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, Kerry 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.
May I help you?
Yeah, I'm here to open up an account.
- OK, what type of account would you like? - Um...
- I want the account where I get the free gun. - OK.
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.
OK. Right, well, that's the account I'd like to open.
We have a vault in which, at all times, we keep at least 500 firearms.
- 500 of these you have in your vault? - In our vault.
- We have to do a background check. - At the bank here?
- At the bank, which is a licensed firearm dealer. - 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 that.
- Cau... ca... sian. Is that right? - Yes.
Thank you.
I don't think that's the part they're gonna be worried about.
"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective
or been committed to a mental institution?"
I've never been committed.
What does that mean, have I ever been adjudicated mentally defective?
- It would be something involved with a crime. - Oh, OK.
So if I'm just normally mentally defective, but not criminal...
- There you go, Mike. - OK, thank you very much. Wow!
I have one personally.
- That's a nice action. - It is, and it's a straight shooter, let me tell you.
Wow! Sweet!
Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?
♪ Some people say that bowling alleys got big lanes
♪ Got big lanes, got big lanes
♪ Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same
♪ Look the same
♪ Everybody's coming home for lunch these days
♪ Last night there were skinheads on my lawn
♪ Take the skinheads bowling
♪ Take them bowling
♪ Take the skinheads bowling
♪ Take them...
Guns ho!
Each gun makes lots of battle sounds. Just press the trigger and listen.
That sounds like a gun battle.
Is it real?
Looks like real.
And 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 neighborhood.
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,
Oscar-winning actor and president of the National Rifle Association,
Mr Charlton Heston.
We come from a state where everyone loves to go hunting.
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 kinda just have some fun around camp.
And one of the guys had the idea, 'Why don't we sting 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 pan of his shin -
and came out through the back of his calf.
Was the dog held at all for any period of time by the police?
No, it wasn't. No. Um...
In Michigan, law basically states that people can commit crimes,
that animals aren't some form of... you know, whatever that could commit a crime.
An animal cannot commit a crime
or be charged with a crime in this state?
Is it possible that the dog, you know,
knew what it was doing?
That I don't know. I wouldn't be able to tell you that.
The dog was cute dressed up as a hunter, there's no doubt about it.
It was a funny picture.
To look at, it was kinda neat.
Yep, this was the kinda place I was from.
A box of 270s.
Comin' up.
- There you go. - Perfect.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
- Sorry about that. Sorry. - It's all right. It didn't discharge.
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?
Cos if a bullet costs $5,000, there'd be no more innocent bystanders.
Every time somebody gets shot, people'd be like, "Damn, he must have did something."
"Shit, they put $50,000-worth of bullets in his ass."
And people will think before they kill somebody if a bullet costs $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're a dead man.
You'd 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 bowling pins?
From a self-defense or tactical standpoint, it's a small target
that closely represents the vitals on a human, should you ever have 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 just 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 defend people.
I'm sure people like to have you guys as their neighbor.
If somebody's in need, you're there to help.
We're all normal people.
We all have regular jobs, and this is what we do on our own time.
- What's your job? - I'm a draftsman.
- How about you? - Unemployed right now.
- Frank, what do you do for a living? - I drive a truck for a heat-treating company.
- 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?
- Where do you live? - Westland.
- What do you have in your home? - A Smith & Wesson 9mm.
- 9mm? How about you? - With hollow points.
- Q-gauge. - 12-gauge at home?
- How about you? - M16.
- At home? - Yeah.
At the ready.
You have to worry where your rounds are going-
- Do you have frangibles? - I know where they're gonna go.
Whose idea was the calendar?
- Probably Kristen. - A picture's worth a thousand words.
It demonstrates a level of sophistication that you wouldn't expect out of militia.
- And, you know, we're people too. - Right.
- We have a lot of fun with it. - It was a fund raiser.
It showed that we're not so serious, you know.
We're not these conspiracy nuts who wouldn't want our pictures to get out.
It was a fun fund raiser.
I've had guns...
pretty much since I was old enough to have them.
And I learned how to use them.
You're silly!
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 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 concerned citizens.
We have a desire to fulfill our responsibilities and duties as Americans.
And armed citizenry is part of that.
♪ That's why I wish again
♪ That I was in Michigan down on the farm...
- What do you grow here? - Right now there's tofu beans, soya beans.
- Tofu soya beans. - You're a tofu farmer?
Yeah, yeah. Food farmer. I'm a food farmer. 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.
This is James Nichols, 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.
US 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 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... 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.
- But he was a nice guy. - Decent guy?
Oh, yeah.
- So they didn't find anything on this farm? - As to what?
- Bomb-making material? - Any explosives.
Um, yeah, blasting caps, dynamite blasting caps.
Dynamite fuse, black powder, you know, for muzzle-loaders.
Sure. Diesel fuel, fertilizer. But that is normal farm stuff.
That is no way connected any way whatsoever
to 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.
- Physically shaking, scared to death. - Of?
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, in every shoe, every corner of the house.
You say anything to me, I'll shoot you.
If the people find out how they've been ripped off
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.
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,
spent part of his childhood here.
Eric lived on the air-force base in Oscoda,
where his dad flew planes during the Gulf War.
20% 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 about seven years.
He's the same age as you, so people in your class...
A friend of mine knows him. He was in class with him. He's lived up here all of his life.
I went to school with him and it shocked me to hear it on the news.
You know, that... that especially a kid from here would be doing that.
I didn't last too long in this high school. I got kicked out. I got expelled.
- Why was that? - I er...
I had a run-in with a kid one time and I pulled a gun on him.
- A gun? What kind of gun? - 9mm.
I could have made a mess out of that.
It could have been worse. You could have been Eric Harris.
- So they kicked you out of school? - They kicked me out for 380 days.
Er, 165 days. Whatever a full school year is.
Matter of fact, for the longest time, my plan was to move out to Colorado.
Colorado?
Cos I've got family out there.
Matter of fact, one of my uncles is a janitor for Columbine School.
Really? 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? Why was your name...? You mean, they did a list of...
Of the suspects.
Of students who potentially would call in a bomb threat after Columbine.
