Bowling for Columbine Page #5

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 f*** up, because if you do,

you're gonna die poor and lonely."

"Well, f***! 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.

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