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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Heston Stepping Down As President Of The NRA.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-28-2003 01:51 AM
On the 'people cause crime, not guns' issue, private firearm ownership is to all intents and purposes illegal in the UK (you can keep shotguns for pest control purposes, but they are strictly licensed and cannot be removed from the premises where they are registered), yet we have the fastest growth in gun-related crime in Europe. There are parts of London and Manchester - many controlled by West Indian and South American drugs gangs - where street shootings are now totally routine. The police generally don't do much about it on the basis that if one drug dealer wants to shoot another drug dealer the best thing is probably to let him get on with it. But this situation must have made life hell for ordinary residents in these places, especially the poorer ones who can't afford to move out.
The point is that if firearms cannot be obtained legally, organised criminals will get them some other way. What heavy regaulation of gun ownership does achieve, however, is to keep them out of the hands of minor criminals and morons. Apart from the Thomas Hamilton case in 1995 we've never had a school massacre (and that was a completely unique case of a convincing psychopath who had legally owned pistols for several years before the incident) certainly never an accidental fatal shooting in the course of committing a trivial offence.
I can't help thinking that if gun ownership regulations were relaxed you would get idiots buying them for 'self defence' purposes and then mistakenly shooting people who were going about their lawful business, and that minor criminals and yobs would kill a lot of innocent bystanders. Michael Moore had a valuable point there, but sadly it got lost amid his biased ranting. The situation we have is that a Yardie drug dealer is likely to be walking around with a gun, but a small-town football hooligan is not. That's probably the best we can hope for.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-28-2003 04:17 AM
quote:
If ya take away the the rights of people to own guns, only the low-lifes will have them.
Only the worst, hard-core low life. Minor low-life won't bother. With guns effectively available to anyone who wants them, I'd have thought that the potential for accidental killings was way higher.
On a related note, our Police are not routinely armed either. There are special armed response policemen who can be called to an incident, but your average beat policemen does not carry any weapon except a truncheon (except at airports). We have enough accidental police shootings (i.e. they shoot innocent people or minor offenders in the mistaken belief they pose a serious threat) as it is: if all the police were armed (which, if all the criminals were, they'd have to be), I can see the potential for accidental shootings skyrocket. I'd be interested to see comparative statistics for accidental shootings in countries were gun ownership is legal/not significantly restricted and is illegal/heavily restricted, and to compare countries where the civilian police are all armed and where they are not.
Link to BBC story.
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 04-28-2003 06:17 AM
There is another point: if having firearms is legal or not does not only define who can have them legally, but also who can be punished for having them illegally. In other words, if the police searches a person or house and finds illegal firearms, this person can be punished. With laws sensibly regulating when and why you can own firearms for what purpose, those people having them anyway are automatically criminals.
If I remember correctly, I read that in New York you can get arrested for not having a ticket for the tube. That sounds drastic, but the article said it also helped fight crime because when somebody wants to rob other people in the tube he is unlikely to buy a ticket. They actually found a few wanted persons during routine ticket checks.
It is of course completely impossible to license parenthood, but it would help A LOT if there were more opportunities for neglected children to spend their time in a more productive way than watching TV all day. If children are given the opportunity to play sports, music, take computer classes, participate in repair workshops or engage in other creative and social activities or projects, they are far less likely to become messed up isolated sociopaths.
This kind of approach also helps the economy in general, because you have more people who acquire skills which fulfill them and then they will become more productive members of society later.
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 04-28-2003 02:56 PM
Although I earned my letter in riflery in college and dutifully read my American Rifleman Magazine for many years, I object to some of the current practices permitted in the US today--or perhaps until 9/11:
I think sniper training courses should be limited to the active military and specialized law enforcement members ONLY.
I think "...a well-regulated militia..." mentioned in the First Ammendment refers to one by a State or Federal government,
not a group formed for a political purpose or grudge.
I think fully-automatic weapons should be limited to military and police; anti-tank, explosive and cop-killer bullets should be illegal for all civilian persons. Ditto for .50cal
and 20mm weapons.
I have no qualms about registering firearms and would like to see a uniform system for all 50 states to trace weapons stolen or used in crimes.
I have watched investigative reports on the gun industry on 60 Minutes, 20/20 and, most importantly, Jim Lehrer's PBS programs. These have convinced me that the gun manufacturers DO know which dealerships they ship to are providing a significant percentage of the weapons used in crime, despite denials from corporate executives. If the FBI and even journalists can find this out, those denials seem false to me. After such disclosures, several gunshops have been closed, after operating for years, providing easy purchase of guns to runners transporting them across state lines to inner cities where they are sold on the streets. Thus class-action lawsuits against manufacturers are not as crazy as I once thought.