- And you were number two on the list? - I was, like, second or third.
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. - Were you in trouble in school?
- Oh, yeah. - But why did they put you
at number two on their list, after Columbine, of the students that could be a threat?
Come on, there must be a reason.
Well, OK. The thing is, I have a thing. It's called The Anarchist Cookbook.
It shows you how to make bombs.
If anything went wrong,
they're gonna come to me first.
- I don't need that. - Just cos you owned a copy of the book?
- Never made a bomb yourself? - No. As in...? Oh, I've made 'em.
It was nothing big. It wasn't even as big as a pipe bomb.
Something maybe like a little tennis ball bomb.
Out of The Anarchist Cookbook,
the latest thing I built...
I think would have to be...
I think I made 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 kinda made me mad.
- Cos you didn't make it to number one? - I know it's kinda silly.
But I guess it would have been kinda like an ego thing there, you know,
knowing that I was number one at something in Oscoda,
even if it was the 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.
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, because the pen is mightier than the sword.
But you always must keep a sword handy for when the pen fails.
I sleep... I sleep with a .44 Magnum under my pillow.
Come on. That's what everyone says.
Is that true?
It's true. The whole world knows that.
If we were to go and look under your pillow, 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. OK. Is it loaded?
Ay ay ay.
OK, I believe you.
Don't do that. No, don't do that.
Don't put the gun to your head!
- I'm not gonna get hurt - This thing is loaded.
It's loaded. It's safe.
You've got to pull the trigger, pull the hammer, and shoot it.
Put the hammer back.
No-one has a right to tell me that I can't have it. That is protected under our Constitution.
- Where does it say a handgun is protected? - Gun. We should...
- It doesn't say gun- It says arms- - Arms.
- What is arms? It's not these. - It could be a nuclear weapon.
Do you think you should have the right to have weapons-grade plutonium here on the farm?
I don't want it.
Should you have the right to have it if you did want it?
- That should be restricted. - Oh, so you do believe in some restrictions?
Well, there's wackos out there.
♪ Happiness is a warm gun
The town of Virgin, Utah,
has passed a law requiring all residents to own guns.
♪ When I hold you
♪ In my arms
♪ And I feel my finger on your trigger
♪ I know nobody can do me no harm...
Kerry McWilliams proudly displays the target he used to pass his shooting test.
But the thing is, he can't see it.
He's blind.
Kerry has had a love affair with guns
since he first got his hands on an M16 as a teenager.
I'm actually most comfortable with assault rifles.
♪ Happiness
♪ Bang bang
♪ But don't you know that
♪ Happiness is a warm gun, mama?
♪ Yeah
This is a great place to raise your children.
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 has 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.
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 incredible. You have to see it for yourselves.
How does this look, Mr Edwards?
We're south of Denver in a community called Littleton.
And this house is pretty much your average middle-class suburban home.
The burglar, the rapist is still here in the neighborhood somewhere.
And so citizens sometimes think...
You know, 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.
- 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.
- 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, it changed... it changed how we talk.
- That's the first thing. - How's that?
For instance, if I say Columbine, everybody knows what it means.
I don't have to explain to you that Columbine...
- What's wrong? - Nothing. I just...
- What's wrong? - I just...
Sometimes Columbine bothers me.
- I'll be fine. Just... - It's OK. It's OK.
There's something um...
...something overwhelming about that kind of...
...viciousness,
that kind of predatory action,
that kind of indiscriminate...
...killing.
This facility where we're located right now,
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
and have children at Columbine High School.
I suppose, in one way, you could say
that what happened at Columbine High School is a microcosm
of what happens throughout the world.
You know the signs that we see that say "We Are Columbine“?
Is that how Lockheed Martin feels?
You're the biggest employer here in Littleton, the biggest weapons maker.
'We Are Columbine'?
I think we probably embody that spirit that, yeah, we're all members of this community
and it behaves us to help one another and to reach out to assist one another.
He told us that no-one in Littleton, including Lockheed's executives,
could figure out why the boys at Columbine had resorted to violence.
Why would kids do this?
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. He built missiles.
These are weapons of mass destruction.
What's the difference between that
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 cos we're mad at 'em -
drop a bomb, or shoot at 'em, or fire a missile at 'em.
♪ LOUIS ARMSTRONG: What A Wonderful World
Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!
Oh, my word!
South of Denver in Littleton, on the grounds of the US Air Force Academy,
there sits an actual 8-52 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.
22 NATO missiles fell on the village of Bogutovac near Kraljevo.
Deadly cargo was dropped on 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.
NEWSREADER. 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.
Somebody's shooting a gun at Columbine High School.
- Do you know if anybody's injured? - They've got pipe bombs, Uzis, you name it.
- You're shitting me. - I'm not.
A student hit in the spine at Columbine.
We've got another kid on the line, shot in the head.
- Jefferson County Sheriff's office. - We have automatic weapons.
AN right. Can you guys send lots and lots of paramedics?
- So he's still under an attack? - The school is still under attack.
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.
Is that something you could.)?
Literally I could patch you through and you could tell us on the air.
- Literally I could put you through right now. - I understand that.
Now they said he's gone to the library. He's in the building.
Hi, this is Stephanie Phillips from Dateline. How are you doing?
- I love your show. - I'm so glad. Thank you.
- I watch it every night. - Thank you!
Jefferson County 911.
I'm a teacher at Columbine High School.
There is a student here with a gun.
- He has shot out a window. - Has anyone been injured?
- Yes! Yes. - OK.
And the school is in a panic.
I'm in the library. I've got... students down.
Under the tables, kids!
Heads under the tables!
I saw a student outside. I was in the hall. Oh, dear God!
I was on hall duty. I saw a gun. I said, "What's going on out there?“
He turned the gun straight at us and shot.
And, my God, the window went out.
The kid standing there with me, I think he got hit.
- Help is on the way, ma'am. - OK. Oh, God!
Stay on the line with me.
Oh, God!
He's shooting in the library right now.
He's firing shots from the library.
He's firing shots in the library.
- Do we need to leave? - OK, hold on here.
