The reason that so many gun deaths are “acquaintance murders” is that a large fraction of gun-related deaths are drug-related, or pertain to some other sort of crime gone awry. There’s a big difference between two drug dealers shooting it out, and having your good buddy Bob come over and shoot you.
I’ll agree that there’s a media distortion regarding guns (among other things), but it’s of the same sort that Moore, himself, helps to propogate.
Jeff
Yep you’re right. I’m pretty sure it’s a fact that places where it’s harder to acquire a firearm, have higher homicide rates. The only thing I can say is that the guns are still causing the deaths, so it’s a gun problem.
It’s easier to shoot someone then to stab someone I’d imagine.
I saw it. And hell if I can figure out what Moore’s position on the issue even was. I mean, he seemed to (cliche imminent) throw a huge number of things against the wall, hoping a few would stick.
What was his point? That guns are unequivocably evil, and cause crime? Nah, because he defends gun owners a number of times, and points out that he himself is an NRA member. That America has a violent history? Well, show me a country that doesn’t. That the Columbine shootings were somehow tied to (a) his statement that the US military dropped more bombs on that day than any other in X conflict, or (b) Lockheed Martin being a prominent local business?
Much of the movie involved tieing together largely unrelated phenomena (he kept bashing the NRA for holding a conference in the city where a child had been accidentally shot, he kept trying to tie together America’s foreign policy and its homeland gun violence, etc), cheap grandstanding (confronting Charlton Heston, letting the principal of the school where the girl was shot cry on his shoulder), and attempting to make broad social commentary derived from tiny sample sizes (opening the doors of two Canadian homes to show they’re not locked, interviewing those two guys in the arcade, talking to four Canadian teenagers in a fast-food parking lot regarding Americans, etc.). So what’s his friggin’ point?
I have a hard time taking this guy seriously. He makes entertaining films, but I’ve yet to hear a good explanation of his beliefs regarding gun control. I’d love to hear what his position is, but until he makes it clear, it’s certainly hard to debate him over it. Maybe this is the point.
No, it’s a people-wanting-to-kill-other-people problem. If you find people committing suicide in droves by hanging, do you have a rope problem?
When Canada banned guns, there was an immediate drop in gun murders. Yay! Except that there was an increase in murders by other means. Coincidentally, the increase in murders by other means happened to equal the drop in murders by gun, such that the overall murder rate didn’t change much.
I find it especially odd that you acknowledge an inverse relation between gun prevalence and homicide rate, yet still say guns are the problem.
Jeff
mojo said:
Because MM abusing the same fear-mongering that the evening news does, in order to “scare” people into thinking that a turkey-shooting shotgun is the source of all our problems.
I agree 100% OCC.
Lss than 20% of all murders were related to narcotics, robberies, and other felonies in 1998, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. See Table No. 333 on page 8 of this PDF file. Approximately 32% of all murders were attributable to “Argument,” and 31% were “Unknown.”
65% of murders were committed with guns. Handguns were responsible ( 
) for 52% of all murders.
I saw Bowling for Columbine and after walking out of the theater, I wanted to find the bank issuing the free rifles and cash in on that awesome deal!
IMHO, I think that Moore really made no point other than that the media in the U.S. is to blame for most, if not all, of our violent crime problems. It really burns my blood when Moore portrayed Canada as a Eutopian place where nobody feels the need to lock their doors, or carry guns, or fear anything. Canada, being mostly rural as compared to the U.S. has about two murders for every 100000 people, whereas the U.S. averages about 7 or 8. It just makes sense that the U.S., with many more major metropolitan areas than Canada, would have a larger number of murders and violent crime, but to suggest that the lack of gun control is to blame?..I disagree
Also Moore was really grasping for straws when he attempted to make Dick Clark make some sort of statement about the Flint MI shooting. So Dick Clark is supposed to apologize for employing the mother of the kid??? Let’s get real Moore.
And when he asked the cop if he could arrest anybody about the smog in L.A…just what was the point of that?
As for the NRA, yeah at worst they probably showed bad taste by showing up for pro-gun rallies in Denver and then Flint after the two tragedies, but you have to realize that at times like those, is when people are most likely to act hastily and emotionally about second amendment rights. The NRA simply felt a need to represent at that time. By the way, Charlton Heston is just a “figure head” if you have not figured that one out yet. So, when Moore made him look bad, he really did not have to try very hard…after all Heston’s just another Hollywood idiot like the rest of them.
