by
Larry Pratt

Gutter-Ball Number 10: Wrong On Blaming K-Mart Bullets For The Columbine Murders

In Bowling for Columbine (BFC) we see Moore talking to two Columbine students shot in their school’s massacre. We’re told both are disabled and suffering “from the 17-cent K-Mart bullets still embedded in their bodies.” Moore says that as these kids showed him the various entry points for these bullets, “I thought of one way we could reduce the number of guns and bullets lying around. I asked one of the boys if they’d like to go to K-Mart to return the merchandise?”

We then see Moore and the two wounded boys, one of whom is in a wheelchair, going into K-Mart headquarters in Troy, Michigan. Moore introduces the wounded kids to a Public Relations lady for K-Mart telling her they were shot at Columbine “with bullets from K-Mart.” One of the kids mumbles something about how he was thinking about how K-Mart should “stop selling bullets” now that they stopped selling handguns. The PR lady says she would certainly take this message to the K-Mart Chairman who is not there at the moment.

When the K-Mart man who does the bullet-buying comes out to speak with Moore and the kids, Moore shows him their wounds “from your bullets.” We then see Moore and these shamefully exploited kids going to the local nearby K-Mart where they buy all the bullets and take them back to K-Mart headquarters.

Then, amazingly, we see a K-Mart PR lady reading a statement saying that K-Mart “is phasing out the sale of all handgun ammunition… in the continental United States in the next 90 days.” Says Moore: “We greatly appreciate that. Wow. That blows my mind.”

But, what blows my mind is that K-Mart would let an idiot like Michael Moore stay on their property, listen to anything he said, and then change their policy concerning the sale of handgun ammunition! Why in the world would K-Mart do this? Seeking an explanation of this gutless cave-in, we called K-Mart headquarters and talked to Michele Jasukaitus, a spokesman for K-Mart. After several days of waiting, Jasukaitus told us she couldn’t answer our questions because the three top executives involved in this policy change were no longer with K-Mart.

Too bad nobody at K-Mart did not accuse Moore of responsibility for Columbine. After all, he supports gun free school zones which guaranteed a safe working environment for the killers. K-Mart should have insisted that concealed carry permit holders be free to carry concealed handguns at schools. Then the next time a killer gets started, he might get stopped almost immediately — something which did happen at a Mississippi and a Pennsylvania school. Armed adults there stopped the killers, saving many lives.

Gutterball Number 11: Wrong On Blaming Lockheed-Martin For The Columbine Murders

So, who or what, exactly, is to blame for the mass murders at Columbine High School? Well, in a CNBC interview with Tim Russert (10/19/02), Moore says: “I don’t have the answer for why Columbine happened.” But, once again, Moore speaks with a forked tongue. He’s lying. As just noted, in BFC, one culprit singled out is K-Mart for selling bullets. And there’s another culprit Moore points the finger at: the Lockheed-Martin Company.

In an interview on MSNBC’s Donahue show (10/28/02), Moore says, with a straight face, that it’s “just one of those weird ironies” that the largest employer in Littleton, Colorado, is Lockheed-Martin, “the world’s largest weapons maker” and this maker of “weapons of mass destruction” is in the town where the Columbine massacre occurred.

So, in BFC, we see Moore, at Lockheed-Martin, interviewing Evan McCullum, Director of Communications, about what might have caused the Columbine murderers to commit their mass murders. Moore asks McCullum: “So, you don’t think our kids say to themselves, ‘Well, jeez, Dad goes off to the factory every day and he builds missiles. These are weapons of mass destruction.’ What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?”

McCullum: “I guess I don’t see that specific connection because the missiles are designed to defend us from somebody else who would be aggressors against us.” Great answer. But, it’s obviously pearls-before-swine for Moore since this response makes sense, unlike his pathetic little film.

Moore also notes, as if there is something sinister about this — that once a month Lockheed transports one of its rockets through the streets of Littleton, “passing nearby Columbine High School” and they do this “in the middle of the night while the children of Columbine are asleep”! Pretty scary, no? No.

In any event, as you might guess, there’s a story behind the story of what we see about Lockheed-Martin in BFC. In an interview, Evan McCullum says that Moore’s producer called and said they were doing a film about suburban America and were filming in Littleton. So, since Lockheed-Martin was a major employer in the area, might they interview someone from Lockheed-Martin? And what they wanted to talk about, supposedly, was Lockheed-Martin’s donation to Jefferson County Schools after the Columbine shootings, specifically donations dealing with an anger-management program. McCullum says Moore’s producer told him this particular Lockheed-Martin program was “kinda cool. Can we talk about it?”

Q: “In other words, Moore and his people misrepresented what they wanted to discuss?”

A: “Yes, to put it mildly.”

McCullum says yes, he has seen BFC and he’s “horrified” he ever spoke to Moore, he regrets it and should never have done it.

McCullum also tells of other Moore lies in BFC. He says that what was shown in the movie was not a “missile” but a rocket used for space launchings of satellites. He says he made this “abundantly clear” to Moore and his film crew, that no weapons are made at the Lockheed-Martin Denver-area facility.

Gutterball Number 12: Wrong To Blame America For The Columbine Murders

Oh, and there’s one more villain Moore singles out in BFC as a possible cause of the Columbine mass murders: the good old USA. At one point in the movie, we’re told, ominously, that the day the Columbine slaughter occurred, April 20, 1999, was the same day the United States conducted its heaviest bombing campaign of Kosovo. We see a news report telling us of this bombing. Then, we see, one hour later, President Clinton saying there has been a “terrible shooting” at Columbine High School. Clinton’s announcement is followed by the audio of 911 calls from Columbine and internal videotapes of some of what was happening in the school as the murders took place.

Get it? Moore is seriously implying that the Columbine murderers just might have been motivated, in some way, to commit their slaughter because of our heavy bombing of Kosovo — yet one more lunatic theory. Critical thinking, obviously, is not one of Moore’s strong points.