If those statistics were for tsunami deaths or being-eaten-by-a-tiger deaths the chart would look a lot different. The <I>real</I> truth is that too many people in too many countries die violent deaths and it doesn't matter whether your are shot, stabbed, run over by a car, beaten to death or strangled with a shoelace.

So the USA has a higher gun-related death rate. How many other violent ways are there to die where the United States wouldn't even make the list? Quite a few, I'd guess. The fixation on guns is an artifact of unreasonable emotion and nothing else.

Edit: Also, fear. People fear what they don't understand and what you will see time and again in these threads is, "Why do you need a gun," or, "I don't see why Americans need to go around armed." The gun issue image becomes larger than the issue itself because of fear, especially fear of a behavior you don't understand.

SpaceAce

Another interesting point... Compare the crime rate in England versus the crime rate in the US:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/cjusew96/crvs.htm

UK has a overall lower violent death rate than the US, but the US has a lower Assault, Robbery, Burglary and Auto Theft Rates than the UK in recent years.


http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/htm...96/cjuse01.gif

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/htm...96/cjuse02.gif

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/htm...96/cjuse03.gif

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/htm...96/cjuse04.gif

The US actually has a higher homicide rate than nearly every western country.

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html

Now you might wonder why the US has a higher rate of homicide considering it's the richest country in the world. It's then when you breakdown the stats and see that gun homicides are 10x more than most other western countries (when adjusted for population) that you think you might find a reason..

How is that emotional?

I'm sure if it was a tsunami list the numbers would look much different, but this thread was about Bowling for Columbine, where the major theme was that too many people in the US die of gun murders. This was his central theme, you can discredit the details in his movie (there are certainly inaccuracies) but his central proposition is true.

Get ready for, "Those aren't deaths! Deaths are worse!"

If you live in a city of 2,000,000 people, which would make you feel less safe: four murders in a year and a handful of burglaries, thefts and assaults or two murders in a year and thousands of burglaries, thefts and assaults?

SpaceAce

Now only western countries get included in the comparisons? People from non western countries are insignificant and shouldn't be included? Is that what you're suggesting?

i have not seen the movie but i suspect it was more a political statement about people for and against the right to own guns.

you can lie with statistics anyway you want.

you may as well continue by comparing rice deaths in vietnam to rice deaths in the US to make the point that we should ban rice.
or that fewer rice deaths makes the USA a safer place to be than Vietnam.
:sleep

I notice in the UK that the people are becoming lazy which I beleive contributes to the increase in crime figures.

I watched a show on what was described to be a poor family and a ritch family who lived in the same street.

The poor family said they wanted this that and the other though never mentioned they would work to acheive it.

On the other hand the ritch family said to their kids you can have this that and the other if you work hard.

Oh BTW the ritch kid was mugged twice during the filming

The US also has more rats than any other countries who's name start with the letter U!

Time for bed.. I need to wake up early to shoot at the paperboy when he rides his bike by.

Night... It was fun :)

I was only ever talking about Western countries.

:BangBang: night :)

See its true,its true, you shoot anything that moves ;-)

Is that why when I played paper boy on the comadore 64 I kept falling off?

those weren't my statistics they were from the site KC posted.

I didn't say the numbers are emotional, I said the arguments are. You proved my point by using your last sentences to once again make an issue of guns causing "too many" deaths. How many is too many? Does it become too many when the accidental deaths and murders outweigh the self-defense numbers? Is one gun death too many? If so, isn't one baseball bat death too many?

What is so important about a gun death? Does a gun death somehow cause a person to die more than once? One person dead is one person dead. If you went to an area in the USA where large numbers of violent gun deaths occur and took away their guns all you would get is a sharp rise in stabbing deaths. If you went to a violent area of a country where no guns are allowed and took away their knives you would get an increase in beating deaths. Guns may be responsible for <I>gun deaths</I> but they aren't responsible for deaths. It's fantasy on the level of Alice in Wonderland to suppose that people will stop killing each other once you take their guns away.

You're right, this thread is about Bowling for Columbine but all these other related issues are germaine to the topic. Why didn't Michael Moore choose to make a "documentary" about how many people are killed by automobiles each year or how many people drown in their swimming pools? Why not a movie about stabbing deaths or beating deaths? The answer is simple: guns push people's emotional buttons.

It's 6:30AM, here. If you don't see anything more from me tonight I went to sleep. Bump it tomorrow if you have anything important you want me to read.

SpaceAce

Mark my words. In the next few years, watching or reading Michael Moore is going to be as much of a litmus test for stupid white men as Rush Limbaugh is today.

Finally the left has found an idiot as big as the one on the right. I would be as embarassed to take Michael Moore seriously as Rush Limbaugh. If you think the "ditto-heads" are idiots what about those who take a film-maker's faux documentary seriously? He's a parotting talking head.

Moore's social analysis is no different than quoting Limbaugh's social analysis. These guys are exactly the same but playing for different teams. They are multi-media extremely biased entertainers with no credentials other than popularity.

ok I'll certainly buy that bowling for columbine was emotional spin on the gun issue.

I don't know that all arguments on gun murders have to be though if you stick to the numbers.

my hypothesis would be that guns contribute to more murders because it's easier to kill someone with a gun. If they have to resort to using knives, or bats a lot fewer people would die, purely because it's harder to kill someone by these means.

sleep for me too :-)

How does one "die" from Rice?

i tried looking for stats comparing the use of sarcasm between countries and couldn't. your on your own. sorry.

:thumbsup Well said.

I am an advocate of tighter gun control here in the U.S. and I thought "Bowling For Columbine" was one of the biggest piles of shit I have ever seen excreted by the media. So obviously bias and playing with the truth it is an embarassment.

Fuck Michael Moore. Fuck him in his stupid ass.

