Um … if places where it’s harder to acquire a firearm have higher homicide rates, wouldn’t that mean that making it easier to acquire a firearm would reduce the homicide rate?
minty green quoted an interview with Moore:
Hmmm … Moore is going to go out of his way to make sure that a rifle he obtained will be destroyed. Yet Moore claims to be a life member of the NRA?
He doesn’t “claim to be” a life member. He is a lifetime member. It’s not like membership in the Masons, you know. Anyone can send in their $750 and they’re in.
Yeah, I believe the movie said he’s been an NRA life member since he was a target shooting champ in high school.
Actually, I don’t believe he does that. My recollection is that he describes Canada’s per capita gun ownership rate as “almost” as high as America’s. That’s still misleading, as it’s actually about a third or less, and per capita handgun ownership is about one quarter of what it is in America. He does also gloss over the much stricter Canadian registration and other gun control requirements.
On the whole though, I very much agree with your post Kimstu. The movie is about how we got so darned violent in this country, and how the perceptions of that are affected by the media. I suspect it started out as a gun control film, and metamorphosed as the project progressed. Unfortunately, I think most gun rights supporters will be like ExTank and decline to see it on principle. That’s disappointing, since although it’s agenda-driven, the agenda isn’t gun control-driven, and it’s frequently thought-provoking.
Of course, sometimes those thoughts are “Hey Mike, pull yer head outta yer butt,” but many of the thoughts are more interesting than that. 
He was a junior member at that point, but only rejoined in the wake of Columbine. I guess Wayne LaPierre was happy enough to cash his check though, so he’s in now, unless there’s some sort of provision for impeaching members as insufficiently enthusiastic about firearms. 
To be fair, government intervention forcing prices to go to 10 times their actual value or beyond isn’t all that far off from being “fees”.
Your blood should be burning.
You are right.
You are more than right.
When you compare similar states to similar provinces, a much different picture emerges, showing Canada to actually be much more dangerous than the United States.
Nearly every Canadian province which borders a U.S. state, has a HIGHER murder rate than a U.S. state that borders it.
A MUCH HIGHER murder rate than the american state just below it, Canada is THREE to SIX times as dangerous as America with states and provinces that are very similar in industry, income, climate, topography, race, population density, and other similar demographics!
For example, Vermont(only 1.5 homocides per 100,000) has a much LOWER! murder rate, barely HALF the murder rate of Quebec(2.68).
North Dakota( 0.6 homocies per 100,000) has a much lower murder rate, ONLY ONE SIXTH!! than either Sashatchewan(3.6 homocides per 100,000) or Manitoba(3.58).
Alberta(3.0 homocides per 100,000) has a 60% HIGHER murder rate than Montana(1.8).
British Columbia(3.51) has three times the murder rate of Idaho(only 1.2), etc.
The Yukon Territory, with 6.5 homocides per 100,000 is 50% more dangerous than its only bordering state, a state almost exactly like the Yukon: Alaska, with only 4.3 homocides per 100,000.
ALL!!! of the american states mentioned above have a LOWER murder rate than all of Canada which is: 2.47 homocides per 100,000 nationwide.
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/010719/d010719b.htm
http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ndcrimn.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/mtcrimn.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/idcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/vtcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/akcrime.htm
There is very little that new national gun control measures can do in the states of North Dakota(0.6) or Vermont(1.5), for example, to reduce their low murder rates, since they are already among the lowest murder rates in the world. Frankly, I dont see what any new federal gun control legislation would do to reduce murders in these states from its already extremely low levels.
Since the majority of murders in the United States, are in a very tiny small geographic area, then what ever new laws or solutions are proposed, should be focused on that 3% of America which has the high murder rate. We should not waste our time, our police resources, our tax dollars, etc. with “federal” legislation trying to make the murder rate of North Dakota smaller than 0.6, nor with intruding on the rights of the majority of americans who do not commit murders.
In this movie, Moore did not want Charleton Heston to talk about the demographics of murders in the United States, and cut off his attempted discussion of FBI demographics as it relates to murder.
According to the FBI, Bureau of Justice statistics, over half the murders in America, are commted by just one small minority group(11%) living on less than 3% of the land area of the United States. The murder rate of 89% of Americans, in the other 97% of America, is less than half of the national rate being reported.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/99cius.htm
I want to point out that this isn’t correct, and it’s an attempt to make the NRA look bad.
Big rallies like that are scheduled well in advance of their occurance and have much planning and such done ahead of time. What the NRA did was run a rally that was already planned and schedules.
If you’re suggesting they should’ve cancelled it, imagine the flak they would’ve gotten from THAT. Every gun control group would accuse of them of admitting “guilt” for the incident. There’s no way they can win on that one - and I think they did the perfectly reasonable thing, go ahead with a rally that had been scheduled and planned probably months before.
