I understand your opinion that the NRA did the correct thing, but my opinion is they didn’t. Not really a fact either way, right? Just differing opinions. That’s all I intended with my original post (since the meeting “had to be held on the scheduled day” was presented as a fact).
And Hansel:
To clarify my point, while the law may require an annual meeting, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t specify a place and time (IANAL, however :)). The decision not to postpone or relocate certainly was a decision made by the NRA. I think it was the wrong one. Others disagree.
jshore, you’re an upstanding and intelligent guy. It just seems that your message is often…well, perhaps “lost”?. Yes, this is a thread which can be partisan, true. And I’ve been and can be very partisan on some issues myself. But I also really like reading what you have to say on this board, and perhaps I just have my reading spoiled somewhat by excess politization.
I’m sorry I picked on you. It was meant to be a ribbing, more than a picking on, if you can believe me.
I think a key point is one we might agree upon, in that it really is difficult to tell what the true level of firearms ownership is. This value seems to be a slippery piece of data, and people in the US are not forthcoming. Also, although polls will show that a small percentage of persons own more than one gun in Canada (and the US, IIRC), people who are avid gun owners often own many more than one, thus diluting the equation. For example, among the gun owners in my office right now, an informal poll reveals the following numbers:
To balance out these 17 with at least 1 firearm, there are also 14 with no guns. This makes 89 guns for 31 persons, or 2.87 guns/capita. (counting the “12+” as “12”).
I am a left-wing liberal. I consistently vote left wing liberal. I’ve got all kinds of conflicting feelings about the war(to avoid hijack imho-Saddam=heartless dictator, US armed forces=good people trying to do what they think is right. Bush=I’m not going there.)
Having said that, Moore lied. He made statements that were verifiably false. He edited footage in such a way as to deliberately mislead.
Who said “The American people can forgive anything except hipocracy.”?[sub]no really. I can’t remember.[/sub]
Re-‘It made people think’
One of the free weeklies(both of which have admitted liberal bias. One featured a cover saying “Republicans, go home!” when Philadelphia hosted the Republican National Convention.) ended its review of Bowling with ‘Sure this film will rouse emotions and provoke a reaction, but so will pissing on some one’s shoe.’
Thanks. And, I’ll try to be a little less partisan. It’s hard sometimes, on some issues more than others.
I believe you…The “puppy” part made it clear to me that you were saying it with a certain amount of friendly jest, even if I know it does really grate on you sometimes.
Yeah…I’m surprised how hard it is. And, I agree that it seems that “outliers” with lots of guns tend to make it so that “number of households with any guns” is very different than “guns per household” or “guns per capita”. I am still curious about handguns in particular. I found one site that showed that 29% of households in the U.S. have handguns vs. 5% in Canada, but given the spread you found for gun ownership it would be good to have more data.
DocCathode: I agree with you in general terms on what you say. My points are simply that:
(1) I am having a hard time figuring out the degree to which Moore lied, misstated facts, or editted deceptively. This is because there seems to be quite an orchestrated campaign to discredit him and it seems that not everyone in this campaign is motivated primarily by a search for the truth and are thus willing to bend it or lie themselves. To be honest, I haven’t had the time to look carefully enough at the issue to have a fully formed opinion. But, I am certainly willing to believe that Moore is not we should look to as a very reliable factual source.
(2) I am pointing out that, in at least one case, Moore’s facts are likely wrong (although it is hard to determine exactly) in a way that goes against the claim that many seem to be making that he is consistently distorting facts to make an anti-gun case. This was a case where he seemed to get facts wrong (or at least use incomplete facts by considering only gun ownership and not handgun ownership) in order to come to a conclusion that would tend to support the “pro-gun” side.
As noted above, no matter what they did, they’d have been seen as wrong by someone. Case in point.
As for the meeting, as also noted, the event was required/mandatory, by both corporate and federal law. And since the meeting required people to travel from all points on the map, rescheduling it at such short notice would have been very problematical at best.