They just shot inside the cafeteria.
I may have to try to get out of here and call you back.
I called four times to find out where I'm supposed to go
and they put me on hold for ever.
Hi. It's Wendy at CNN still.
Hi. We're taking names and numbers from the press.
OK, cos Fox has somebody on now.
Fox has somebody from your...
I know. We've talked to a whole bunch of people
and there's so many phone calls coming in.
I gotta get to my daughter at Columbine. I've been trying for an hour.
Sir? OK, calm down, OK?
I think we're entitled to the information as parents on where our children are!
- We have a lot of units out there. - I cant get anywhere near it.
I want to find out how to get in touch with my daughter. How do I get information?
I don't have any of that information right now.
Why the hell not? It's been over an hour!
My son is Eric Harris and I'm afraid he might be involved in the shooting at Columbine.
Involved how?
He's a member of what they're calling the Trench Coat Mafia.
- Have you spoken to your son today? - No. 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. If you try to leave I don't want you to get shot, OK?
Stay very tow and quiet. Stay tow and quiet.
Everybody, keep very 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 Kmart, just down the street.
Harris' 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 instead.
He shot her in the head in front of me.
And he shot the black kid
because he was black.
I have only five words for you.
"From my cold, dead hands."
Just ten 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.
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.
He sent me this...
...and it says, "Don't come here. We don't want you here."
I say 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 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 TEC-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 for evermore,
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 pan.
Thank you.
Like when they had their convention in Colorado
- a week or a month after Columbine. - The NRA?
Yeah. That was just stupid. Just don't do that.
Of course you have the right to, but what are you doing?
That's just upsetting a city full of people. Why do that?
This is Matt Stone.
He grew up in Littleton and has fond memories of Columbine.
Columbine is 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
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 whitebread, redneck mountain town
Columbine is a normal high school in a normal suburb, basically.
Painfully, painfully, painfully normal.
Just absolutely, painfully, horribly average.
You know? Littleton in general is um...
I remember being in sixth grade
and I had to take the math test
to get into honors math in seventh grade,
and they're like, "Don't screw this up. If you do,
you won't get into honors math in seventh grade or in eighth grade,
and then not in ninth grade, tenth grade or eleventh grade,
and then you'll just die poor and lonely."
And that's it. You know what I mean?
You believe in high school- and a lot of it's kids -
but the teachers and counselors and principals don't help things.
They scare you into doing... into conforming and doing good in school
by saying, "If you're a loser now, you're gonna be a loser for ever."
So with Eric and Dylan, right, people called them "fag".
They were like, "You know what, if I'm a fag now, I'm a fag for ever."
You wish someone just could've grabbed them and gone,
"High school's not the end of..."
A year and a half, or a year, was it? I don't know.
A year? 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, because if you do, you're gonna die poor and lonely."
"Well, fuck! Whatever I am now, I am that for ever."
Of course, it's completely the opposite.
All the dorks at high school go on to do great things,
and all the really cool guys are living in Littleton as insurance agents.
It's almost person to person.
It's completely that way.
If someone had told them that, maybe they wouldn't have done it.
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?
Er, I love it. I learn.
I get picked on by bastards who hate me,
and the principal's a dick.
AN right. What causes school violence?
Er, him.
- Him? - Yeah.
And after Columbine, it really sucked being a student in America.
Since the Columbine shooting, schools have extended zero-tolerance policies,
suspending and expelling students for all kinds of behavior considered unruly,
or warning signs of violence to come.
This second-grader in Illinois was suspended for ten days for bringing a nail-clipper to class.
"It's a weapon", his school said.
This 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
when he pointed a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and 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 dyeing his hair blue.
A high school honors student from Michigan could be expelled later today.
17-year-old Jeremy Hicks
wore a Scottish bagpipers outfit to his junior prom
that included a plaid kilt, a feathered hat
and a traditional knife known as a sgian-dubh.
This T-shirt landed a high school student in court She wanted to start an anarchy club.
These little time bombs are out there ticking, waiting to go off.
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.
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 belt line visible at all times.
Our students may not wear baggy pants
or colors and 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?
AN the experts had an answer.
- Angry heavy metal subculture. - Where were the parents?
- Violent movies. - South Park.
- Video games. - Television.
- Entertainment. - Satan.
- Cartoons. - Society.
Toy guns. Drugs.
Shock rocker Marilyn Manson.
Marilyn Manson.
Marilyn Manson has canceled the last five dates of his US lour
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 Manson.
Two years after Columbine, Manson finally returned to Denver.
The Ozzfest 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 er... had no judgments, you know.
You could 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, son 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 behavior,
I can say, "Not without a fight, you can't."
The two by-products of that whole tragedy
were er... 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 that the day 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 that's really ironic,
that nobody said, "Whoa, maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior."
No, because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin it and turn it into fear.
Cos then you're watching television,
you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear.
There's floods, there's Aids, there's murder.
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 girls are not gonna fuck you.
And it's just this... It's a campaign of fear and consumption.
And that's what I think that it's all based on,
is the whole idea that, "Keep everyone afraid and they'll consume."
And that's... that's really as simple as it can be boiled down to.
If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine, or the people in that community,
what would you say to them if they were here 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 Schlieve. - And I'm Amanda Lamontagne.
- And you went to Columbine? - Yes.
Uh-huh. And you were with er... Eric and Dylan?
In their class?
Yeah. We were in their bowling class.
- In their bowling class? - Yes.
What's bowling class?
Um, it's 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 none.
Is there any...
I learned how to bowl a lot better. That's for sure.
What were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold like?
- Weird. - Yeah?
- I mean um... not very social. - I didn't really know who they were.
Not very social. Just kinda kept to themselves.
How good bowlers were Eric and Dylan?
When we played them, all I remember is they were just like... crazy.
- They would just, like, chuck the ball. - Chuck it down there.
Didn't care much about how they bowled.
They didn't really care about their scores.
What were the suspects doing the morning of attack?
I heard 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, well, I guess they went to their favorite class.
Why wasn't anyone blaming bowling
for warping the minds of Eric and Dylan to commit their evil deeds?