Basically, if you saw *Bowling for Columbine[/] to reaffirm your beliefs in gun control, you probably walked out feeling pretty fulfilled. Because of Moore’s shortcomings, I saw it as good material for me to use when I argue for my “pro-2nd amendment” opinions!
“From my cold dead hands…”
But this says nothing about gun-related murders, only murders as a whole. I wish I could check out that link, but my computer doesn’t seem to like PDFs at the moment. 
Jeff
Also, Moore is standing behind the scene where the bank gives him a gun for opening an account:
That certainly coincides with what is shown in the movie, where the lady at the bank plainly states that they are a federally licensed firearms dealer as she prepares to do the background check.
Note also that while the Lockheed Martin facility MM visits in the film makes rockets for satellite launches these days, the very same same Atlas and Titan rockets were formerly made by Lockheed for use as nuclear missiles. There are several other Lockheed facilities in the area, though it’s unclear what (if anything) is manufactured at the other locations. Personally, I thought the whole military-industrial complex thing was too dumb for words, but that’s MM for you.
to me, one of the most interesting things about the movie was the lack of strong statements it made. if you’ve ever seen some of his other movies, it’s all too clear what his position is, and what he’s trying to get you to realize.
this one asked a lot more questions than it answered. it seemed to me that the point of the movie was to provoke discussions such as this one, and obviously it’s pretty successful. he is a grandstander, and as such did a bit of hyperbolizing, but all in all, it seemed like a rather honest effort for moore.
on another note, one of the few points the movie makes is that gun control needn’t be the answer. canada was the prime example. though there are more murders there than in england, canadians who have among the lowest murder rates in the world, also (if i’m not mistaken) have more guns per capita than americans.
and on a completely different note, the second amendment wasn’t made so people could hunt.
Apos: you’re question about the M-16 variant (known as the M-16A2) was answered correctly by Padeye. It development and implementation was the result of a DoD study showing that full-auto was often wasted in “spray-and-pray” firing patterns by the average infantryman, where full-auto quickly becomes useless due to degraded accuracy.
Rambo and movies notwithstandind, full-auto is inherently unstable and inaccurate in all but the hands of highly trained and experienced shooters, such as rich enthusiasts with money to burn on extravagant quantities of ammunition and range time, and elite military forces who receive such from military budgets.
Essentially (a real weapons guru will undoubtedly correct me, this is layman at best): The three-round burst was deteremined to be optimal for the dual purposes of placing several bullets in any given volume of space which an individual enemy soldier might occupy, while retaining sufficient accuracy to actually hit him with at least one, if not several bullets using aimed fire.
It is classified as a full-auto weapon by the BATF, and procedures such as described by Padeye must be undertaken to obtain one, if one were of the law enforcement community, or a seller to law enforcement agencies; I do not believe, under the Act he cited, that even a qualified, appropriately licensed private civillian may obtain one for personal use.
We just recently hashed over the “Why Does Anyone Need Full-Auto” question in a previous GD thread (the debate devolved to that on/about page 4 or 5). One side said that, as long as crimes committed with full-auto weapons were low (to non-existent once the qualification of crimes committed by legally owned and registered full-auto weapons was admitted), there was no need for further restrictions upon them.
The opposition said that, as long as there are any crimes committed with full-auto weapons, be they legally held or illegally obtained, then tighter restriction sare in order.
I personally found this to be a “bar” set impossibly high, and methinks it is a springboard for others who wish to ban all firearms on the grounds that, no matter how many or how few gun crimes are committed, as long as there is even one, then guns should be banned.
World Eater: while I certainly respect your right to your opinion, I would ask you: would you vote in national elections for candidates who feel as you do, so that your opinion might be imposed upon others who don’t live in New York city, or feel as you do about hunting? Say, people who live in Montana? Michigan? Where people routinely hunt, and not just for personal amusement, but for cheap alternatives to grocery store meats, or to control runaway deer populations which are swelling unhealthily due to the elimination of natural predators?
Given the span of a “few decades,” you might be towards the top; recently, (last 5-10 years) violent crime in N.Y. city has been falling pretty sharply, and I just heard on ABC Nightly News last week that for 2002, N.Y. city had 82 homicides (presumably mostly with firearms, but I’m sure some stabbings and motor vehicle homicides may be in that statistic as well).
So N.Y. is not the murder capital of the U.S. by any stretch of the imagination. Googling “murder capitol USA” yielded nothing of note.
Do you believe that the firearms used in the instances you describe were legally obtained? That a person with no criminal background walked into a gun store, presented ID and other required documentation (licenses and what-not), paid for the firearm, and then went out and committed armed burglary?
