Bowling for Columbine

[Bindibadgi]

Anyone watch this last night? (Sorry S4C here, i might be behind C4). Very powerful stuff, and hats off to Michael Moore - he did his research! 11k USA gun deaths a year and only 60-300 in various european countries! (UK=68 iirc). Even Canada with a gun ownership of 7 million out of 30million people has less than 1000 gun deaths iirc.
It was also completely confirming what i thought already - US NRA nuts are just the KKK without the hoods. (No offence, but that's how i see it).

Noone in the US would admit that gun deaths are because guns are readily avaliable. They tried to blame everything else except the obvious

I'll admit - i enjoy violent video games, movies, airsoft and paintball but i know its regulated and not real. Id never own a real gun to defend my property, id rather spend 10x more money on stuff like locks and double glazing than a gun - what's the price of someone's life?

Tbh, watching that i wanna move to Canada now

Also - gotta hand it to wal-mart for stopping all gun related sales after seeing those columbine kids. Good move

[Moby-Dick]

Its a great film - There is a little bit of spin on it, along with some slightly suspect editing in parts, but generally the message is good.

[Jonlad]

yeah, ive seen this ages ago! (dvd) there was another dvd which he did called 'expose the awfull truth' but is only avalible on region one dvd (at the moment, it is coming out in england soon) oh yeah, id recommend buying michael moore's 'dude wheres my country' (book) it's all about september the 11th etc

[ACiD303]

It's brilliant, it won the best documentary oscar in which Michael Moore's sppeech was an up your's to President Bush :grin:

That cartoon piece(done in co-op with south park boys?) about the fear of the white man was one of the funniest things Ive ever seen as well!

All of Michael Moore's work (books, films etc.) Ive encountered have been top notch, in addition to te "expose the awful truth", his first movie was called Roger & Me - it's a bit of a downer but again, brilliant.

I would most like to see his TV Nation TV series (a co op venture between NBC and BBC) - just finished reading the book and some of the stuff they did was hilarious. Shame that aired too long !

[Jonlad]

another book which you can get really cheap by michael moore is called 'stupid white men' also dude where's my country? is on sale in waterstones! (about £10 i think...)

[ACiD303]

also dude where's my country? is on sale in waterstones! (about £10 i think...)

Yeah I saw that, though the Waterstones I went into only had the hardback version for sale for £9 and the paperback was £8 . . . finished it pretty quickly (my only real quirk of "dude where's my country" is that it's almost too similar to "stupid white men" - though he does repeat himself in his books, they all intercross each other).

[wol]

I thought it was quite interesting. Strange how the US managed to kill so many people. However i do wonder how many of those that are killed are because of gang shootings, police shootings etc and not just ordinary people.

Wol

[Bindibadgi]

Sorry i was talking about the documentary, havent seen the film

Wol - very true, you could apply that to the Britain (soon) though.

[directhex]

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page...2&p=57&c=&g=72

his earlier tv series The Awful Truth was also very good (2 seasons of 12 episodes), including hilarious sectiosn such as sending some iraquis to inspect US WOMD

http://www.playusa.com/playusa.asp?p...1&title=113070

[petrefax]

saw this on C4 the other day, been meaning to watch it for ages. was just as good (if not better) than i expected. have seen miichael moore on a few things before & have a lot of repect for him & his work

same here ben - i wanna move to canada, everyone there is well cool

[R3k]

I watched it and thought it was pretty good. I think there were a couple of flaws though - in the US I believe it is legal (certainly in some states) to protect your own property, so how many of the 11k were killed 'legitimately'? In other words, how many of those had broken into someones property and the owner of the property shot them? Sure in British society killing is deemed wrong, but if the law states that you can shoot someone legally then when faced with an intruder and you own a gun the likelyhood is your going to shoot them. And if the law says it's OK, the must be right yeah?

One other thing - I couldn't really work out what Michael Moore's solution to the problem was. I agree that since the introduction of 24hr news the quality of news has deteriorated because of channels wanting to be the first to get the 'breaking news' graphic up. In so many 'breaking news' stories on BBC news 24 the early reports have been nothing but nonesense, handled poorly and unsympathetically.

Was he taking the 'let ban handguns stance'? Certainly lobbying K-Mart to remove ammunition from there stores led me to believe that. Since handguns have been made illegal in the UK the business has now gone even further 'underground'. If somebody wants to own a gun they will find a way to get one. However, if the money is going to criminal gangs the money will be used to finance further crime, and with a growing market, territories will be greater protected by even more gun totting criminals. In that situation I would prefer it if handguns were available at a reasonable price so that at least we would know who owned them. Taking the example of Canada, it wasn't owning guns that made people kill.

Overall I did enjoy it, and found it very interesting.

[wol]

I find it really strange that you can buy as much ammo as you want without them really questioning it!

Not sure i like the idea that you can walk into Qwick-e-mart and buy that sort of stuff. Its hard enough here getting a decent amount put on your FAC. Im sure if they tightened the laws slightly it would help, there'd be loads of people winging about it but hey they'd get used to it eventually!


Wol

[nichomach]

I enjoyed BfC, and I think one thing came across clearly even if that wasn't what Moore was mainly aiming at; gun ownership isn't the problem (see Canada, as noted above) - America has much more deeply rooted problems that find their expression through firearms-related deaths.

[quimico]

Exactly, owning a gun it's not the problem. The problem is that americans still live like when they arrive to that land for first time. The solution to all their problems it's best solved shooting first, pure wild west. I'm the law, it's my duty to protect my family. bla,bla,bla. It just make me sick. Did you hear that militians saying how safe was their lifes because they were prepared for everything? Or the guy sleeping with a magnum under the pillow? Everybody there is fu*****g scare and the don't even recognize it and they don't have a clue of what. Apart from the fact that the movie shows how the information is cutted to include as to the second every single episode of violence and massacre. I don't know if make sense of all I said but that movie just reinforce my point of view about the USA

[Flibb]

I ended up being a tad confused after watching this, one minute he is saying its not gun ownership then hes lobying Kmart, didnt get that. Anyway got the bits below from another website, could be a load of crap, or might not.

Cheers
Flibb


Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, with the narrator talking rapidly, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.



This sequence is intended to create the impression either that NRA and the Klan were parallel groups or that when the Klan was outlawed its members formed the NRA.

Both impressions are not merely false, but directly opposed to the real facts.


Fact: The NRA was founded in 1871 -- by act of the New York Legislature, at request of former Union officers. The Klan was founded in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that while it was an organization and a terrorist one, it technically became an "illegal" such with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to use troops to suppress the Klan. (Although we'd have to acknowledge that murder, terror and arson were illegal long before that time -- the Klan hadn't been operating legally until 1871, it was operating illegally with the connivance of law enforcement.)


Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus and deploying troops; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.

Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."

Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.

Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to suppress the KKK.

Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded by former Union officers, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.

Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen

[spazman]

Watched this several times now, scares me each time, the bit with that malitia, 'wht do you use to defend your home?' 'M16'. Sends shivers down my spine. Bloody americans and their guns.