There’s hotel reservations, plane tickets (the last time a friend of mine went to Hawaii, he had to change the ticket five days prior, which cost him something like $350) scheduling days off from work, even things like finding sitters for kids and other minutiae. Remember, it wasn’t a “Denver” meeting, it was an NRA meeting that happened to occur in Denver- members came from all over the US to attend.
With all this valuable discussion of the factual errors in MM’s movie, what about the basic premise?
I mean, I walked away from that movie going, “yeah, maybe the news does focus on fear and violence which causes… wait… fear and violence? Which they then report accurately?” I mean, the basic ideas aren’t inherently contradictory, but it’s a pretty confused thesis.
The basic problem seems to be the “we are a violent country” statement. That could mean two different things: either we really ARE violent, or we really LIKE violence (but aren’t necessarily especially violent in real life). And those two things get confused into each other. In the film, he seems to be condemning the culture for playing up fear and violence. But if it’s playing it up more than actually exists, where’s the problem, exactly aside from a few more occasional wack-jobs? And if it really IS that bad, then how can he claim the culture is over-reacting, over glorifying things?
So, you, elucidator(ironic name choice there) and the rest of your ilk are content to ignore this thread for what it is and are dragging this off for your own agenda.
As the question I asked was answered and then some, could the Mods please close this thread?
Piffle. Your own agenda is about as subtle as nipple rings on a hog. You don’t like contradiction, you got the wrong board. Next time, take a cue from december (of your ilk) and title it something like “Why Does Michael Moore Hate America So Much?”.
I think this is a really interesting analysis Apos. I haven’t yet seen BfC btw, so I have no opinion on its content (yet). I also have no cite to point you towards, but I’ve read many times in many places that coverage of the news vastly overstates the extent of both crime and violence in our society by focusing disproportionately on it as “news.” OTOH, egregiously violent things do happen in our society (e.g., Columbine itself)–and moreso than in ones with fewer guns. So I don’t think these theses are mutually exclusive; it’s just that the relationship between them is complicated and, in addition, the whole question of violence in American society (or in many other countries) can’t and shouldn’t be reduced to some kind of cause and effect relationship between media representations and actual violence.
If I take his point correctly, Mandy, MM is not suggesting that our media coverage causes gun violence so much as it reflects the same perverse, even erotic, fascination with guns. ("Dr. Freud…paging Dr. Sigmund Freud…) It reflects a desire to be brutally empowered, and like most violence, if not all, it is grounded in fear: fear of violence, but more importantly, fear of helplessness, of impotence. Fear of being small. In this context, size definitely matters.
This may be just about the only thing Doc Freud was right about.
(Of course, theres no such thing as “penis envy”. Its really penis shame, which is why we’re always looking for someplace dark and warm to hide it.)
Extreme nitpick: the requirements you refer to are a function of state law, not federal law. Federal law impacts corporations in certain specific areas (most notably financial disclosure under the securities laws), but internal corporate governance is pretty much a function of the law of the state where the company is incorporated.
Just asking but why would people in America (the strongest country on the planet) have a fear of helplessness, of impotence. Fear of being small.? If these are the requirements for a violent society then France (with their fading diplomatic star and loss of worldwide influence) should be the most violent country in the world.
“Just asking but why would people in America (the strongest country on the planet) have a fear of helplessness, of impotence. Fear of being small.?”
Because people’s conscious experience is largely individual and local, not totalistic, and, as individuals, the average American often feels lost in the crowd–not strong or empowered. In fact, one of the reasons that many Americans like war so much is that it encourages them to identify as members of “the strongest country on the planet” rather than as the anonymous and atomized individuals they often feel themselves to be.
(I find it rather odd that you single out France for loss of worldwide influence. France is hardly that uninfluential and it hasn’t fallen from the heights of, say, Russia or Britain).
And more importantly, let’s, just for a minute condescend to entertain the notion that guns=penises.
What does it say about those gun-grabber types out there who are obssessed with the size, capacity and form of everyone’s guns/penises…and worse, try to confiscate them. :eek:
[sub]to be clear-I enjoy archery as a sport and arrows can be made safe to shoot at other people in SCA style battles. Wild animals are not kosher, so I don’t hunt with the bows. Though, I have considered doing so with SCA safety arrows as a test of skill.[/sub]
