Posted on 11/25/2002 9:31:12 AM PST by VRW Conspirator
At the hometown premiere for Michael Moore's new movie, "Bowling for Columbine", Phil Donahue spoke to Michael in front of a live audience in Showcase Cinema West movie theater in Flint, Michigan. The film has already received an incredible response. It was the first documentary ever accepted at Cannes Film Festival in 46 years, it received a 13-minute standing ovation from the audience in Cannes, and was unanimously awarded the Cannes 55th anniversary Jury Prize award. Moore's past work, "Roger and Me", became the highest grossing documentary of all time. He is also the author of two "New York Times" bestselling books, "Downsize This" and "Stupid White Men." Below are some of Moore's thoughts on the gun culture in America.
On Columbine:
I think like most Americans, I was very affected by Columbine the day it happened. And in the weeks after it, I started thinking about how this issue has affected me all my life. It's the country I live in, the violence and everything. I thought, you know, we should really do something about this. So I just got my friends together and we were making our TV show. We approached this Canadian production company to see if they'd give us money. And they gave the money and we were off making the movie.
On American Gun Culture:
Ultimately, getting rid of the guns will be the answer. I think if we got rid of all our guns in the U.S., we would still have the psyche problem: the problem that says we have a right to resolve our disputes through violence. That's what separates us from these other countries.
All those countries [with low gun deaths in a year] have all banned the death penalty. They believe it's immoral to execute other human beings. There are so many other things you could go through and point out, about how they structure their societies.
I mean, think about Japan, first of all. One hundred and twenty million people, 39 gun murders a year. That's almost unfathomable to us. I mean, we can't even imagine; that would be like us having 89 gun murders a year in the entire country.
But they work it out differently. You know, the Canadians, they believe that if you get sick, you should have the right to a doctor. They believe if you lose your job, you have a right to get help.
If you were poor in Canada, or in these other countries, the majority of the country wants to embrace you. They want to help you. What we want to do is, we want to beat up on the poor.
We want to say, you're poor? We're going to make you suffer even more. And I think that that leads to a lot of violence, especially in our inner cities, because you've got these state acts of what I call state-sponsored terrorism and violence against our own people.
On Gun Law:
When I moved to New York City a decade ago, there were 2,100 murders that year. New York then enacted very strong gun laws. You cannot really buy a gun in New York City. Last year there were 600 and some murders, down from 2,100. This will reduce a lot of it. But it's not the full solution.
And that's why I agree with the NRA in part, when they say guns don't kill people, people kill people. Because it really is the people.
I'd like to say guns don't kill people, Americans kill people. Because I think that's what's really at the core of this.
And we need ask ourselves, why do we, as Americans, do this? And the French don't do it, the Germans don't do it, the Canadians don't do it. They're not any better than us. They're not any less violent as a people. They're humans, they have the same responses as we have. Why don't they go for the gun and kill at the rate that we do?
On His Documentary "Roger And Me":
Ten, 12 years ago when "Roger and Me" came out, at that time we had 50,000 General Motors jobs still. We had lost 30,000, but we still had 50,000. Today there's 12,000 GM jobs left here in Flint, just in the decade since "Roger and Me." And nothing has happened. It's only gotten worse. During a time of incredible wealth in this country, cities like Flint, Michigan, have just been on the ropes.
And you know, I got to say, if I were the mayor of this town, I would be down there to Ford Motor, and I'd say, "You want to make General Motors look bad? Put a factory here in Flint, Michigan. Put a factory here because people will line up around the block, and they'll work their butts off for you. Pay them a good wage, and that'll bring this town back." You know, but there's no thinking like that about how to bring other jobs here.
On Our Elected Leaders:
It's much easier to get elected, again, playing off people's fears. Run a law-and-order campaign. Promise you're going to lock everybody up. Play on the racism of the white voters, and let them know you're going to lock up the black community, or as many of them as you can. We've got two million people in prison now. You know, that's the easy way to go.
The hard way to go is to say, "You know what? If we work toward full employment and if we had a safety net to catch anybody who wasn't employed, where we made sure everybody had the means to get through day and the week and the month, we would have an enormous decrease in crime."
But that's hard work, isn't it? That would take smart politicians. That would take an effort amongst all of us, as the voters, to say, "We want to be like the Canadians."
On War With Iraq:
We're taught from an early age that it's okay to use violence to resolve our problems personally. I believe our mentality as Americans is to shoot first and ask questions later. We just, we go for the gun in a way that no other country does. We somehow believe we have some sense of entitlement or some manifest destiny.
Let's just go for that gun, and that's how we're going to resolve our disputes. And I don't mean that just on a personal level, which is where a lot of the homicides come from. I mean that on a political level and on a global level.
Because, just what we're dealing with right now with Iraq. The guy who's sitting in the Oval Office tonight. He wants to bomb. We don't need any more inspections, let's just bomb them and we'll find out later if they have the weapons. That's the American way. I don't like that.
