Pro Gun Rally As Micheal Moore example essay topic

Bowling for Columbine is an interesting and entertaining documentary about the state of gun laws and violence in the United States as compared to similar countries. In the film Micheal Moore asks questions such as, "Why do Americans kill each other with guns 10 times as often as other countries?" and, "What could have caused the massacre at Columbine in Colorado?" While these questions may not be answered specifically during the film, many interesting and sometimes horrifying facts are brought to light. Clearly Micheal Moore does not support the current gun laws in America and makes that very clear, nor does he seem to care for the practices and ethics of the NRA despite being a lifetime member. Through out the movie various scenes are shown of Charlet on Heston, the NRA president, making completely inappropriate speeches at the worst possible times.

Shortly after the Columbine shootings he is shown yelling, "From my cold dead hands!" while lifting a rifle into the air before a cheering crowd of NRA members. While this may seem bad enough as it is, this "pro-gun rally" as Micheal Moore calls it is actually being held in Littleton, which was where the shootings took place. Moore goes as far as to personally interview Heston and ask him to apologize for going to towns to hold rallies just after tragedies have occurred. Of course Heston declines and proceeds to turn his back on a picture of a little girl who was shot and killed in another school shooting.

Another major issue presented by Moore is the idea that the media presents minorities in a bad light, particularly the evening news and the television show COPS. On the evening news every night in America viewers are shown murders and various crimes committed by the anonymous "urban" male. Even while crime rates are steadily dropping year after year the rate of murders shown on the news has gone up 600%, which brings the viewers to believe that the crime rates are actually on the rise. The constant push of crime on the news is instilling fear and hate in the American citizen.

Hate for races, hate for your neighbours and hate for youths. Moore believes that if American news programs showed more general interest news, like the ones in Canada, and less glorified violence, that it would be less likely to be responsible for spreading fear and racism. The big mystery in Bowling for Columbine is the amount of gun related deaths in America when compared to counties such as Canada. According to the movie there are 165 gun related deaths a year in Canada whereas there are 11,127 in America a year. So the big question is why are Americans killing each other so much compared to Canadians? Moore gets input from random Americans in the street about why they think this phenomenon is occurring and some of the answers border on comical.

Suggestions are made that Canadians don't watch as many violent movies which is of course a ridiculous idea. Others think that Canadians don't own as many guns as Americans but it's revealed that in the 10 million homes in Canada there are 8 million guns. Any realistic theories to what may cause such a large amount of gun deaths are not brought to light and the only answer that anyone can give is a simple, "I don't know". Some scenes and some of Moore's practices while making the movie have been taken into question.

Some say that Moore's film was not a documentary at all, but simply a cleverly edited together movie to try and push his particular beliefs upon society. Whether the film is a documentary or just an entertaining movie, Moore definitely gets some valid points across, and important questions asked. So why do so many Americans kill each other with guns? I don't know either.