Was it not 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.
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 Americans believe that it's the break-up of the family unit
that's caused so many wayward youth to turn to violence.
I'll run away and kill myself. How would you like that?
You can't keep me here!
Statistically there are more broken homes and divorce in Great Britain than the US.
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?
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.
They're just like us. Occasionally, a person 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,
I hear, "Oh, our culture is so different. We're different."
They have violent video games and 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.
Hi, boys and girls. Ready to get started?
Once upon a time, these people in Europe called Pilgrims
were afraid of being persecuted.
They all got in a boat and sailed to the New World, where they wouldn't have to be scared.
- Oh, I'm so relaxed. - Whew, I feel so much safer.
But when they arrived, they were greeted by savages and they got scared again.
- Injuns! - So they killed them all.
You'd think wiping out a race of people would calm them down.
- Instead, they got 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 the Second Amendment allowed every white man to keep his gun.
I loves my gun. Loves my gun!
Which brings us to the genius idea of slavery.
You see, the white people back then were also afraid of doing any work.
So they went to Africa, kidnapped thousands of black people, took them to America
and forced them to work for no money.
- And I don't mean "no money" like: - I work at Wal-Mart and make no money.
I mean zero dollars. Nothin'!
Nada! Zip!
Doing it that way made the USA the world's richest country!
So did having money and free help calm the white people down?
No way! They got even more afraid,
because, after 200 years of slavery, the black people outnumbered the whites in the South.
Well, you can pretty much guess what came next. The slaves started rebelling.
Old Master's head got chopped off!
When white people heard this, they freaked out.
"I wanna live! Don't Kill me, big black man!“
Well, just in the nick of lime came Samuel Coll,
who in 1836 invented the first weapon ever
that could be fired over and over without reloading.
The Southern whites went...
Yee-haa!
But it was too late.
The North soon won the Civil War and the slaves were freed.
Free to go chop all the old masters' heads off. Everybody said...
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 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. The KKK and the NRA.
Of course, they were unrelated.
One group promoted responsible gun ownership,
the other group shot and lynched black people.
And that's the way it was all the way to 1955,
when a black woman broke the law by refusing to move to the back of the bus.
- People couldn't believe it. - Huh?
What's going on?
All hell broke loose. Black people demanded their rights.
White people had a major freaky fear meltdown. And they were all like:
Run away! Run away!
And they did. They all fled to the suburbs, where it was all white and safe and clean.
They bought a quarter of a billion guns, put locks on doors, alarms on houses
and gates around their neighborhoods.
And finally, they were all safe and secure
and snug as a bug.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
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 Y2K scares?
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.
The countdown begins.
All day, store director Rick Smith watched consumers get YZK-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.
The Africanized bees are expected to reach Texas this year,
cross into Arizona in two to three years.
The killer bee is overly aggressive.
They will follow you for... oh, half a mile.
The bees never came.
Remember hearing that someone had hidden a razor blade in an apple at Halloween?
Before long, kids were not permitted lo go out in the dark on Halloween
and go trick-or-treating at strangers' homes.
Many say they won't give out candy treats on Halloween. It's too dangerous.
Guess what. There never was any razor blade in the apple.
Only two kids in the past 40 years have been killed by Halloween candy,
both poisoned on purpose by relatives.
Bye.
It was like a scene from a horror movie.
This Hooksett man was mowing his lawn when a fox darted out of the woods
and attacked his riding mower.
And 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 a stairway to danger.
You might wanna take some extra precautions.
Keep a low profile.
Don't go around dancing with a bunch of Americans in the streets.
Don't draw a lot of attention to yourself and the fact that you're an American.
The nation's top doctor says one in five Americans has 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.
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 LA.
How come whenever I'm out here, though,
I turn on the 11 o'clock news and, you know, I hear,
"Tonight in South Central, a drive-by shooting,"
or "Tonight in South Central... this, that or whatever"?
I mean, they're not making that up, are they?
No, but they're choosing what they're covering.
If you turn on TV, on the news,
what are you gonna hear about?
Dangerous black guys, right?
An unnamed black guy who's, you know,
- accused of some crime or... - Right.
You're gonna see pictures and hear stories of black guys doing bad things.
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.
The suspect is a black male aged 16 to 18.
Police say... The black man... The suspect...
The suspect is a black male. A black man... A black man...
A black... Black... Male... Man... A black man...
Susan Smith drowns her two children
and she tells people a black guy stole the car and stole the kids,
and everyone at first bought it.
Some guy jumped into her car with her kids in it,
and he's took off. It's a black guy, she says.
- A black male? - Yes, ma'am.
I told them I loved them.
And... it's just a tragedy.
The anonymous urban - which means usually black -
male comes by and does this... is the excuse for all kinds of things.
Charles Stuart, the Boston lawyer, kills his pregnant wife,
says a black guy did it. Everybody buys it.
The suspect is a black male about six feet tall.
Chuck and Carol Stuart were robbed at gunpoint as they left a Lamaze class.
It seemed the ultimate urban nightmare.
What 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...
I'm scared. I'm really worried with them.
Rosemary Shibley never expected a nest of killer bees
to shack up across the street from her.
But I'm terribly allergic to them and so are my grandkids.
They came from southern and eastern Africa.
Dr Warwick Kerr 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, took over and moved to the southern United States.
The main difference between a traditional bee and an Africanized bee is their aggressiveness.
If I was to do this to an Africanized bees' 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.
You can only distinguish them by measuring them.
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,
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 unfounded.
And these pistols, curiously enough,
weren't being taken off of kids in the city of Flint,
but were being taken off of kids out in the out-county area,
in the suburban communities, and...
t 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 a...
We've never really had many problems with the 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 did you get a gun?
- I stole mine. - Where from?
- From a friend of mine. - Where did he get it?
- His dad owns guns. - What were you doing with the stolen guns?
We went to Detroit to try to sett them,
cos I can get, like, a buck-fifty a pop for a 9mm.
Really? Who would you sell them to?
Anybody that would really want them. Mostly gangs and stuff.
Gangs in the city of Detroit? Black?