Or did they steal those guns? Perhaps bought stolen guns off the street? Did someone else buy it for them (a straw-man purchase, and illegal)? Perhaps purchased in another state with false ID’s?
Don’t tell me what you can or cannot prove; obviously, you cannot prove any of the above, or speak with certainty to the origin of a gun being held to your head during the commission of a crime; I am asking you what you sincerely believe the source[s] of the majority of guns used in crime are, and perhaps, if you feel you have the time, how current laws can either be enforced or added to constructively to stop the source[s].
I am generally very pro-gun, and own 6 handguns, 4 rifles and 2 shotguns. I live in a gun friendly state, where my driver’s license, a successfull background check through NICS and some form of cash (check, credit card) is all that is required to legally purchase and own a firearm, and where concealed carry is allowed once a training course with objective criteria is completed.
But I am not unamenable to reasoned, rational debate; provided that your reasons don’t boil down to “guns are evil, they kill people, and I don’t like them.”
In which case, I just call you a hoplophobe (thank you Jeff Cooper!) and move on.
Sorry for the unintended hijack.
To the OP: I refuse to pay good money to see something which, regardless of its accuracy regarding facts, will enrich one of the gun control movements most vocal and obnoxious supporters.
:shrug:
YMMV.
I thought his point was that smog harms more people than some other crimes which commonly result in arrests, but since smog is mostly the fault of corporations, no one is arrested.
You’re mistaken, and the film was misleading on that point. Canada has significantly less gun ownership per capita than the U.S., and even less handgun ownership per capita. Here’s a link: http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/Cda-US.htm
Quite correct. It was made so that the states could maintain their own militias if they wished to do so.
From my ( foreign ) perspective, it seems that Moore is doing a general overview of what he sees is wrong with society in contemporary USA. I think what he is getting at is NOT that gun control (or lack thereof) is the major problem, IMHO its the structures and divisions US society has constructed that Moore identifies as problems. Class, racial, and any other number of boundaries have been set up that diminish the quality of life (perhaps) and contribute to the high murder rate. Maybe. Just my interpretation.
Mogiaw
What are they going to do, arrest the corporation? Obviously, its far more difficult to assess blame for something like smog than for something like assault, and this is as much to blame as the sway the corporations hold over those that could sanction them.
ET: To the OP: I refuse to pay good money to see something which, regardless of its accuracy regarding facts, will enrich one of the gun control movements most vocal and obnoxious supporters.
Your choice, Ex, but don’t overlook the points that other people are making here about BfC’s not being a mere “vocal and obnoxious” pitch for gun control. He suggests (albeit mistakenly, as minty points out) that far-less-violent Canada actually has more guns per capita than the US. He interviews some perfectly reasonable and law-abiding gun owners. He makes no secret of being a life member of the NRA.
Seems to me that what the movie is trying to unpack is the uniquely American hysteria about guns, on both sides of the issue. What’s it based on in our culture as a whole? Why did the shooting of a classmate by a black six-year-old provoke racist diatribes about little monsters and irresponsible mothers, addressed to the local DA? Why did the shooting of classmates by the Columbine killers provoke about equal parts outrage against guns and against Marilyn Manson? Why do we watch “true crime” shows that use gun violence as entertainment? Why does the NRA deliberately choose communities that are reeling from a recent gun-violence tragedy to stage vociferous “from-my-cold-dead-hands” pro-gun rallies? Why do we as a society work so hard to stimulate fear and anger about guns, either danger posed by the guns themselves or danger posed by restricting them? Why are the “hoplophobes” and the “hoplophiles” both so vehement and nutty? Why do guns matter so much?
If you don’t want any of your movie money going into Michael Moore’s pocket, fine. But if you happen to have a chance to see “Bowling for Columbine” without enriching the filmmaker in the process, you might find it very interesting.
I don’t like to do this, but…cite?
occ: What are they going to do, arrest the corporation?
IMHO the funniest scene in the movie made exactly this point, with an imaginary “true-corporate-crime” TV show that had officers busting into corporate suites and yelling at CEO’s to freeze.
Obviously, its far more difficult to assess blame for something like smog than for something like assault, and this is as much to blame as the sway the corporations hold over those that could sanction them.
And I think Moore’s point was also that it’s far less glamorous and exciting to watch on TV. One of the reasons we are so obsessed with gun violence is that it’s the kind of crime that makes good television. A “true-crime” show about EPA assessors scrutinizing emissions analyses and writing up citations against companies that exceed their limits? Boooooooring.