While most gun clubs consist of decent families engaged in character-building sports of competitive target-shooting, hunting and ballistics research, I have met even NRA members with unsavory backgrounds and agendas who hide behind the First Amendment and the NRA to continue dishonest and even criminal anti-social practices.
Gerard (EX-NRA member and former riflery instructor.)
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Michael Gonzalez
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 790
From: Grand Island , NE USA
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted 04-28-2003 05:25 PM
*Post Edited to shorten content and make easier to read.
Bowling Truths:
The introduction of Bowling is a purported clip from an NRA documentary, announcing that the viewer is about to see a National Rifle Association film. Obviously, Bowling is not an NRA film, and so Moore makes it clear right at the beginning that Bowling is not a documentary (based on true facts), but rather a mockumentary (based on fictitious "facts").
The first mockumentary "fact" is the title itself. The Columbine murderers were enrolled in a high-school bowling class. After the NRA introduction, the film begins on the morning of April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine murders. Narrator Moore announces that on that day, "Two boys went bowling at six in the morning." This serves as a setup for a later segment looking at the causes of Columbine, and arguing that blaming violent video games (which the killers played obsessively) or Marilyn Manson music (which the killers enjoyed) makes no more sense than blaming bowling.
In fact, the two killers ditched bowling class on the day of the murders. The police investigation found that none of the students in the bowling class that morning had seen the killers that day. The police report was completed long before the release of Bowling for Columbine, so the title itself is a deliberate falsehood. (I don't use the word "lie" because the mockumentary genre allows for the use of invented facts.)
After the April 20 lead-in, Bowling begins an examination of middle-American gun culture, and indulges the bicoastal elite's snobbery toward American gun owners.
Moore comically reports an incident in which some reckless hunters tied a gun to their dog to take a funny picture, and one of the hunters was shot. According to the police reports, the foolish hunters had only a still camera, but Bowling presents a fabricated video clip which purports to have been filmed by the hunter's friend. Because the clip appears to be a home movie, Bowling makes hunters seem viciously callous: The "hunter" holding the camera continues recording after his fellow hunter has been wounded, rather than immediately stopping to help the friend.
A montage of U.S. foreign-policy atrocities (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World") concludes with the statement that the U.S. gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000-01. The next shot is of the World Trade Center in flames.
In fact, that money was not given to the Taliban government, but rather to U.S. and international agencies that distributed humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. In other words, the fact that the United States gave money to Food For Peace and for girls' schools for Afghan refugees is supposed to prove that the America deserved to be attacked by al Qaeda.
Right after the footage of the airplanes hitting the Twin Towers, Bowling shows a B-52 memorial at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Moore intones: "The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972." The point is obvious: that the United States government and al Qaeda both perpetrate murder by airplane.
In fact, the plaque on the B-52 at the AFA is not as Moore describes it. The plaque says "B-52D Stratofortress. 'Diamond Lil.' Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26-year history in the command. Aircraft 55-083, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52Ds credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam Conflict Flying out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southern Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas Eve, 1972."
A long mockumentary segment reports on the NRA convention in Denver in May 1999. The segment begins with NRA president Charlton Heston holding an antique rifle above his head and delivering the signature line: "From my cold dead hands." Actually, Heston never displayed a rifle or uttered that line at the Denver convention.
Moore bashes the NRA for being insensitive by holding its convention in Denver two weeks after the Columbine murders. That insensitivity is heightened by the implication that Heston did the "cold dead hands" rifle display there. Viewers are not informed that the NRA convention had been scheduled many years in advance, that Mayor Webb (who at the last minute told the NRA to cancel the convention) had eagerly solicited the NRA convention for Denver, or that the NRA drastically reduced its four-day convention, holding only its annual members' meeting, in an afternoon session LEGALLY REQUIRED by its non-profit charter from the state of New York.
The audience is informed that the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, "the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." The voice-over says that this was just a coincidence, but the cartoon shows gun owners helping Klansmen to murder blacks.
The phrasing of the Klan line leaves the impression that the Klan was created in 1871, even though the group was founded in 1866 in Tennessee. What happened in 1871 was congressional passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allowed the president to suppress the Klan by denying Klansmen the writ of habeas corpus. (The Klan was, of course, composed of men who fought on the losing, pro-slavery side of the Civil War.)