- Er... predominantly. - Yeah.
So now you're OK?
I'm free now. I'm completely clear.
You can keep selling guns?
I can't really. It's getting too risky, man.
Everybody knows me up here.
If people want guns, or drugs, or alcohol,
they come to my house, and that's just too much.
Yeah, too much. Too much hassle.
My favorite 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 er... we're right here on the corner of Florence and Normandie.
This was kinda ground zero for the LA riots.
Right. You know, if a couple of white guys
go down and walk around South Central,
they're gonna get killed, which is a common perception.
The odds that something's going to happen to us are really, really slight. Minuscule.
Right. OK.
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 glamor, 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 probably much more dangerous for us,
which is the stuff we're breathing.
The pollution blocking the Hollywood sign, we're breathing this,
and that's far more dangerous than all the other stuff the media's telling us to be afraid of.
As we left the comer of Florence and Normandie,
I noticed that a number of helicopters had appeared in the sky.
Within seconds, the news media started to arrive.
- What's the story? - I thought you'd know.
I don't know anything.
A sergeant just told me it's a guy with a gun, but they're not sure. That's all they told me.
There's no action, so I'm not getting the camera down.
I just saw the chopper. We were going to another story.
- What story were you going to? - A near-drowning.
- A drowning? - Near-drowning.
How about the story about how you can't see the Hollywood Hills because of the pollution?
Could you maybe do a story on that tonight?
Pollution. You probably could.
I probably could. 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 baby nearly drowning,
- and you can only be in one place atone time... - Go with the gun.
Always, go with the gun?
Is it all over here? All over?
- All over? - Not yet. Not yet.
Just wait for these... these sergeants down here to come down,
cos they got all the details.
OK. Hey, I was just wondering. I just got here to LA today.
I can't see the Hollywood sign down on the hills there, down Normandie.
- I can't see the sign cos of the pollution. - Right.
Is there anybody you can go and, like, arrest for polluting up the air?
Absolutely not.
- Nobody? - No.
Why is that?
Well, why is that, Sergeant?
Oh, he's fighting him!
For over a decade,
there's 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.
Get your hand back here.
That show is Cops.
I went to see a former producer of Cops
and executive producer of World's Wildest Police Videos, Mr Dick Herlan.
If you look "liberal" up in the dictionary, I think my picture's in there. Yeah.
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. Hale does well. Violence does well.
Tolerance, understanding, learning to be different than you were does less well.
- In the ratings? - Yeah.
Maybe because we in the television business,
because we tend to demonize black and Hispanic people,
then those watching it at home go,
'I don't wanna help those people. I won't do anything to help them.
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 don't... I'm not sure we're demonizing black and Hispanic people 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...
We're certainly not trying to demonize black and Hispanic people.
We show them on the news, on TV,
as um... pretty scary people.
Yeah.
And I agree. I think I'd like to see that reversed as much as possible.
Start tonight.
The thing is, I don't know how to start tonight.
I don't know how to tell that story.
- If I knew... If I was smart enough to do that... - If I pitch you one, OK?
All right.
Do a show called not Cops, but Corporate Cops.
♪ Oh, 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
Er... 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'm telling you, that is gonna get ratings!
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,
then you need to do an appropriate response to a man who's just stolen $85 million
from indigent people,
then, boy, we're gonna be out there filming that.
But 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
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 that's... I don't know what the difference is, but there's a big difference.
Yeah, but why isn't it happening in Canada?
Why aren't there, you know, 10,000 murders a year?
I don't know, but I wanna go to Canada to retire, or something,
cos it sounds like where we wanna 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.
School.
- Don't you worry about not learning? - I'm mostly helping everybody else in class.
I barely get to do my work, period.
How about you?
- Not worried about your education? - I've got the textbook.
Why do you think we have so many gun murders in America?
Er... I have no idea. People must hate each other there, or something.
Oh, 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. - Eggs?
How many gun murders in Samia this year?
None.
Last year?
I believe we had one at the time.
Year before that?
I can't recall what we had in the way of er...
- 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
five times as large as Samia.
Windsor, Ontario, lust 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?
Er... there was one a long time ago, probably...
- How long ago? - Oh...
In your lifetime?
In my lifetime. Probably about 15, 20 years ago, there was one murder.
In fact, this Windsor policeman told me
that the only gun murder 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 neighbor.
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.
And then the guy gets his leg taken off.
- And there was a lot of girls. - Showing cleavage.
- And naked. They were naked at one point. - I like that stuff.
What movie did you guys see tonight?
Sixth Day.
- Sixth Day with Arnold Schwarzenegger? - Yeah.
Did it make you wanna come out here and play this shoot-'em-up game?
Yeah.
There's no poverty in Canada like there is here, in the States.
Wrong again.
Actually, we've also had a much higher unemployment rate.
When Michigan was running at 4%, we were still running at 8% or 9%.
We had almost an institutional unemployment rate.
I think there'd mostly be white people in Canada.
Hm, that's strange. Because 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 they have so few murders has to be because they've got so few guns.
- What kind of guns do you own? - Er... I hunt.
I own rifles and shotguns, I own pistols.
So how many guns, total?
- Erm... probably about seven. - Seven guns?
- Do you have a gun? - I have a few guns.
- Really? How many guns do you have? - Half a dozen.
You could name how many people right now that own guns, that you know?
- Two? Three? A dozen? - More than that.
There's a huge amount of gun ownership, being a large country geographically.
We grew up with hunting and fishing being a tradition.
In Canada, with a population of around about 30 million, there's about 10 million families.
The best estimate is somewhere in the region of 7 million guns.
Wow!
Canada was one gun-lovin', gun-totin', gun-crazy country!
- Where can I get a gun? - I can buy a gun uptown any time.
I see you're a Glock owner. Where can I get a Glock in Canada?
Most gun stores will sell them 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.
AN right, where's the ammunition at?
Where's the ammunition? 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.
Do you take American?
- Do you lock your doors? - No.
Are you afraid of anything?
No, not normally, no.
- Do you lock your doors at night? - Nope.
- You don't lock your doors? - No.
Are you afraid of anything?