Actually I just remembered this article from the Guardian few months back that I found quite interesting..

Bhtuan crime wave

100 :glugglug

It sounded like you were trying to make a point.

I just thought maybe I was missing something. Comparing rice and guns just didn't seem to make sense. I should have known nobody could really be that silly.

I heard stories of birds eating raw rice and then their stomachs would blow up!

Why is that so many people are searching and arguing for one simple cause to describe one effect?

If Michael Moore were making a serious documentary film he would have asked the tough questions. Why is the murder rate among African-Americans so high (7-8x higher)? Why did the homicide rate begin a steady climb upwards in the US and other industrial countries beginning in about 1960 doubling in just a decade? Why did homicide rates peak more than a decade ago? Most importantly, why is the US homicide rate at it's lowest point today since 1965? What has changed? What is going on? Why has the homicide rate declined more than 30% in just a decade in the largest US cities? In just 10 years the homicide rates among African Americans has halved. Why?

Utilitarian arguments aren't the real issue. Even if you could prove conclusively that for all societies, at all time, under all conditions less guns will lead to less dead people - many people would not wish for the repeal of the 2nd amendment.

I'm not from the USA but I've been there quite often. I like that country!

But I think this movie wasn't made to show the people around the globe how dangerous and bad the USA are.
It's a movie for american to show you that some things are going wrong. just like in every single country in the world.
In the USA many people tend to believe that everything's just fine. But of course it isn't. This movie is probably too extreme but it can help to get a better sense of reality.
Here in Germany it's the opposite. We have these kind of documentations every day. We don't know what the word patriotism means. In Germany you grow up in the believe that the country you're living in sucks and that you are not allowed to be proud of it.

Understand what I want to say?
This movie was made for americans. Michael Moore is an american. It doesn't matter what happens in other countries. There are some things he doesn't like and he wanted to express his feelings.
Of course this movie is subjective but why not watch it and think about it?
PERHAPS Michael Moore is right here and there...

:warning THINKING:warning

And NOT: I don't like this movie. Everything in it is wrong!
And also NOT: Michael Moore is 100% right!


Just my :2 cents:

btw.: after watching this movie I still love the USA :)
Especially Miami.
And there I really love the "German Biergarten" on the Collins Ave. ;)

I think that one lesson Europe learned from World War II is that Nationalism is a bad thing. Americans learned the exact opposite lesson.

Guten Tag, Swingerman. :-)

For the record, I did watch the movie. I watched it for the entertainment value (I laughed a lot).

Why not read Rush Limbaugh's book or listen to his show? Maybe I am being closed-minded but I presume I'd be wasting my time reading Limbaugh's "The Way Things Ought to Be".

Anyone that writes a book titled "Stupid White Men" is playing to the lowest common denominator. Moore's material is aimed at as biased a group as Limbaugh's.

I'm pretty baffled by anyone championing Michael Moore.

Such authors are guilty for what they leave out as much as what they put in.

Nationalism is a bad thing.

Maybe America is being dumbed down. It must be infectious though. It seems to be spreading to the rest of the world.

A few samples of what American pulp media has produced in the past few years.

"Stupid White Men" - Michael Moore

"Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations" - Al Francken

"Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism" - Sean Hannity

"Liberal Treachery" - Ann Coulter

"Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong" - Mona Charen

"Blinded by the Right" - David Brock

"Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine" - Joe Conason

Mass marketed glossy paperbacks aimed at catering to either people's fear of the evil socialist liberals or the religious right-wing conservatives.

Nationalism will save you.

That's what Hitler told the Germans.

No thats baking powder, as I am ashamed to admit but a freind of mine when I was about 13 used to throw bread for birds which was covered in baking powder they would then blow up

Your belief assumes a Utopian world which doesn't exist and probably never will.

Your assumption that nationalism is bad thing is only true if no one else in the world is nationalistic. Global politics is a chessboard and your opponent has pieces. I will agree with you that if no one in the world identified themselves with various ideologies we'd probably be better off but they do. It may never be different.

You could argue that the nation-state is only a temporary political arrangement. I would grant that is an extremely high probability. However, it and it's variants are here right now though.

The French didn't want to be German. They wanted to be French. Right after the second great war they went back to being french with french customs, language, and traditions. Those are the same customs, language, and traditions that you wish to experience when you travel to France.

If the Japanese militarized and invaded and defeated Australia, would you be happy to switch to Japanese customs, language, and traditions? Why or why not?

I tried that with Alka-Seltzer and it didn't work.

The point Michael moore made was the level of fear that Americans are fed. Their media is full of it. Is it because that is all there is or that is all that is reported.

Also as Colin's signature shows, there is a tendency to idolise the man who take justice into his own hands. Like Micheal Douglas, Stallone or Willis, these are all idols and it started with John Wayne.

Some kids watching this day in and day our have a tendency to think it is right. Also someone made the point about Afro-Americans, do another survey and look at wage earnings and education, you might see the causes instead of the results.

why hit me up on Icq 122994792

please show me the media that does not over sensationalize everything. i have travelled all over the world and lived out of the US for most of the last 7-8 years and there is no such thing as a media that is not "full of it" - there is only media which you agree and dissagree with, thus you give more credibility to those news sources which support or are consistent with your own views.


thats interesting that his signature "shows" all that. i thought it was just an actor with a gun.

haha... i would like to see you analyze all the sigs on GFY.

please tell us what they "show"

Nationalism and cultural identity are not the same thing.

I like living in Australia and appreciate Australian culture but I don't believe Australian culture is inherently better or more important than any other culture in the world... it's just different.

Nationalism breeds hatred and xenophobia. Every culture has something to offer. Why get obsessed with just one?

Opinions on Culture From a Penal Colony
by Joe Average

:Graucho

:321GFY michael moore