Movie review

I rented Bowling for Columbine .  I disagreed with a lot of things, although I do have strong gun control views. 

The connection Moore made between the shooting at the school and Lockheed Martin was silly.  Yes, I understand that in a cosmic, spiritual, powers and principalities-type of way, all violence is interconnected.  But I highly doubt the two boys went on their rampage as a protest against Lockheed, which seemed to be what Moore was hinting at.  I didn't understand the connection he was trying to make between the shooting and Kosovo, either.  Something about how it was the bloodiest day of bombing, but the media ignored it because of Columbine.  

I was uncomfortable with the way he took the two victims of the Columbine shooting to the Walmart headquarters to protest their sale of bullets.  (The bullets the shooters used in Columbine were purchased at Walmart.)  I think their cause was just, but I hoped that he wasn't using those victims to make his political point.  If the victims wanted to do this of their own volition, fine, but hopefully Moore didn't talk them into it.  On the other hand, would Walmart have stopped selling bullets without their protest? 

I thought taking the picture of the little girl murdered by a schoolmate in Michigan to Charlton Heston's house was cheap.  It's not his fault that girl died.  I do think he's completely wrong about gun control, but it was very classy of him to agree to sit down with Moore without an appointment.  However, holding the NRA convention in Denver after the shooting was touchy.  This article says it was two weeks later.  In that case, the NRA couldn't have moved or cancelled the convention in time.  If it was months later, maybe.  And the NRA did scale it down and cancel plans to have a gun sale.  Hey, I'm no NRA fan.  Listening to one victim's father make a speech pleading for the NRA not to come was very moving.  But it may have been an unfortunate coincidence (the NRA convention and the shooting), even though it was obviously causing a lot of anguish.

Do Canadians really and truly keep their doors unlocked at a higher rate than Americans?  Show me some statistics.  The three homes Moore went to don't constitute a valid sampling.  I understand he was trying to say Canadians have less fear of crime.  Does less fear of crime cause less crime?  I don't know.  American TV news is getting out of control with the fear thing, though.  Remember the silly "Shark Attacks!" stories a while ago?  (And don't you love the "Some household item in your kitchen may be causing you cancer!  Details at 11!" news commercials?)

Finally, the big question of the movie was why does America have so many more gun-related murders than other countries?  Poverty?  No, Moore said, Canada has a higher unemployment rate than the U.S.  Okay, but unemployment rates and poverty rates are two different things.  I bet the U.S. has a higher rate of poverty.  A history of violence?  Moore offers Germany and the British Empire as examples.  Hmm, I don't know about that comparison.  Violent movies, video games, etc.?  No, other countries watch the same amount of violent movies but still have dramatically different lower murder rates.  So what is it?  Lots of different ethnicities in one country, as Heston suggested?  What does that mean?  Blame it on the blacks and Hispanics?  Or does our history of racism, combined with poverty and other factors, contribute to what's called "black on black crime"?  Or is that just a stereotype?  Does it have something to do with our culture of fear, as Moore suggested?  I don't know.  I don't think you can reduce it to one thing, but the question does need to be examined. 

What kind of a society is this, when a child can be shot standing on his own front porch?  This happened to my colleague's son last year.  Darius was fourteen, shot in a drive-by, and he was not in a gang or involved in anything that would have brought this upon himself, in case you're wondering.  You might say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but how can your own home be the wrong place? 

Don't tell me "guns don't kill people, people kill people."  Sure, people strangle each other or stab each other or drown each other.  But there are too many bullets whizzing around our streets killing our children.  Maybe we disagree on gun control, but can't we do something to make our society safer?