Heightened gun control, while it may not be his argument in the movie, will not stop America's "gun murder" problem. The fact that almost anyone can get a gun only makes the world safer, but to be precise, I don't mean necessarily the entire world, I mean your world. The fact of the matter is, even if the most strict gun laws were put into practice, criminals insane enough to murder scores of people will still be able to access a gun and commit their crime, end of story. It is the same way with any illicit drug law currently in effect, all it stops is the casual user, anyone who really wants to get high, can and will find someone selling. Moore may be making his case that the world is sick with fear, and violent by its very nature, but him pointing this out will not stop a single madman from going out in his blaze of gunfire. No gun law was going to stop columbine. The only conceivable way these 2 kids could have been stopped was by an armed guard in the school.
Let me further explain this as I don't want any misunderstanding. I do not think every person on earth is by nature violent, and I don't think we should sleep with a gun under our pillow, but the sad truth that Michael Moore shows is that perhaps we would be more safe with one. Now that may seem like a contradictory statement, but hear me out. Moore shows us several clips of madmen ("some people are just LOONIES o.O guy"), and also uses columbine, and a 6 year old shooting a classmate. Clearly, all of these people should not have had access to firearms, but the fact is THAT THEY DID. There is NO WAY, to stop someone who wants to get a gun and kill people from killing people, unless you personally have the means to protect yourself, and the others around you, and what is the best way to do that? A gun. That is right, here in this land of oppurtunity and weath and individuality, in the end you must rely on yourself for protection, and in the end, one more gun in the hand of a sane individual rather than 2 insane kids or WHACKO'S 0.o guy, is a good gun in my book.
FUN FACTS :)
http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm
Call them biased, sure, but so is everything else for one side or another.
Also I would like to discuss Charlton Heston's point that there is more violence because there are more minorities, that is not how I would word it, but lets just assume for a second that we are not all politically correct sticklers. Here is what Im going to do for you, I'm going to be blunt. More minorities-more poverty-more poverty-more crime, so yes in a transitive way, Heston made a point. Please do not think I am a racist, or anything close to that, because I am not. You and I both know that unfortunately, the more minorities, the more poverty there is, that is an unquestionable statistic, and also another statistic is, the more poverty, the more crime. Where the number of those who do commit crimes are vastly smaller than those who do, that number is still large enough to account for some of America's "massive" 11,000 gun deaths per year. I do not blame minorities, I blame poverty.
In short, I would say Michael Moore needs to quit whining about how the world is, and buck up like the rest of us. Its a hard knock life, it has been that way in the past, and will continue to be that way in the future.
Finally I will state this point. Should this magnificent country of ours be invaded by hostile forces, they will have to march through our country, where there are 70 million or more firearms in the hands of citizens, I don't know what you think, but I say good luck Charlie, this is the land of the free, and the home of the *BANG*
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2 comments:
Here's where I think you're off:
"More minorities-more poverty-more poverty-more crime, so yes in a transitive way, Heston made a point."
You later say that you're blaming poverty, but the line you wrote above makes it sound like more minorities LEAD TO more poverty, when that's not the case. If this country were all European-Americans, or African-Americans, or whatever, there would still be poverty, right? So... then minorities don't have anything to do with it.
What I was trying to get at, whether I accomplished it or not, was that Heston was not making a racist statement. It is a fact that the majority of crime and gun related death happens in urban environments
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/viocrm.txt
*Central cities, particularly those with populations between 250,000 and 499,999, have the highest per capita rates of violent crime.
To pick a case city, Detroit, which is also shown in the film, these are the demographics-
Detroit is the most violent city in America according to Forbes.
Infoplease.com yielded these statistics:
81.6% Minority
26.1% Below Poverty Line
These are facts from well respected web sources.
Heston was forced to back off his statement to be politically correct, and yes there will be poverty no matter what the %ages of ethnicities they are.
My defense of Heston is only to show he was probably not going to say something blatantly racist, but what he was getting at is poverty itself, and statistics show that minorities make up the majority of inner city populations and due to the close quarters with high density population under the poverty line, this leads to violent crime as is shown in Detroit
It is a sad fact that minorities are more likely to live in poverty, and is hopefully something that America can progress on, and fix. Since slavery was ended, the quality of life for minorities has steadily increased and hopefully will continue to show this trend.
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