Bowling for Mooreverse

[Pekka]

So Bowling for Columbine was on TV just now. I've seen it few times before and I got to say it's one well made film.

Problems. Moore presents the wrong questions, getting the answers he wants. The end of the film, there is no one single answer as to why US has so many killings with guns. He clearly makes a big point about Canada having LOADS of guns, yet not so many incidents.

SO why did he make NRA the bad guy? If the number of guns doesn't play the definite factor, why was NRA left as the sole reason for it, added with racism, media whoring, bloody history, and then quickly countered that many other countries have all the same things that US has, that would play into high numbers, yet US is the only one with such high numbers.

There was no answer to it, but loads of guilty targets were displayed.

Seems to me, the technique this was done was brilliant but very obvious. That is, propaganda. He brings good points and backs up many of them, so it's difficult to see why it's not 100% flowing to the right direction. He sets assumptions, and let's them live in the air, unanswered, thus you take the guilty parties to be guilty, at least partially.

It must be a combination of many things, but he did take out kids as an example, shooting each other. Well, if you are a parent and have a gun at home, you are supposed to have it properly there. This is parent issue IMO more than gun control issue. Little kids shouldn't be able to reach them guns, loaded guns, and go out to see what happens when you pull the trigger.

The only answer to his scenario is that we should have 0 guns. That unfortunately is not possible.

Also, he made every gun owner to be ****ing psycho right wing nut. Because he had the convinient opportunity to pick the ones he wanted on screen. What about responsible gun owners, the 98% of gun owners? But that would have been a boring film, plus it still wouldn't have answered the question why the murder rate is so high.

But killers and gangbangers and gun toters rarely ask permission to purchase a gun, even if it is controlled. So who suffers from it, the responsible gun owners. Yes, tragic mistakes happens when people with no effort to responsibility leave their guns available to kids and stuff, but I don't tihnk that's the issue or the reason fro high murder rates.

So in short, he brings out the targets, the ones he chooses to portray as guilty parties, asks them the wrong questions and leaves the film with no answer, and thus the viewer has no option but to assume the guilty parties are actually guilty.

That is BS.

[GePap]

What Moore points to is a climate of fear. His point is not only that people in Canada have lots of guns, but they also have poverty, and petty crime. BUt they are less worried about it all than Americans.

As for the NRA, its easy to point out that the leadership's fanaticism is unhelpful to say the least.

I also think you miss out where he makes clear he grew up and NRA member.

[Pekka]

Yeah, he made lots of meaningless points.

He didn't establish the fact that the murders happen because of fear. That would appoint to booming sales of weapons.

Moore is also very ugly man.

And the point where he brought the sad story of 6 year old killing the little girl in school because he was able to get the gun from the house, well, gun control or not, that can happen. Also, what it the house owner was drug dealer, and the kid got the gun and same happened, would we blame gun laws? I don't think so. It's a non-issue.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
And the point where he brought the sad story of 6 year old killing the little girl in school because he was able to get the gun from the house, well, gun control or not, that can happen. Also, what it the house owner was drug dealer, and the kid got the gun and same happened, would we blame gun laws? I don't think so. It's a non-issue.

I've never heard about anything like that happening in France, a gun-law country.

If you considerably reduce the amount of guns in circulation, you considerably reduce the likelyhood of such an event. The likelyhood doesn't become zero (there was a school shooting in Germany), but it's considerably lower nonetheless.

What you are doing is saying that nbothing should be done unless those tragedies could be made absolutely impossible. If we followed that line of thought, we'd do nothing against rape, aginst car crashes, against disease, against no nothing.

[Kontiki]

For the record, we do not have nearly as many guns per capita in Canada as the US, and our ratio of rifles to handguns is way, way, way higher.

[Atahualpa]

I think it's pretty clear that he made the climate of fear responsible for the high murder rates.
I also think an undocumented side of this is, something you are afraid of, will manifest itself. This is the filling expectations part. If you expect someone to kill you, it's more likely that he kills you than if you don't expect that, especially if he knows that you expect him to kill you.

Sure some of the movie is agitation, but I mostly overlooked it. It would have been okay had he just shown the symptom, a TV documentation doesn't need to provide answers. Ofc, that's where Moore stepped to far when he put the blame and such, but well, I mean it's okay to say that the NRA is a tactless organization when they show up in a city where there has just been a mass shooting and proclaim there guns, guns, guns.

[Pekka]

Ohh,,, your answer is very.. French. You are just like Moore here, putting words to my mouth. This is not what I said. You said that. So you like raping uh?

No.

