind of seemed like fully automatic to me,
from what I remember. - This is Richard Costaldo.
And this is Mark Taylor. Both of these boys were shot
the day of the Columbine massacre.
Richard is paralyzed for life and in a wheelchair.
And Mark is barely standing after numerous operations.
- The kids at Columbine had to pay a penalty.
We paid a penalty that day... for this nation.
The way we look at it.
- Mark and Richard were disabled and suffering
from the 17-cent K-Mart bullets still embedded in their bodies.
As they showed me the various entry points for the bullets,
I thought of one way we could reduce
the number of guns and bullets laying around. I asked the boys
if they'd like to go to K-Mart to return the merchandise.
- Ready? - You... you go.
K-Mart Headquarters Troy, Michigan
- Hi.
- Excuse me, will you turn the camera off, please?
- We're here to see Mr. Conaway. - You have to turn the camera off
while you're in the building. - Oh, okay, all right.
Okay, turn it off now.
[ One hour later] - Hey, Michael. - Hi, how are you?
- I'm Mary Lorenz. I'm director of Media Relations for K-Mart.
- Oh, good. All right, good. - How can I help you today?
- Well, I'm here today... This is Richard Costaldo.
- Richard, nice to meet you. - And this is Mark Taylor.
- Mark. - And they're students
from Columbine High School. They were shot at Columbine,
in the massacre, with bullets from K-Mart.
- You came a long way. All the way from Colorado.
- Yeah, I just... I was thinking that...
since you stopped selling the handguns and all,
it'd kind of make sense to stop selling the bullets too.
- Our request is that you get rid of nine-millimetre bullets
and that you don't sell them in the store completely.
- We do carry... You probably are aware of K-Mart -
hopefully, you're shoppers at our stores -
that we do only carry, you know, sporting firearms
and the accessories that go with the hunting sport.
And we'll certainly take your message to our chairman and CEO,
Chuck Conaway. He's not here today.
- He's not here today? - No. He's not here, actually,
this whole week. - Not at all during the week?
Do you have a limit on the number of bullets, ammunition,
that people can purchase? - You know, I can't answer
these questions for you. I'm not the merchandiser
who places those products in our stores.
- Can we speak to that person?
- But I can get answers to those questions for you.
If you leave your card, I could get those answers for you.
- We don't want to leave a card.
The reason why we can't take a card
and come back is because Mark here,
he's got a K-Mart bullet just an inch away... right?
- Yeah. - From your aorta.
- In between my aorta and spine. - Between your aorta and spine.
- I'm glad to see that you're still able to stand.
- And I told him that somebody here would listen,
somebody here would... would...
would take the request seriously. Not just a PR person,
but somebody who has some authority and can answer
some of the questions that they want answered.
- K-Mart does care about this,
but I can't go any further right now.
So until I make a call, um,
I'm gonna go back to the office
and see if there's anyone in merchandising...
- Mary went back upstairs. And two hours later,
she brought down this guy whose job it is to buy the bullets
for K-Mart.
- Good. Stay out of trouble. - Yes.
- We're not the ones in trouble, guys.
Mark thought he'd show him his bullet wounds.
Those are his bullet holes. - Hm.
- From your bullets.
That's where the K-Mart bullets went in.
- Well, take care.
- Is anybody else gonna come down?
Is anybody else gonna come down? Is that it?
- I'll check. - Okay, thank you.
We waited around a couple more hours
but no one else came down.
As we left the building, Mark came up with an idea.
He suggested that we go
to the nearest K-Mart and buy out all their bullets.
- Just take as many of those as you can.
- Yeah, you can come around here and look.
- What else do we have over here?
You got 357. Sure, I'll take 'em all, take everything you got.
- So you're 17? You're what? - Sixteen.
- Wait.
- Oh, shit!
- Oh, my God...
- Mark pretty much cleaned them out of their ammunition.
And the next day, we decided to go back to K-Mart headquarters
with all the bullets. This time,
we brought the press.
- Our local first coverage of south-eastern Michigan
continues now with all-new stories.
- Coming up here on our six-o'clock report,
a warning to everyone this summer to watch out for snakes.
You'll hear from a mom who was bitten by a rattlesnake.
- And also, students who survived the Columbine massacre
are in town. They are very angry with K-Mart.
- We're here to see Chuck Conaway, the chairman of K-Mart.
- How you doing, sir? It's always a pleasure.
Okay, uh...
They would like to speak to Mr. Conaway.
- Here's the nine-millimetres.
These are the bullets that are in both Richard
and in Mark's body right now.
- Move your group outside.
I'll have somebody here in five minutes.
