Bowling for Columbine Page #2

- 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...

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