Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine was the first Michael Moore experience I enjoyed

Review of Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine

Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine is about gun control and gun abuse that culminates in the murder of teens by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Why, he asks, are we so obsessed with guns that militias hoard them, our movies glorify them, and banks give them away to new customers. Are we nuts about guns or just nuts, he wonders. His search for American gun madness uncovers several reasons that never pass tests of truth - reasons he never develops as to prove them. His passage through his search raises logical fallacies he cannot escape.

Moore first begins his search for the reason for gun obsession at his interview of Evan McCollum of public relations at Lockheed Martin, the largest weapons producer in America. Moore subtly suggests - by showing scenes of violent overthrows of dictators by the United States and violent support of them and finally a scene of the planes flying into the world trader towers - that the murders at Columbine are somehow related to the U.S. history of weapons productions and the support of wars after. The message from this montage seems to be that the murders at Columbine are a result of the history of violence and war because of the United States.

This suggestion is immediately debunked by Moore’s statement that a violent past is not to blame for out-of-control gun use. For instance, according to Moore, Germany has little gun abuse despite its violent past. Neither does Great Britain. If a violent past is not to blame for gun abuse in the United States, what is to blame? What is the point of showing a montage of American violence that has nothing to do with the cause Moore is exploring?

My confusion is amplified by Moore’s interview of Matt Stone, co-creator of cartoonish comedy South Park. Stone, Moore says, took out his anger about being different by developing a comedy about living in a small town. The suggestion one gets from this interview is that the solution to gun crimes is teaching kids to take out their anger by funneling it into more productive uses instead of shooting up their town. However, Moore does not develop this thesis. Rather, Moore follows up on his theory that gun and bullet restrictions are the solution to gun accidents and misuse.

This theory, however, does not reach fruition until later in the documentary. Another theory propounded by Moore is what I call the “fear” thesis. His comical rendition of what he calls a “brief history of the United States” includes the suggestion that the Pilgrims came to America because they were scared and then killed indigenous Indians because of their fear. White men then became scared of the British and witches and killed them both, later forming the NRA (National Rifle Association) and Klu Klux Klan to temper their fear. Their fear even expanded to killer bees (a fear that never materialized), razor blades in candy, and escalators. Moore places a strong emphasis, however, on white man’s fear of black men. His theory, it seems, is that America is enveloped in a fearful culture and guns are used by the fearful to terminate what they fear.

Moore abandons this theory also and later in the documentary tracks down Dick Clark, host of American Band Stand and creator of Dick Clark’s American Band Stand Grill where Tamarla Owens worked two jobs to support herself and her young son. Owens was on the welfare-to-work program that got welfare mothers off government assistance and into the work force. Even though she worked two jobs, she could not make enough money to pay the rent and was given an eviction notice. Her son was sent to live with his uncle and there he found a gun he brought to school. The gun was used to kill another first grader at Buell Elementary in Flint, Michigan.

This accident at Buell Elementary obviously has nothing to do with the violent history of the United States or the fear factor that Moore displays in his comical rendition of U.S. history. Rather, it has everything to do with a man who accidentally leaves the gun where his nephew could find it. Moore does blame the welfare system because he feels that if Tamarla was not working two jobs, she would have been able to supervise her son and keep guns away from him. However, if the child’s uncle had been able to hide the gun, then Moore would not be blaming the welfare-to-work program for this death much less faulting Dick Clark for owning a business that pays substandard wages. It’s obvious that fault lies with the Uncle, to a certain point, for leaving the gun lying around where the nephew can get it and human mistakes for creating the situations the welfare system must fix. Without these mistakes, Tamarla would not be in the situation she is in. Moore does not address this either.

At this point in the documentary, Moore has abandoned his first two theories explaining our high rate of gun tragedies and misuse and never fully explored any of them. Neither has he allowed for other possible reasons for gun misuse, such as poverty, delinquent parents, or genetic predispositions toward violence. Moore seems biased against guns, despite his membership in the NRA, and desperate to find a reason to blame guns for these tragedies despite his exploration of other causes for gun tragedies, causes that he never fully explores and causes that are never proven.

The answer to Moore’s question about gun tragedies, if in fact they exist, lies in the nature of humans rather than the presence of guns. Surely the presence of swords did not prompt ancient cultures to wage war on others using swords as weapons just as the presence of lions did not cause the Romans to toss Christians to them. The presence of a knife did not prompt a woman to cut off her husband’s penis either. Rather, swords and knives, tanks and bombs, were the weapons of choice in cultures or people that were already predisposed to war. Perhaps guns were the weapons of choice for those already predisposed to violence. It is important to keep guns out of the hands of minors and those who might do harm with them, but the overwhelming non-violence by those who own them, including Charlton Heston and Michael Moore himself, testifies that it is more than the presence of guns that causes gun violence. Rather guns are the weapons of choice because of their lethality in groups of people that are already predisposed to do violent and lethal acts.

This is Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, an interesting tale of experiences, interviews, and events. Yet, it is a muddle of logic that one seems unable to escape from. It leaves one wonder, “What is Michael Moore’s point?”