- Do me a favour, don't block the door.
Just off to the side, if you would.
- Will go outside and somebody will come out.
- My name's Laurie McTavish.
I'm the Vice-president of Communications for K-Mart.
I'm happy to deliver a statement on behalf of the company.
What happened in Columbine, Colorado, was truly tragic
and touched every American.
We're sorry for the...
disadvantage to this young man.
K-Mart is phasing out the sale of handgun ammunition.
The business plan calls for this to be complete
in the continental U.S. within the next 90 days.
- Wow! Wow!
- K-Mart representatives met with Mr. Moore
and the students from Columbine, Colorado, yesterday,
and listened to their concerns about the product
carried in K-Mart stores.
The company committed, at the end of that meeting,
that K-Mart would have an answer for them within a week's time.
- Well, the first thing we want to do is thank you
for committing to no longer selling handgun ammunition
in your stores. And within 90 days--
- The process will be phased out within 90 days.
- And after 90 days, there will be no more selling
of ammunition that can go into handguns or assault weapons.
- Firearm ammunition, will be... We will not sell it,
after 90 days, in our stores.
- We greatly appreciate that. - Thank you.
- Thank you very much. Thank you. That's very brave.
Thank you. Wow!
That blows my mind. That's more than what we asked for.
- It's remarkable. - Yeah. Well, like I told you--
- I didn't think-- - Did you think?
- No! - We're like, uh...
We're just getting ready to... We're going to the airport.
The kids from Columbine had scored an overwhelming victory
against K-Mart and it inspired me
to do something that I knew I had to do.
All I needed... was a star map.
[ ringing gate bell ]
[ phone ringing ]
- Hello? - Mr. Heston?
- Yeah. - This is Michael Moore.
- Yes. - The film-maker?
- Yes, of course. - Yes. How you doing?
- Fine, thank you.
- Listen, I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you.
We're making a documentary about the whole gun issue.
And I'm a member of the NRA.
I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about--
- Tell you what, let me look at my calendar.
I may be able to give you some time tomorrow.
I have some people here now. - Okay, well, how can I--
Pardon me? - Hold the phone.
- Okay, thank you. - Okay.
I can give you a little time tomorrow morning.
I think that's Thursday. - Yes.
- Let's say 8:30. - Eight-thirty in the morning?
- Yeah. Okay? - Okay. And just come here?
- Yes. - Okay, good.
[ phone ringing ] - Hello?
- Hi. It's Michael Moore here to see Charlton Heston.
- Okay. [ beeping ]
[ theme music from "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" ]
- Hi. Good morning.
How are you? - Fine.
- Thank you very much for agreeing to see me.
He took me out to his pool-and-tennis house
so we could have a chat.
I told him that I was a lifetime member of the NRA
and showed him my membership card.
- Good for you. Well done.
- I assume you have guns in the house here?
- Indeed I do. Bad guys take notice!
- So you have them for protection?
- Yeah. Sure. - Have you ever been
a victim of crime? - No. No.
- Never been assaulted or...? - No.
- No violence toward you, but you have guns in the house.
- Loaded. - They're loaded?
- Well, if you really needed a weapon for self-defence,
you need it loaded. - Okay, but why...
why do you need it for self-defence? Because--
- I don't. - Yeah, you've never been
a victim of crime, you haven't been assaulted.
- No, that's true. - You haven't been, you know...
Why would you... So why not... Why don't you unload the gun?
- Because the second amendment gives me the right
to have it loaded. - I agree.
I totally agree with that. I'm just saying... I mean,
the second amendment gives me--
- Let's say it's a comfort factor.
- It gives you comfort to know that there's a loaded gun.
- Yeah.
- Comfort meaning that it allows you to relax and feel safe?
- Not worry about it. - Not worry, not be afraid.
- And I'm not really, but, uh...
I'm exercising one of the rights passed on down to me
from those wise, old, dead white guys that invented this country.
If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me.
- But you could still exercise the right,
just by having a gun unloaded and locked away somewhere.
- I choose to have it.
- What sort of strikes me as interesting is that,
in other countries, where they don't have the murder rate,
the gun-murder rate that we have, that, uh...
many people say,
"Well, that's because they don't have guns around.
It's hard to get a gun in Britain or Germany or whatever."
But we went to Canada and there's seven million guns
in 10-million homes. - There won't be very long.
- But hear me out, though. - Okay.
- Canada is a nation of hunters,
millions of guns,
and yet, they had just a few murders last year.
That's it. A country of 30-million people.
Now, why - here's my question - why is it that...
that they've got all these guns laying around,
yet they don't kill each other
at the level that we kill each other?
