Is Bowling For Columbine Worth Watching?

[BatmanNate]

Originally posted by: chiwawa626

Originally posted by: BatmanNate
A bunch of asshat kids keep trying to trade me that for access to my FTP. If these leet speaking anal mongers are the target audience, I think I'll take a rain check.

And what does that make you MR. "133t-warez-man"

Coming from the guy with the AOL address in his sig.

 

[tcsenter]

I haven't seen Bowling for Colombine but I've read that Moore is a card-carrying member of the NRA and is a skilled marksman.

Moore WAS a competitive shooter, in junior high school, and WAS a member of the NRA. At least that is what Moore claims, I have never seen this 'confirmed', only repeated over and over. But I will take Moore at his word, since its not really relevant to anything. Moore has repeatedly expressed his support for gun control, as he did on MSNBC's Phil Donahue show when Moore said he would support banning all handguns, just a few minutes before confessing he really didn't believe it would have much impact on violent crime. So many contradicting and inconsistent statements, so little time to note them all.

Moore is what I've come to call a gun "privilege" supporter. Moore thinks you have a 'privilege' to own a single-shot 12 gauge, .22 rifle, or maybe Moore would even allow us to keep a muzzle loader, under lock and key 24 hours a day, and only if the firearm is for a "legitimate" purpose recognized by Moore, such as hunting or target shooting. If your local police or city officials should decide they don't like guns, well then you'll just have give them up. This is a privilege, not a right.

The NRA is an organization which holds that gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right, not unlike the right to trial by a jury of one's peers or right to legal representation. The NRA vigorously rejects the notion that gun ownership is a mere 'privilege' afforded to you by the graciousness of your government officials, like the privilege of owning or driving a motor vehicle on public roads. Like any other constitutional right, one need not prove a "legitimate" purpose for exercising that right; rights exist for their own sake.

So while Moore may be a member of the NRA, one must question why, since his views are decidedly opposed to the most core NRA positions. Moore has stated numerous times that the NRA was 'different' when he was growing up, it only concerned itself with promoting gun safety and not political lobbying, which I have estimated to be Moore Lie #47,926,237. The NRA has been active in politics and lobbying since the 1940s, and has only lobbied to the extent that gun control proposals have become fashionable politically. If anything, the NRA has SOFTENED some of its positions since the 60's and 70's.

What facts in this movie were incorrect? It's a documentary...you can't really bend the truth that much.

lol! Where shall I begin?

Its a movie, a 'film' for purposes of entertainment. A 'mockumentary', perhaps, even an 'entertain-u-mentary'. But if Moore's film should be considered a 'documentary', then so should "The Blair Witch Project".

Moore predictably starts with a false or distorted conclusion then attempts to work backwards to explain it. This is called "inductive" reasoning, and not coincidentally, is the province of the right brain, not the left brain which is concerned with critical thinking and logical analysis. Add a heaping scoop of sights and sounds, toss in an entertaining cartoon, a catchy tune, and a hilarious Chris Rock bit, you have a veritable feast for the right brain, leaving only meager table scraps for the benefit of the left brain. This is precisely why Moore's fans incessantly attribute to his productions the trait of "thought provoking" and claim Moore "makes some good points", despite enormous flaws in logic, reason, and fact.

"Informed" is left brain, "entertained" is right brain. Moore's antics, stunts, muck-raking satire, upstaging, name-calling, opportunistic lamenting and shameless grandstanding is 96% right brained stuff. Audiences THINK they are being "informed" when in reality they are being "entertained", except they're not sophisticated enough to know the difference. Its the classic 'phantom' shoulder tap, the 'bait-and-switch', which gets you to look right when you should be looking left, pun intended.

Moore couldn't possibly present his thesis any way other than an exercise in reverse logic, because scrutinizing Moore's thesis deductively causes it to fall apart at the seems. Start with the questions or points that Moore raises and try to follow them to Moore's open-ended conclusion. It doesn't work. They are leading questions, all of them, and only Moore holds the road map.

Moore predictably mischaracterizes the gun violence problem in the United States, in that it is not the 'United States' which is more violent than other countries; it is a very small and identifiable demographic within the United States which is more violent. Looking at non-specific aggregate national firearm violence statistics alone misses the more important and meaningful issues.

The higher firearm-related homicide rates in the US compared with other countries can be entirely attributed to the illicit narcotics trade and gang violence within US inner cities. It is no coincidence that some 70% of murder victims in the United States themselves have criminal records. The vast majority of shooting victims are criminals (i.e. bad people) who meet criminals (i.e. bad people) in pursuit of their criminal lifestyle; gang members killing gang members, drug dealers killing buyers, buyers killing sellers, etc.

It is not high-profile public or school shootings which accounts for our higher homicide rates, because not only are they the statistical exception, but England, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, et. al. have all had their own problems with high profile public shootings. Its not as though they only occur in United States, do a little research on high profile public shootings or rampages in other countries and you find that out quickly.

ONLY when you include in our aggregate firearm homicide statistics the contribution made by the crime-infested inner cities does this contribution "skew" our national aggregate firearm homicide statistics dramatically higher. In other words, it is NOT your 'representative and average' American out there shooting people or being shot who is disporportionately contributing to our national firearm homicide statistics, and so saying that 'America is a more violent country' is really a false overgeneralization and mischaracterization of the problem.