Not really.
- Have you ever been broken into? - Yes, I have.
What happened?
They broke into my home... I wasn't there.
They broke in, they stole some booze, some cigarettes, and they left.
So I figure it must have 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?
I've had people walk in while I've been sleeping and vandalize my home and steal from me.
And that didn't wanna make you lock your doors at night?
Nope.
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.
You don't lock your doors, but we Americans do. Why is that?
You must be... You must be afraid of your neighbor.
Do you ever leave your doors unlocked at home?
- Yes. - You do?
- Where do you live? Toronto? - Right around here.
- You leave your doors unlocked? - Yeah.
You think, as Americans, that the lock is keeping people out of your place.
We, as Canadians, see it more as...
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 neighborhood in Toronto,
to see if this unlocked door thing was true.
Oh, hi.
Sorry, just checking.
Hello?
Oh, hi.
Nobody locks their doors.
Nobody locks their doors in this town.
- No, do you want it locked? - No, I don't. No.
- Do you like living here? - I like it very much.
- And the T-shin? - The T-shin too.
This door was wide open. And you're not afraid?
- Should I be afraid? - I don't know. You live here.
You're not, are you?
- Thank you very much. - No problem.
- I'm sorry about the intrusion. - No, no problem.
- Thank you for not shooting me. - No problem.
Bye-bye.
As an American, I got to say, this all seemed kind of strange
until I looked up at the TV in the bar,
and noticed what they watch 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 because someone says so.
Night after night, the Canadians weren't being pumped full of fear.
And their politicians seemed to talk kinda funny.
...making sure they have proper daycare,
that they have assistance for their parents when they're in an old-age home,
proper health care to ensure they won't lose their business or their house
because they can't afford medical bills. That's how to build a good society.
No-one wins unless everyone wins.
You don't win by beating up on defenseless people.
That's been the approach spreading in some of the right-wing governments in North America.
They pick on defenseless people,
and at the same time they give financial support and tax breaks and tax benefits
to people that don't need them.
Where are the indigent in the city? Where do they live?
Indigent? Um...
You act like you've never heard the word before!
We don't have that problem here, really.
So I asked him, "Could you at least take me to a Canadian slum?“ Well...
this is what a ghetto looks like in Canada.
Is this the same sort of mentality that says, with Canadians...
You think if somebody gets sick, they should be able to have health care?
- Oh, definitely. - Yes.
Why?
- Because! - Human rights. Everyone's got the right to live.
- Did you just come from the emergency room? - I did.
How much did you have to pay for your treatment?
I wouldn't know what the bill is. It's covered by our hospital plan.
- So 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.
Because everybody reacts over there just like that.
They don't stop and think.
First reaction is pull the gun up. "You're on my property."
You know, like...
I don't know.
It's just different over here.
- Where do you live? - Detroit.
- Come over to Canada here for the night? - Right.
People are a bit more open-minded over here, a bit more welcoming.
Feel any difference when you cross over to this country? Be honest, now.
It's a lot lighter.
- Segregation there is much more intensified. - In the United States?
Yeah.
So you can feel it.
Almost like they just let you be.
Well, that's Canada for you.
Every time I turn on the TV in the States, it's always about a murder,
a gunfight, a hostile position.
I just think the States... Their view of things is fighting. That's how they resolve everything.
If somethings going on in another country, you know, they send people over to fight it.
Canada's more... just like...
let's negotiate, let's work something out,
where the States is, "We'll just kill you and that'll be the end of that."
If guns were...
If more guns made people safer, America would be one of the safest countries in the world.
It isn't, it's the opposite.
I heard that 911 call, on TV someplace.
It was horrible. It was just...
They kept asking, "Where's the shooter?" She said, "He's gone. I need help."
- And that little girl was in there too? Kayla? - She was on the floor, yes.
And the police and the medics came?
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."
And then when the medics come in, when the police come in, you're no longer in control.
Was she still alive then, or...?
Her lips had begun to turn 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 news helicopters and satellite trucks a half-hour to show up on the scene.
They're checking the truck. You know, we're doing one in 30 minutes again.
This evening about 7:00
will be a public memorial service. We are expecting hundreds of people.
They will mourn the loss of Kayla, a tiny girl,
who loved pizza, teddy bears, and who was taken away from us much too soon. Gina?
Good morning. The funeral home is 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 Rossen, Fox 2 News.
Nice job.
Yeah, Michelle, we're having technical problems, OK?
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 7:00 tonight.
We're live in Flint, Michigan, this afternoon. Jeff Rossen, Q13, reports.
Thank you.
I kinda need it, don't I?
I have some, I just didn't put it in. I didn't have a chance.
This man prayed for Kayla, then let the balloon go.
I said the color picture, not the black-and-white card.
Plenty of media here that covered Columbine.
There are some networks, especially, that go from, unfortunately, tragedy to tragedy.
I feel bad for them, because that's all they see.
Tragedies.
Yeah, but we're just trying to crunch right now
for the five and the six.
Today we're feeding CNN and Fox.
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 home town 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 storyline
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 Flint Beecher football field 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 it they 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.
I just don't want this to happen to anybody else, you know.
I know. I know.
I don't want it to happen to anybody else either.
I thought it would um...
It's OK. It's OK.
It's OK.
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
From my cold, dead hands...
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 defense than now.
Before he came to Flint,
Heston was interviewed by The Georgetown Hoya about Kayla's death.
Even his own NRA website talked about it.
We wanted to let the NRA know we haven't forgotten about Kayla Rolland.
How could they come? 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 $21 million every year.
We teach it 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, or to even try him as an adult?
Oh, yeah.
There were people from all over America that wrote and called and sent mail.
It was amazing to me.
Groups that were affiliated with the NRA,
groups that were...
you know, people that I'd call gun nuts...
writing 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 to our office... about 15 minutes after the shooting took place,
I gave him some crayons and stuff to kinda occupy him a little bit.
He came over and drew that picture for me.
I had pictures up behind my desk that my children had drew for me.
He wanted to draw me one to hang behind my desk.
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.