I'm an American. I paid for those bombs. And I want it stopped. I want that stopped.
I mean, this isn't just starting with Bush. I mean, we have lived our lives, ever since I was born in the '50s, we've overthrown democratically elected governments. We've staged coups. We sent our boys to die in Vietnam for nothing and killed Vietnamese for nothing. We have this whole sad history of this kind of violence. And it is connected. It doesn't just happen in a vacuum.
And it's no surprise to me why people outside this country in other countries look at us and wonder "Why? Why do you do this? Why do you want to jump to war right now against Iraq?" Of course, we all know it's not about weapons of mass destruction, it's weapon of mass distraction, you know, so that Bush can get our minds off the economy and what's really going on because there's an election coming up.
I am having trouble figuring out where to start with this guy. He represents all the liberal lunacy bunched into one charlie horse. The thing that strikes me the most about the peacenik approach to solving the world's problems is the total un-accountability. If America implemented the snake oil solutions exactly to Michael Moore's prescription, he would not ever accept responsiblity for when things went to hell in a handbasket. These fools would never "feel the pain" of their own decisions and they never want to accept that Liberals come up with wrong-headed solutions. Idiots!
What drives me nuts is the out-and-out lying. When he says that NYC had 2,100 murders and then we passed gun laws and they disappeared - HE'S LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH. The gun laws in NYC in 1991, when 2,100 people were murdered and the gun laws in 2000, when 600 people were murdered WERE IDENTICAL.
Only one thing changed - the "law-and-order" government of Rudy Giuliani took over from the Michael Mooresque administration of the useless David Dinkins.
I guess the decrease in the number of murders had nothing at all to do with the Republican mayor cracking down on crime...
Good point. I don't think NYC would have seen the same decline in crime if David Dinkins and other liberals of his ilk remained in charge.
TITLE: Moore titled the movie Bowling for Columbine because, he suggests, the two kids who shot up Columbine High in Littleton, Colo., went to a 6 a.m. bowling class on the day of the attack.
ACTUALLY: Cool story, but police say it's not true. They say the shooters skipped their bowling class that day.MISSILES: Moore wonders whether kids at Columbine might be driven to violence because of the "weapons of mass destruction" made in Lockheed Martin's assembly plant in Littleton. Moore shows giant rockets being assembled.
ACTUALLY: Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton doesn't make weapons. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.WELFARE: Moore places blame for a shooting by a child in Michigan on the work-to-welfare program that prevented the boy's mother from spending time with him.
ACTUALLY: Moore doesn't mention that mom had sent the boy to live in a house where her brother and a friend kept drugs and guns.BANK: Moore says North Country Bank & Trust in Traverse City, Mich., offered a deal where, "if you opened an account, the bank would give you a gun." He walks into a branch and walks out with a gun.
ACTUALLY: Moore didn't just walk in off the street and get a gun. The transaction was staged for cameras. You have to buy a long-term CD, then go to a gun shop to pick up the weapon after a background check.
How is this guy able to buy the rifle in the film from the bank/gun dealer in Minn? Can someone from out of state buy a rifle in Minn or did MM use his old Minn address as id when he really lives in NY?
By the way, did you know that George Bush breathes the same air as HITLER???!!!!
IGNORANT OVERBEARING JERK!!
Moore, who co-reigns with Barbra Streisand as America's Premier Space Cadet, is a smelly dirtbag.
and a few paragraphs later:
And the French don't do it, the Germans don't do it, the Canadians don't do it. They're not any better than us. They're not any less violent as a people. They're humans, they have the same responses as we have. Why don't they go for the gun and kill at the rate that we do?
OK. To sum up: Americans kill each other at an alarming rate because they think differently than Europeans. But Europeans think the same way Americans do.
The man is incoherent.
MM writes: "I mean, think about Japan, first of all. One hundred and twenty million people, 39 gun murders a year. That's almost unfathomable to us. I mean, we can't even imagine; that would be like us having 89 gun murders a year in the entire country."
I don’t know what the incidence of gun ownership in Japan is, but I do know that whenever I cross the U.S./Mexico border there is this big sign saying “Firearms Are Illegal in Mexico.” Notwithstanding that, Mexico’s homicide rate is twice that of the U.S.
So the Japanese have slightly smaller population than Mexico and a miniscule comparative murder rate. On the other hand Mexico has a slightly larger population, where guns are illegal and a huge murder rate.
I’m sick of hearing about the “gun culture,” pure and simple it just the culture. I’m going to say something inflammatory here. If we excluded the raw numbers regarding guns and homicides from the precincts that voted 80% or more for the Dims – our gun/homicide rate in the rest of the precincts would be quite respectably low.
I'd be willing to bet that of the 80,000,000 or so privately owned guns in the U.S., 79,960,000 are not used to COMMIT a crime AND in fact thousands are used to PREVENT a crime.
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