It would seem that you cannot have it both ways: either the US is a really safe country, and our fears of violence are greatly exaggerated, or the US is a really violent country, and our fears of violence are not at all exaggerated but perfectly reasonable. Which is it?
Those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive, and I think the reality of it is they lead into each other in a kind of self-fulfilling way.
Really? Which came first? I can tell you roughly when our violent crime rates began to skyrocket - between 1957 and 1967. Check the historical violent crime statistics from the FBI.
Moore attempts to make the case it is white people who, out of some deeply-seeded fear of all these darkies, feel they 'need' guns to protect themselves, that is the 'cult of fear', right? Why, then, is the vast majority of the gun violence
minority on minority and not whites killing minorities?
Or are blacks included in this 'cult of fear', too? And if so, who are they afraid of, whites? Then why are blacks, for the most part, killing each other and not whites?
Every premise developed by Moore falls to pieces under scrutiny.
Moore doesn't merely ask questions, he asks leading questions, to which Moore has already formulated the answer. The only 'good point' Moore makes which can stand up to scrutiny is that the United States has a gun violence problem. WOAH! This is hardly some ground-breaking 'discovery' only Moore has stumbled upon.
How many other notable school shootings - Pearl, Jonesboro, West Paducah, Edinboro, and others - were located in communities influenced by this ominous 'military industrial complex'? I'll take a wild guess - none - that's why Moore doesn't mention any of them. This is nothing but a superficial correlation.
Hey, I can do that. Looky here, two of the notable school shootings were in cities ending with 'boro'; Edinboro and Jonesboro. Clearly, then, there is something very amiss in cities ending with the letters B-O-R-O that warps the minds of their children and causes them to have murderous fantasies. Stop the presses, I've stumbled upon the 'cause' of America's gun violence problem! Its those infernal mind-warping letters B-O-R-O!
In fact, this observation is statistically more viable than Moore's, since it is a commonality shared by two different school shootings. Moore doesn't attempt to look for any common denominators in other school shootings, making the entire exercise statistically a 'sample of one'. All I gotta get is one of those distorted 'History of America' cartoons, a fat dumpy posture, a profoundly stupid audience to buy it all, and I'm in business!
Even more interesting than Moore's neglect of other school shootings, is why he picks a statistical rarity to represent America's 'gun violence problem'. Among all the types of shootings which contribute to our homicide rates, high profile shooting 'rampages' are a statistical rarity. You don't define an issue by its rare exceptions. Perhaps Moore dropped out of college because he was having so much trouble with statistics? That would explain much...
Even more interesting than Moore's attempt to define an issue by its rare exceptions, is how he completely ignores the fact that public killing sprees are not by any means exclusive to the US (This is not a comprehensive list of all public rampages in other countries, only the most infamous or deadly cases):
U.K.:
August 19, 1987, 27-year-old Michael Ryan shot to death 16 people and wounded 14 others in the small farming community of Hungerford, approximately 60 miles west of London.
March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked to the Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and killed 16 children, their teacher, and then shot himself.
Australia:
April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a 28-year-old with a history of mental problems went on a rampage beginning in the historical town of Port Arthur in the southeastern corner of Tasmania, killing 35 people.
17 August 1991, taxi driver Wade Frankum shot 8 people to death in a suburban shopping mall in Strathfield, Australia before turning the gun on himself.
August 7th, 1987, Julian Knight killed 7 and wounded 19 in Melbourne.
December 8th, 1987, Frank Vitkovic burst into a high-rise federal office building and fatally shot eight persons with a rifle before throwing himself through an 11th story window to his death. Five other persons were wounded in the shootings.
27 October 1992, Malcom Baker went on a shooting spree through three coastal towns near Sydney, Australia, killing his former girlfriend, her pregnant sister and four others before surrendering to authorities.
Canada (peaceful, non-racist, non-military worshipping, according to Moore):
April 6th, 1999, Pierre Leburn walked into his former place of employment on Ottawa, Canada and kills four former coworkers then kills himself.
In December of 1989, Marc Lepine went on a shooting rampage at the University of Montreal, targeting women as his victims, killing 14 and wounding 12, before killing himself.
5th April 1996, British Columbia, Mark Chahal burst into the home of his estranged wife's family and opened fire as they were preparing for a wedding, killing 9, before turning the gun on himself.
September 1970, Creston, British Columbia, Dale Nelson went on a killing spree leaving eight dead.
France: (yep, that country Moore loves so much)
On March 27, 2002, Richard Durn calmly opened fire at a city council meeting in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, methodically killing eight people and injuring more than 20 others in an attack the prime minister called a "a case of furious dementia."
July 1989, Luxiol, France: Christian Dornier drives around firing a shotgun at residents of a farming village 275 miles south-east of Paris, killing 14 people and wounding 9.
June 1985, Brittany, France: Guy Martell went on a shooting rampage through a string of towns, leaving seven dead.
February 1995, Paris, France: Alexi Polevoi murdered his father, stepmother, her parents and two friends in the family.
September 1995, Cuers, France: Eric Borel murdered three members of his family after they criticize him for his failure in secondary school exams, then walked to a nearby village and calmly opened fire on a quiet town square, killing nine more people before committing suicide.
Holland:
April 1983, Delft, Holland: Sevdet Yilmaz, a Dutch national of Turkish birth, shot dead six people and wounded four others in a crowded cafe in Delft.
New Zealand:
November 1990, Aramoana, New Zealand: David Malcolm Gray terrorized the small township of Aramoana killing 13 people before being fatally shot by police.
October 1941, Hokitika, New Zealand: Stanley Graham shot dead seven men including four police officers.
February 1997, Raurimu, New Zealand: Armed with a shotgun, Stephen Anderson stalked a New Zealand ski village for an hour, killing six people and seriously wounding five others.
Switzerland:
September 27, 2001, Zug, Switzerland: A gunman with a grievance against politicians went on the rampage in a regional parliament, killing at least 15 people - including himself and wounding dozens of others.
March 1992, Lugano, Switzerland: Erminio Criscione killed six people and wounded six others by ringing doorbells and firing on victims as they answered the door.
Germany:
February 2002: A former pupil killed his headmaster and set off pipe bombs in the technical school he had recently been expelled from in Freising near Munich. The man also shot dead his boss and a foreman at the company he worked for before turning the gun on himself.
April 2002: Seventeen people killed after a gunman - a former pupil - opens fire in a school in Erfurt, eastern Germany. He then turned the gun on himself.
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These must all be 'fascist, right-wing, racist, capitalist, military industrial complex worshipping' countries, eh?
He makes so many good points....highlighting the inaccuracies is important to do, but using those as an excuse to shut your mind off to everything else isn't healthy.
Neither is being a total idiot who enthusiastically swallows every lie Moore is selling without question, but that doesn't stop you, either.
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