Like said, responsible gun ownership is what reduces the amount of tragedies and accidents. Promoting that and teaching and educating is the best way to make sure kids don't get their hands on guns.

Kids shooting other kids is not a big problem, even though every case is a tragedy. In numbers games, it's small potatos.

I'm not saying it's acceptable losses. I'm saying, it's guns, **** happens, trying to take them away won't make the problem smaller if there's already lots of guns out there.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I've never heard about anything like that happening in France, a gun-law country.

If you considerably reduce the amount of guns in circulation, you considerably reduce the likelyhood of such an event. The likelyhood doesn't become zero (there was a school shooting in Germany), but it's considerably lower nonetheless.

What you are doing is saying that nbothing should be done unless those tragedies could be made absolutely impossible. If we followed that line of thought, we'd do nothing against rape, aginst car crashes, against disease, against no nothing.

There has also been at least one in Austria, plus lately there was an incident involving knifes, where one pupil died.
Ofc, the point remains that with the weapons the kids used in Columbine, they could do way more damage than with a knife or pistol.

[Pekka]

Now you guys are misinterpreting what I said on purpose.

I clearly said, it must be a COMBINATION of things. Loads of guns, poverty, what have you.. not one single answer. And if there was, it woudl be BS because there must be many reasons.

After you see the film, you are left hating many parties that in fact weren't so guilty after all.

THat's my point.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Pekka
Yeah, he made lots of meaningless points.

He didn't establish the fact that the murders happen because of fear. That would appoint to booming sales of weapons.

Moore is also very ugly man.

And the point where he brought the sad story of 6 year old killing the little girl in school because he was able to get the gun from the house, well, gun control or not, that can happen. Also, what it the house owner was drug dealer, and the kid got the gun and same happened, would we blame gun laws? I don't think so. It's a non-issue.

Ah, the Pekka "style" of debate....



NO, he did not "establish the fact", because his is a HYPOTHESIS. He did not set out to "establish facts".

As for the final blatherings, I really never hearm much about crackhouse kjids shooting themselves accidentaly. Maybe its their early gun training...

[Atahualpa]

I don't think that's a problem, no? If you decide that it's a combination of these things he showed, well then good for you. Nobody said you need to draw the same conclusions Moore drew.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
I clearly said, it must be a COMBINATION of things. Loads of guns, poverty, what have you.. not one single answer. And if there was, it woudl be BS because there must be many reasons.

DUH.

Of course. Pretty much every social phenomenon is a combination of several factors. However, politics is about trying to solve collectively problems that are inherently individual.

Gun control won't miraculously change the situation in the US. However, if it allows for a reduction in the amount of weapons over time (especially of the amount of handguns), it can already make quite a bit of difference after a decade or two.

Of course other things are to look for. Petty crime is rampant in most societies with strong income disparities, and it can have terrible consequences that aren't seen if we only compare the statistics on violent deaths (for example, I'd be surprised if the US was way off the non-Scandinavian European countries when it comes to muggings and rapes). There are also violent counter cultures (and sometimes violent mainstream cultures) that strongly contribute to the kind of violence that is ordinary in a society. And of course, there are psychopats in every society, and you can't bring a political solution to that problem.

However, tackling one factor is better than tackling no factor. In a country where everybody and his dog has a handgun, more people are likely to die of a gun accident, or of gun abuse, than in a country where handguns are nearly inexistent. Simple. FACT.

[Pekka]

Ata, no. I meant that the real answer must be combination of things, not necessarily what was preseneted in this film.

GePap, crack kids? The kid that was presented in this film was 6 years old. No matter what surroundings, it could have happened. If his daddy was a drug dealer, or just normal daddy who left the gun around because he was stupid. Makes no difference.

You are all starting to disgust me with your hippie attitudes.

[Pekka]

Spiffor, keep debating other points I'm not even making. MY POINT IS, read carefully, that MOore intentionally leaves the guilty parties to be Lockheed and MArtin, Walmart, Charlton Hest, the religious right, rich white folks and Bush.

That's hardly the answer.

[Seeker]

There was a segment that was perplexing to me. He was interviewing some Canadians about if they 'lock their doors' and they were all saying they didn't. What did he mean by 'lock your doors'?

This struck me as a little weird, I mean maybe in some peaceful small town people don't lock their doors, but if you walk out the door in Toronto you definetly lock it behind you.

Maybe I was misunderestimating the question?

Americans don't actually lock their doors when they are still inside the house do they?

I mean, I always lock my door when I go out, but I don't think I've ever locked the door when I'm actually at home in broad daylight. Why would I?