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 its founder, Gerald Miller, was soon hired by the number one firm in the country
that states turn 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 closer to home:
poor black mothers like Tamarla Owens.
So you've got a one-parent family,
and the mother's traveling an hour, an hour and a half to work, and then to come home.
How does that help a community?
But that's part of the state making parents responsible, making them 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? 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 responsible.
But you can't do that.
We're not doing anything by taking the one parent, putting them on a bus,
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 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?
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 pan, pan of the problem.
We drove the one parent out.
Now, you, or anybody else, that can tell me that that best serves a community...
...I shake my head and wonder why.
- How long have you been riding the bus? - I've been working here...
- just about three years now. - About three years?
My brother... I've got my brother working here. Half of my neighborhood works out here.
Just about everybody I know personally works out here in the mall.
In Flint, doing the same thing I'm doing now, they only pay minimum wage.
I come 40 miles to make um... three or four dollars more an hour.
How much do you make an hour here?
- I make $8.50 an hour. - $8.50?
- 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.
- Not... not real good. - Nice lady?
Yeah, she was OK. She came to work every day, did her job.
She worked two jobs, so...
Worked two jobs?
She was trying to make ends meet.
♪ We're going hoppin', we're going hoppin' today where things are poppin'
This is Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill, where Tamarla worked one of her two jobs.
♪ Bandstand
She worked in this room here as a bartender...
...a fountain person making drinks, making shakes, desserts.
- Was she a good employee? - Yeah, she was.
- She also worked at the Fudgery in the mall. - Where the state had placed her.
Dick Clark is an American icon,
the man who brought rock'n'roll into our homes every week on American Bandstand.
Every pan of your life you can link up to a pan of music, usually.
As Dick says, it's the soundtrack of our lives.
Music is the soundtrack of our lives.
His restaurant and the Fudgery, in Auburn Hills, applied for special tax breaks
because they were using welfare people as employees.
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,
she asked her brother if they could stay with him for a few weeks.
It was there that Tamarlds son
found a small .32-caliber 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 tow-wage jobs to survive.
I'm doing a... I'm doing a documentary on these school shootings and guns and all that.
And um...
in my home town of Flint, Michigan, which you know...
this little six-year-old shot a six-year-old.
Get in the car, Dave. Watch your arm.
- Sorry. - I'm sorry, we're really late.
The mother of the kid who did the shooting works at Dick Clark's All-American Grill.
Forget it. Close the door.
It's a Welfare To Work program.
- These people are forced to... - Close the door. Goodbye.
I want you to help me to convince the Governor of Michigan...
It's a Welfare To Work... These women are forced to work.
They've got kids at home... Dick!
AW, jeez!
In George Bush's America,
the poor were not a priority.
And after September 112001,
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 defense 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.
Dennis Marks and his wife have stocked up supplies.
Weapons, ammunition.
Wei-Mart says after September 11, gun sales surged 70%.
In Dallas, they're already taking pot shots at Osama bin Laden.
In the months after 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 may be next to a guy trying to set fire to his shoes.
The threats seemed very real.
It's probably a little paranoia, 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 11 terrorist attacks.
How are we afraid of these things?
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,
and a lot of activity to keep us afraid.
What better way to fight box-cutler-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 I didn't know after the World Trade Center attack,
but one thing was clear.
Whether it was before or after September 11, 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...
YES-Q.
- 9mm? - Yeah.
It was a...
I guess it was supposed to be semi-automatic, but it kinda seemed like fully automatic to me,
from what I remember.
This is Richard Castaldo.
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 Kmart 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 Kmart to return the merchandise.
Ready?
You go.
- Me? - Yep
Cool.
Do you want me to grab this?
Hi.
- You have to turn the camera off, please. - We're here to see Mr Conaway.
You have to turn the camera off in the building till I get clearance for you to turn it on.
OK, turn it off.
OK, Michael. I'm Mary Lorencz. I'm Director of Media Relations for Kmart.
- Oh, good. All right. - How can I help you today?
- I'm here today... This is Richard Castaldo. - Richard, nice to meet you.
- And this is Mark Taylor. - Mark.
And they're students from Columbine High School. They were shot...
They were shot at Columbine in the massacre with bullets from Kmart.
You came a long way, all the way from Colorado.
Yeah, I just...
was thinking that since you stopped selling the handguns an' all,
it may kinda make sense to stop selling the bullets too.
Our request is that you get rid of the 9mm bullets
and don't sell them in the store completely.
We do carry...
You probably are aware of Kmart, hopefully you're shoppers of our stores.
We do only carry, you know, sporting firearms and the...
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?
I can't answer these questions for you. I'm not the merchandiser who places those products.
- Can I speak to that person? - I can get answers to those questions for you
if you would like to leave your card.
Well, we don't want to leave a card.
I'll just be blunt. The reason why we can't take a card and come back is because Mark here,
he's got a Kmart bullet, just an inch away, right... from your aorta?
- In between my aorta and spine. - Between your aorta and spine?
Well, I'm glad to see that you're still able to stand.
And I told them that somebody here would listen, somebody here would... would...
would take their request seriously.
Not just a PR person, but somebody who has some authority
and can answer some of the questions that they want answered.
Kmart does care about this.
But I can't go any further right now, so until I make a call...
I'm gonna go back to the office and... see if there's anyone in merchandising.
Mary went back upstairs, and two hours tater
she brought down this guy, whose job it is to buy the bullets for Kmart.
Stay out of trouble.
We're not the ones in trouble, guys.
Mark thought he'd show them his bullet wounds.
Those are his bullet holes... from your bullets.
That's where the Kmart bullets went in.
Well, take care.
Is anybody else gonna come down?
Is anybody else gonna come down? Is that it?
- Let me check. - OK, 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 Kmart 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've got 357s? Sure, I'll take them all. Everything you've got.
- So you're 17 and you're what? - 16.
Oh, shit.
Oh, my God, Craig.
Mark pretty much cleaned them out of their ammunition.
And the next day we decided to go back to Kmart headquarters
with all the bullets.
This time we brought the press.
Our local coverage of southeastern Michigan continues with all new stories.
