Amy Adler As most of the world knows, in April 1999, two Columbine High School students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, took guns to school and shot thirteen students and one teacher dead. How did they get the guns? What does bowling have to do with anything? Those looking for an in-depth look at the two shooters will be disappointed. Although Mr Moore does record that Harris and Klebold went bowling on the morning of the shooting and later takes two of the wounded students, now recovered, to buy bullets at Kmart, this is not really about Eric and Dylan. Rather, it is more of an examination of the "gun culture" of the USA. The National Rifle Association, in this film headed by Charlton Heston, has ensured that getting a gun and ammunition is as easy as filling a prescription. Moore notes that we are unique among countries in that our rate of gun shootings and killings far surpasses that of Canada, our nearest neighbor, and other Western civilizations. Some have blamed violent video games, some singers like Marilyn Manson (interviewed in this film as a favorite singer of Harris), still others that "family department" stores like Kmart and Walmart have the weapons and the ammo. Interestingly, Moore also takes a look at Work-to-Welfare programs like the one near his hometown of Flint, Michigan. A young single mother was forced to work at a casino, 90 minutes away, to satisfy the welfare requirements but still couldn't pay the bills. When she was forced to move in with an uncle and had to leave her six year old son in his care, the young lad found his uncle's gun and took it to class, only to shoot a fellow student dead. what a tragedy! In short, anyone wanting to talk about the Second Amendment and gun control would do well to begin with this film. Those seeking in- depth information on the Columbine shooting should look elsewhere.

murray_johnc I'm generally an admirer of Michael Moore's work, but his film-making IQ was at a low ebb when he did Bowling for Columbine. I'm not going to spend too long expressing my disgust with Moor'e sleazy "got-ya" attack on Charleston Heston; by posing as an NRA member he cynically took and advantage of an aging man's mental confusion as Heston succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Moore creates ridiculous fantasies, as he suggests Canadians don't bother to lock their doors at night (if Moore seriously believes that break-ins and burglaries don't occur often in Canada, he should try living in Vancouver's DTES or the North End of Winnipeg. Another ridiculous assumption is that Canada is not a nation of gun owners.Instead of doing such ridiculous comparisons of the US with Canada Moore should have chosen Japan as his field of study. Japan has the lowest rate of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret? If a Japanese wants to buy a gun in Japan the applicant must attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%. The applicant must also undergo mental health and drugs tests, a criminal record check and police will look for links to extremist groups. Then authorities check the applicant's relatives and work colleagues too. And as well as having the power to deny gun licenses, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons. That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three gun shops, and Japanese gun owners can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges from their previous visit. THAT's why Japan has near zero gun crime. Japanese culture is at the apex of human civilization, and they wisely shield their society from the influx of riff-raff from less enlightened parts of the world.

schoolcraft-25536 When an American is asked why she thinks there's less crime in Canada, the answer is 'fewer blacks'. Moore counters by revealing that 31% of the Canadian Polulation is non-white. Maybe, if you count Native population as well as Asian and Latin American population.The facts: Preston, in the Halifax area, is the community with the highest percentage of blacks, with 69.4%; it was a settlement where the Crown provided land to Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. And... Halifax had the highest rate of gun-related violent crime of all major Canadian cities in 2012, according to Statistics Canada. According to the 2011 Census, a total of 945,665 Black Canadians were counted, comprising only 2.9% of Canada's population, and this figure includes Black Canadians of mixed race.What do you say to that —Michael Moore?

bkoganbing In the wake of the most massive tragedy of all, the planes on 9/11 flying into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, Bowling For Columbine found a ready and receptive audience and earned itself an Oscar for Best Documentary. It's not clear however whether this will stand the test of time like some of the work that Edward R. Murrow did with Joe McCarthy or with migrant workers. Murrow was simply telling a story and focusing like a laser on a specific problem with some suggested cures. Michael Moore was lumping everything into a general us versus them.No doubt about it gun violence is one god awful problem. I spent years at New York State Crime Victims Board paying claims for funeral expenses for survivors expenses to bury loved ones. The availability of firearms in the USA is some kind of surreal joke. The best part of Bowling For Columbine is right at the beginning with Moore getting a choice of firearm for opening an account at a Michigan bank. I opened an account at Citi-Bank when I moved to Buffalo and got a piggy bank.Long before the USA was industrialized we were a frontier nation and that's ingrained in our national culture. That second amendment was put into our constitution was something thought necessary as we also were adverse to a standing army. Well we've sure got one now, but no one bothered to modify that 2nd amendment or reinterpret it. I was also a member of the Army Reserve in my younger days, but no one took their M-16s home with them nor did we purchase them for our own use.The National Rifle Association is one powerful lobby because so many people feel the need to own a weapon. Until that's excised from our national consciousness, we won't see a realistic reduction of weapons any time soon.Michael Moore took all of his beliefs and crammed them into one film. These things have the flimsiest of connections if any. I remember in Oliver Stone's JFK we bring in Donald Sutherland's character to pull together all the conspiracy threads that led to the JFK assassination to make it all clear. With Moore doing his own narrating the film is like Sutherland's scene exponentially expanded with visuals.The NRA after the Columbine High School shooting massacre rather callously did not call off a convention scheduled for Denver. To keep the issue of the right to bear arms as they see it they elected a celebrity president, Hollywood screen legend Charlton Heston. Sad to say Heston was in his dotage when he took the position and left it when he acknowledged said dotage admitting Alzheimer's Disease.Personally I've always kept beliefs and entertainment in different worlds. If I didn't I wouldn't enjoy the work of a lot of people like Charlton Heston. In fact in his younger days Heston marched for civil rights in the 50s and 60s. He's not the first or the last person to change his mindset on issues. He grew more conservative as he aged, I in fact grew more liberal.So I'm not amused at Moore's mocking of Heston. No more than I was amused at Howard Stern mocking Kirk Douglas after his stroke. It just wasn't called for.A little less mockery and a lot more focus would have given Michael Moore a better film.