Case in point, the firearm homicide rate of inner-city black males between the ages of 15 and 30 is astronomical and has in many inner cities EXCEEDED 100 per capita (100K) at various times in recent decades. Granted, that is the higher end of the scale, but the 'median' homicide rates for black males in that age group is not much rosier. These are war-like casualty rates unprecedented in modern society during times of peace. I doubt the Civil War recorded casualty rates exceeding 100 per 100K, but that would just be off-the-cuff speculation on my part. It is THIS unrepresentative demographic which inordinately "skews" or pulls our national statistics higher.

Homicide rates for white males in the same age range doesn't even begin to approach blacks or latinos. If my memory serves me correctly, it is somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four per 100K. Although, one must wonder how long that will remain to be true, now that a few million 'angry' white middle-class kids, who have no clue what poverty is, or any other realities of the ghetto for that matter, and certainly have not a damned thing to be angry about, have chosen to emulate the 'gangster' culture of the inner city through their fascination with common criminals and gang members who just happen to rap well.

So wait a minute, that doesn't explain why Canada has far lower homicide rates but owns more guns per capita than the US, right? Again, start with a false or distorted premise, and you'll get the wrong answer every time. Garbage in - garbage out.

Not surprisingly, Moore gets it wrong on both counts (imagine that). Come to think of it, I have shown in other threads that Moore gets it factually and materially wrong almost every time he completes a sentence, usually by some order of magnitude, but that is beside the point.

Moore cites 7 million firearms in Canada and 200 - 250 million in the United States. Canada's population is approximately 28 million vs. 280 million for the United States. That means the United States has roughly 10x the population of Canada but 28 - 35x the number of firearms. Do the math, Canada does not come close to the per capita firearm ownership of the United States.

So what about the 'ethnic diversity' and 'racial composition' question, doesn't Moore have a valid point when says Canada is just as diverse as the US? In a word, no.

Canada isn't remotely as as "diverse" as the United States. Perhaps if you simplisticly define "diverse" as 'different ethnicities and national origins', then yes Canada is as diverse. But if you look at representation among the population, Canada doesn't even come close.

The total non-white minority population of Canada barely exceeds 11%. In particular, blacks represent about 2.1% of Canada's total population. 2.1%! No single ethnic/racial minority group represents more than 3% of Canada's population. As diverse as the US? Not even in the ballpark. Canada is as lilly white as any European country.

In fact, Canada's demographics hardly bear any resemblence at all to the United States. Canada is slightly larger than the US in area but has 1/10 of the population. Of course, a vast chunk of Northern Canada isn't very hospitable and few people inhabit those regions. Still, Canada's demographics are more similar to a state such as Alaska or Montana, and neither of those states is representative of the United States as a whole.

So what about Canada's lower firearm homicide rates? Well, something interesting happens when you compare Canada's less populated out-lying areas with those of comparably populated out-lying areas in the US. Out-lying is used here to mean non-urban, semi-rural or rural regions.

According to a study by Dr. Brandon S. Centerwall of the University of Washington published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, entitled "Homicide and Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976-1980", in geographically similar areas with a population of less than one million, homicide rates per capita were 3.1 and 3.7 for Canada and the US, respectively. Not a remarkable difference.

Again, you have to go to the urban centers to find the difference. In major metropolitan areas with a population greater than one million, homicide rates per capita were 2.2 and 14.1 for Canada and the US, respectively. A remarkable difference.

Only question left to answer is, what differences are there between the major urban centers of the US and Canada which might explain the remarkable difference in light of the unremarkable difference between the non-urban areas of US and Canada?

A little hint: Centerwall's study was presented as part of a critical review of another study by Dr. John Sloan published in the New England Journal of Medicine, entitled "Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide. A Tale of Two Cities". In it, a U.S. city, Seattle, was compared with a neighboring Canadian city, Vancouver, and according to Sloan, the strict gun laws in Canada were responsible for a lower rate of violence in Vancouver.

Sloan and Centerwall came to remarkably different conclusions by analyzing very similar data sets, two opposing studies. Except, something remarkable happened...

In both studies, when the homicide data sets were broken down into groups by race, the Canadian groups did not have uniformly lower homicide rates than their US counterparts.

 

[LeStEr]

Originally posted by: Jejunum
yes its excellent

 

[tcsenter]

Michael Moore wanted me to bump this thread...

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Just watched it. Loved it, for the most part. Could see where things were just a bit "too" manipulative and where he was stretching things a bit thin, but in my opinion, he brings up some good points.

 

[Martin]

Wasn't it Heston or someone high up in the NRA that compared Moore to Bin Laden? A millionare with his own agenda seeking to destroy america's freedoms?

That was funny.

 

[Infos]

I thought it was hilarious and a GREAT MOVIE! 😀

 

[0roo0roo]

its interesting. the war bit is hacked, but heston gets his just deserts. that makes it worth watching alone.

 

[jonmullen]

I really enjoyed it when I watched it, worth the time.