I've also been accused of making up the gun homicide counts in the United States and various countries around the world. That is, like all the rest of this stuff, a bald-face lie. Every statistic in the film is true. They all come directly from the government. Here are the facts, right from the sources:
The U.S. figure of 11,127 gun deaths comes from a report from the Center for Disease Control. Japan's gun deaths of 39 was provided by the National Police Agency of Japan; Germany: 381 gun deaths from Bundeskriminalamt (German FBI); Canada: 165 gun deaths from Statistics Canada, the governmental statistics agency; United Kingdom: 68 gun deaths, from the Centre for Crime and Justice studies in Britain; Australia: 65 gun deaths from the Australian Institute of Criminology; France: 255 gun deaths, from the International Journal of Epidemiology.
Finally, I've even been asked about whether the two killers were at bowling class on the morning of the shootings. Well, that's what their teacher told the investigators, and that's what was corroborated by several eyewitness reports of students to the police, the FBI, and the District Attorney's office. I'll tell you who wasn't there -- me! That's why in the film I pose it as a question: Since that interview, the Titan IV rockets manufactured in Littleton have been critical to the war effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq. These rockets launched advanced satellites that were "instrumental in providing command-and-control operations over Iraq...for the rapid targeting of Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles involved in Iraqi strikes and clandestine communications with Special Operations Forces." (view source here).
That Lockheed lets the occasional weather or TV satellite hitch a ride on one of its rockets should not distract anyone from Lockheed's main mission and moneymaker in Littleton: to make instruments that help kill people. That two of Littleton's children decided to engineer their own mass killing is what these guys and the Internet crazies don't want to discuss.
The oddest of all the smears thrown at "Bowling for Columbine" is this one:
In the full, unedited interview I did with the Lockheed spokesman, he told me that Lockheed started building nuclear missiles in Littleton and "played a role in the development of Peacekeeper MX Missiles."
As for what's currently manufactured in Littleton, McCollum told me, "They (the rockets sitting behind him) carry mainly very large national security satellites, some we can't talk about." (see him say it here)
"The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness."
Um, yeah, that's right! I made it up! Heston never went there! He never said those things!
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