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,
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
Marksman 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.
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. - 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.
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" - 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.
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.
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!
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.
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. - 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.
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."
Don't come here? We're already here.
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.
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"
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
- 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.
Schmidt 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.
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-- - Suspect--
- The suspect is a black male - A black man.
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?
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.