- I think American history is...
uh... has a lot of blood
on its hands. - And Germany history doesn't?
- No. - And British history?
- I don't think as much. - Oh, are you...
Germans don't have as much, blood on their hands?
- Uh, they do, yes. - The Brits, they ruled the world
for 300 years at the barrel of a gun.
They're all violent people. They have bad guys, they have crime,
they have lots of guns--
- Well, it's an interesting point, which can be explored
and you're good to explore it at great lengths,
but I think that's about all I have to say on it.
- You don't have any opinion, though, as to why that is,
that we are the unique country, the only country,
that does this, that kills each other on this level, with guns?
- Well, we have, probably, more mixed ethnicity
than other countries, some other countries.
- You think it's an ethnic thing?
- No, I don't. It's...
I wouldn't go so far as to say that.
We had enough problems with civil rights in the beginning.
It's... But, uh, I have no answer for that.
- What do you mean, you think it's a mixed ethnicity?
I don't understand.
- You said, "How is it that..." - That we're unique.
- "So many Americans kill each other?"
I don't know that that's true, but, uh...
- Well, no, you know that.
We know we have the highest murder rate with guns.
It's way higher than any other country.
- The only answer I can give you is the one I already gave you.
- Which is? - Which is that we have, uh...
- Historically-- - ...a history of violence.
Perhaps more than most countries. Not more than Russia,
not more than Japan or China-- - Not more than Germany.
- Not more than Germany, but certainly more than Canada.
- I come from Flint, Michigan, and last year,
a little six-year-old boy took a gun into a classroom
and shot and killed a six-year-old girl. And, uh...
it was really a tragic thing--
- This was a kid, though. - A six-year-old, yeah.
Did you hear about this?
A six-year-old shooting a six-year-old?
- Yeah. - Well, here's my question.
After that happened,
you came to Flint and held a big rally.
- Mm-hm.
- And, you know, I just--
- So did the vice-president.
- Yeah, but did you feel it was being at all insensitive
to the fact that this community had just gone through--
- Actually, I wasn't aware of that at the time we came.
We came and did an early-morning, uh... rally,
then went on to wherever we were going.
- You didn't know at the time, that this killing had happened?
- No. - Had you known, would you have--
- Would I have cancelled the... uh...
- Yeah. - I don't...
Hard to say.
- It wasn't like it was already planned.
I mean, the choice to come there was made
after this horrible killing took place.
- Yeah. Mm-hm.
- You know, had you know that, would you have come?
- I don't know. I have no idea.
- Maybe not. Maybe not. - Okay. Thank you.
- You think you'd like to just maybe apologize to the people
in Flint for coming and doing that at that time, or...?
- You want me to apologize...
me, apologize to the people in Flint?
- Or the people in Columbine
for coming after their horrible tragedy.
Why do you go to the places after they have
these horrible tragedies? I'm a member of your group here--
- Well, I'm afraid we don't agree on... on that.
- You think it's okay to just come and show up
at these events. - No.
- You don't think it's okay?
Mr. Heston, just one more thing.
This is who she is -
or was. This is her.
Mr. Heston, please don't leave.
Mr. Heston, please, take a look at her.
This is the girl.
I left the Heston estate atop Beverly Hills
and walked back into the real world,
an America living and breathing in fear...
In your mind, you imagine somebody
who might break into your house, to harm you or your family.
What does that person look like?
- You. Her. Him. The camera guy, anybody.
Could be a gun in the camera, I don't know.
- Where gun sales were now at an all-time high...
- Can shoot as fast as Wesson semi-automatic.
- And where, in the end,
it all comes back to bowling
for Columbine.
- Three bowling-alley employees shot to death Sunday night
at the AMF Broadway Lanes.
- There's nothing I really know. I really don't know anything.
- Just that three people died. - Right.
- In Littleton, in a bowling alley.
I'm sorry.
Yes, it was a glorious time to be an American.
"I see trees of green
"Red roses too
"I see them bloom
"For me and you
"And I think to myself
"What a wonderful world
"I see skies of blue
"And clouds of white
"The bright sunny day
"The dark sacred night
"And I think to myself
"What a wonderful world
"The colours of the rainbow
"All so pretty in the sky
"Are also on the faces
"Of the people walking by
"I see friends shakin' hands
"Sayin' How do you do
"They're really saying
"I love you
"I see babies cryin'
"I watch them grow
"They'll learn much more
"Than I'll ever know
"And I think to myself
"What a wonderful world
"And I think to myself
"What a wonderful world...
"And I say to myself
"What a wonderful
"World"