In our six o'clock report, a warning to everyone to watch out for snakes.
You'll hear from a mom who was bitten by a rattlesnake.
And also new, students who survived the Columbine massacre are in town.
They are very angry with Kmart.
We're here to see Chuck Conaway, Chairman of Kmart.
It's always a pleasure to see you.
OK. Erm...
They would like to speak with Mr Conaway.
Here's the 9mms.
These are the bullets that are in both Richard...
and in Mark's body right now.
Want to put them back? I don't want to touch those.
I will do that for you, sir.
If you move outside, somebody will be here in five minutes.
Don't block the door. Just off to the side, if you would.
We'll go outside and somebody will come out?
I'm Lori McTavish, the Vice President of Communications for Kmart.
I'm happy to deliver a statement on behalf of the company.
What happened in Columbine, Colorado, was truly tragic and touched every American.
And we're sorry for the...
disadvantage to this young man.
Kmart is phasing out the sale of handgun ammunition.
The business plan calls for this to be complete in the continental US within the next 90 days.
Wow!
Kmart representatives met with Mr Moore and students from Columbine, Colorado, yesterday
and listened to their concerns about the product carried in Kmart's stores.
The company committed at the end of that meeting
that Kmart 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.
- Well, we greatly appreciate that. - Thank you.
Thank you very much. This is very great.
Thank you. Wow!
That blows my mind. That's more than what we asked for.
- This is remarkable. - Yeah.
- I didn't think it'd... - Did you think?
I'm like... We're like...
- We were just getting ready to go to the airport. - We were just getting ready to go.
The kids from Columbine had scored an overwhelming victory against Kmart.
It inspired me to do something that I knew I had to do.
All I needed...
was a star map.
Hello?
- Mr Heston? - Yeah?
This is Michael Moore... Er... the film-maker.
- Yes, of course. - How are you doing?
Fine, thank you.
Listen, I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you.
We're making a documentary about urn... you know, the whole gun issue.
And I'm a member of the NRA.
I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about this.
I 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. - How can I... Pardon me?
- Hold the phone. - OK, thank you.
I can give you a little time tomorrow morning. I think that's Thursday.
Yes.
- Let's say 8:30. - 8:30 in the morning?
OK, and just come here?
- Here. - Yes? OK, good.
Hello?
Hi, it's Michael Moore here to see Charlton Heston.
OK.
Hi.
Good morning.
How are you?
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.
Hold 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. - Indeed I do.
Bad guys, take notice.
So you have them for protection?
- Yeah, sure. - Have you ever been a victim of crime?
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 need a weapon for self-defense, you need it loaded.
- OK, but why do you need it for self-defense? - I don't.
You've never been a victim of crime, you haven't been assaulted.
- That's true. - Why would you...
So why not... Why don't you unload the gun?
Because er... the Second Amendment gives me the right to have it loaded.
Oh, I agree. I totally agree with that.
But I'm just saying, you know... the Second Amendment gives me...
Let's say it's the comfort factor, you know.
It gives you comfort to know there's a loaded gun?
- Yeah. - Comfort meaning...
- it allows you to relax and feel safe... - Not worry about it.
- Not worry, not be afraid. - And I'm not really, but...
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 the gun unloaded and locked away.
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 we have...
You know, many people say that's because they don't have guns around,
that it's hard to get a gun in Britain or Germany or whatever.
But we went to Canada, and there's 7 million guns in 10 million homes.
There won't be very long.
But hear me out, though. Canada is a nation of hunters.
Millions of guns.
And yet they had just a few murders last year. That's it, of a country of 30 million people.
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 er...
...has a lot of blood on its hands.
And German history doesn't? Or British history?
I don't think as much.
Oh... Germans don't have as much blood on their hands?
Ah, 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 in the past... - Well, it's an interesting point,
which can be explored...
and you're good to explore it at great length.
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?
We are the unique country, the only country that does this,
that kills each other on this level with guns.
Well, we have probably a 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.
But... I have no... no answer to that.
But what do you mean, you think it's a mixed ethnicity? I don't understand.
- You said, "How is it... - That we're unique?
...that so many Americans um... kill each other?"
I don't know that that's true. But...
No, you know that. You 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...
- 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.
Certainly more than Canada.
I come from Flint, Michigan.
Last year a little six-year-old boy took a gun into a classroom
and shot and killed a six-year-old girl.
It was really a tragic thing.
- This was kids, though? - Six-year-old... Did you hear about this?
- A six-year-old shooting a six-year-old. - Yeah.
Here's my question.
After that happened, you came to Flint and held a big rally.
Mm-hm.
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... rally,
and went on to wherever we were going.
You didn't know at the time you were there that this killing had happened?
- Had you known, would you have not... - Would I have canceled the...
I don't... It's hard to say.
It wasn't like it was already planned.
The choice to come there was made after this horrible killing took place.
Had you known that, would you have come?
I don't know. I've no idea.
Maybe not.
- Maybe not. - Thank you.
Do you think you'd like to maybe apologize to people in Flint for coming and doing that then?
You want me to... me to apologize to the people in Flint?
Yeah. 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 OK to just come and show up at these events?
No.
You don't think it's OK?
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... - Me? Really?
...the camera guy, anybody. There could be a gun in the camera.
Where gun sales were now at an all-time high...
You can shoot as fast as with a 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? In Littleton.
In a bowling alley.
- I'm sorry. - You have a nice day.
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 say to myself
♪ What a wonderful world
♪ I see skies of blue
♪ And clouds of white
♪ Bright sunny days
♪ Dark sacred nights
♪ And I think to myself
♪ What a wonderful world
♪ The colours of the rainbow
♪ Are so pretty in the skies
♪ Are also on the faces
♪ Of people walking by
♪ I see friends shaking hands
♪ Saying how do you do
♪ They're really saying
♪ I love you
♪ I see babies cry
♪ I watch them grow
♪ They'll learn much more
♪ Than I'll ever know
♪ And I think to myself
♪ What a wonderful world
♪ Yes, I think to myself
♪ What a wonderful world
♪ And I say to myself
♪ What a wonderful...
♪ World!