And, for clarification, Moore has said that he joined the NRA with the specific intent to change them from within to stop being a gun rights organization.
Wait, Susanann, I thought you were going to be comparing similar states to similar provinces? Quebec and Vermont are not equivalent, nor are Idaho or British Columbia.
In fact, neither are Alberta or Montana. Alberta has almost 2 million people living in it, and two cities with more than 500,000. Calgary has about 900,000 and Edmonton with about 666,000. The entire province has a population density of about 4.5 p/km2.
Montana has about half as many people, with only around 900,000. In addition, neither of the two largest cities in Montana have even 100,000 people. In fact, the five largest cities in Montana combined have about 230,000, about a third of Edmonton and less than a quarter of Calgary’s. Montana has a population density of about 2 p/km2, or less than half of Alberta’s.
The closest province to Montana in terms of demographics is Manitoba. And when comparing homicide rates, we see that Manitoba comes out ahead. Montana has 4.1 homicides per 100,000, while Manitoba sports a homicide rate of 3.94. Essentially the same.
Please stop fudging your statistics, you’re just as bad as Moore. You are comparing two different statistics, US murder rates against Canadian homicide rates, for dissimilar provinces and states. The difference is that homicide includes not only murder, but also manslaughter and other things.
I’ll assume your mistake was made out of ignorance, Susanann, not because you are a disreputable liar.
I forgot about this little gem.
Even if you halve the homicide rate, the US is STILL higher than Canada, as Canada’s 2000 homicide rate was less than a third of that of the US. CITE.
So I guess that blows a hole in your little theory.
Again, please stop spreading disinformation in this thread.
In this thread?
Eh? You talking to me, minty?
How about the fact the Moore did not show all that he did? He found more locked doors in Canada then unlocked ones, but chose not to show them because it didn’t help the arguement he wanted to make.
Talking to you, but referring to the person you were addressing. There’s quite a pattern of misinformation, as the links in this thread show.
I don’t know why Moore avoids the real issue at work in Columbine:
The two shooters were ceaselessly harassed by homophobic, thuggish, pea-brained jocks, which drove them to mass murder.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Those two young lovers worked on that job for months before they carried out their plan. I don’t know why Moore tries to explain away the fact that the atmosphere in large high schools is conducive to the kind of abuse that leads sensitive young men who don’t fit in to extreme behavior.
And calling them “fascinated with nazis” or “racists” is total BS. It was the thugs who were tormenting them day in and day out who fit that label.
Not that the young men should have murdered anyone. They should have just left the miserable place and been done with it all. But we all know how hard it is to conceive of the life beyond when you’re in that hell called high school.
Moore’s just capitalizing on a tragedy. The whole thing really ticks me off.
And that shouls show everyone what a doofus Moore really is. It’s the NRA, for Pete’s sake. The second word in their name is a type of gun. They could no sooner stop supporting gun rights than I could pilot a submarine.
The day the NRA becomes anti-gun is the day I die, because then I will have seen it all.
There are no reliable statistics on gun ownership anywhere, since so many people in America and Canada do not tell the government if they own guns, or how many they own. Gun ownership is underreported nearly everywhere, particularly in Canada, where so few Canadians have registered their guns.
To his credit, Moore does admit that gun ownership in Canada is nearly as high as in the United States, causing him to accurately comment that gun ownership is not the problem(which would be even more obvious had he compared Switzerland ). http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/archive/international/msg00013.html
You are absoluely right that the second ammendment was not made so people could hunt. Although a few casual comments were made in the debates by some of the founding fathers regarding that the people “could” also use their privately owned guns to hunt as a side benefit, all of the founding fathers were very clear on their precise intentions of why they included a Second Ammendment to insure that all americans had an individual right to their own personal guns.
“A free people ought…to be armed…” (George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790)
“The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.” (Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution.)Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia,…taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at 271, 275 (2d ed. Richmond, 1805). Also 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.
“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…” (Samuel Adams) Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Peirce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)
“No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” (Thomas Jefferson, proposal Virginia Constitution, June 1776, 1 T. Jeferson Papers,334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed.,1950))
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyrany in government.” (Thomas Jefferson)
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.” (George Mason, 3 Elliott, Debates at 425-426)
“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves… and include all men capable of bearing arms.” (Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169)
“Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people” (Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788)
Funny though, it usually seems to be the man that the woman is defending herself from that has the gun. And I wouldn’t be surprised if those men originally said they bought the guns to “protect themselves” too.
If you aren’t a drug dealer or know or know other people with guns, your chances of needing one are pretty slim.