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 into law, and worked for the rapid extermination of that terrorist organization. Grant dispatched federal troops into South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida to destroy the Klan and to protect black voting rights. In an April 1872 report to Congress, Grant pointed out the continuing problem in some southern counties of the Ku Klux Klan attempting "to deprive colored citizens of their right to bear arms and the right of a free ballot."
President Grant also signed the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime for the Ku Klux Klan or similar conspiracies to interfere with the civil rights of freedmen — including their Second Amendment right to arms.
Frederick Douglass justly called Grant "the benefactor of an enslaved and despised race, a race who will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
The 1871 founders of the National Rifle Association were thus diametrically opposed to the Confederates who founded the KKK. The NRA founders were Union officers who had fought on the winning, anti-slavery side of the Civil War. Dismayed by the poor quality of Union marksmanship during the war, the NRA's founders aimed to improve the shooting skills of the American public at large. The first NRA president was Ambrose E. Burnside, who had served as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
The supposedly racist nature of white gun owners is reinforced by Bowling's statement that an 1871 law made it illegal for blacks to own guns. No such law existed, although it is true that many gun laws from the late 19th century — such as licensing and registration laws, or bans on inexpensive guns — were selectively enforced in the South so as to deprive blacks of firearms. These are the same kinds of laws that Moore promotes today. Indeed, he turned the Bowling for Columbine premier into a fundraiser for the Brady Campaign, which works hard to outlaw inexpensive guns used by poor people for protection.
Moore's clever techniques of inversion reach an apogee with the Willie Horton ad. Political historians will remember that in the 1988 Democratic primaries, candidate Al Gore criticized Gov. Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts furlough program under which Willie Horton — who was serving a murder sentence of life without parole — was given a weekend furlough, and raped a woman. During the fall campaign, the pro-Bush National Security Political Action Committee ran a Willie Horton commercial.
The official Bush campaign ran its own advertisement, "Revolving Doors," which attacked the furlough program but did not mention Willie Horton.
But Moore pastes text from the National Security PAC ad over film from the Bush commercial, thus creating the impression that Bush invoked Willie Horton. Moore falsifies the advertisement by pasting onscreen the text: "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." This libels Willie Horton, who perpetrated a rape but not a murder during his furlough.
Moore films the over-the-counter purchase, no questions asked, of some ammunition in a Canadian store. The Canadian government has pointed out that such a transaction would be illegal, since the buyer is required to present identification. Moore did not respond to a request from the government's Canadian Firearms Centre to explain whether he staged a fake purchase, edited out the ID request, or broke the law.
A long segment on Kayla Rowland, a six-year-old girl who was fatally shot in school by a male classmate the same age. Moore blames Michigan's requirement that welfare recipients work at a job. Because the killer's mother, Tamarla Owens, commuted to work in a shopping mall 70 hours a week, and because she still could not pay her rent, she was about to be evicted. She thus moved in with her brother, and then her unsupervised son found a handgun, brought it to school, and killed Kayla Rowland.
Actually, Owens earned $7.85 an hour from one job ($1,250 a month, almost entirely tax-free), plus at least the minimum wage from her second job, and received food stamps and medical care. Her rent was $300 a month. Michigan had rent-subsidy and child-care programs too, but Owens apparently did not know about them. So, contrary to the impression created by Moore, Michigan's welfare-to-work program is generous: Even without the rent subsidy, Owens earned more than enough to pay the rent. Perhaps Owens's caseworker should have told her about the available subsidies, but the caseworker's mistake hardly means that the Michigan system is the Dickensian horror portrayed by Moore.
Moore tells the audience that Ms. Owens and her son were living with Owens's brother. He doesn't tell the audience that their home was a crack house, or that the stolen gun was received by the brother from one of his customers, in exchange for drugs.
"No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl," says Moore. Actually, the killer was the class bully; said that he hated everyone at school; had been suspended for stabbing a child with a pencil; and, subsequent to the shooting, stabbed another child with a knife.
We now get a quick cut to Charlton Heston speaking at a gun-rights rally in Flint, holding a rifle above his head. Moore explains that Heston came to Flint after Rowland was killed. Later, when interviewing Heston, Moore tells him, "You go to these places after they have these horrible tragedies." There's a considerable distortion here. Kayla Rowland was killed on February 29, 2000. Heston appeared at a Bush campaign rally in Flint over half a year later, in mid October
credit Steve Krauz
[ 04-28-2003, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: Michael Gonzalez ]
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