Bowling for Baloney
By Larry Swickard
In parts 1 through 3 I began demonstrating why Michael Moore's documentaries should be considered "fraudumentaries" specifically designed to promote a left-wing agenda. I also explained that my motivation for writing this series were my high school students and their parents who have seen Bowling For Columbine and assumed it was factual. After all, Hollywood gave it an award for best documentary. Since I began writing this series one of my teaching colleagues told another teacher that she wished someone would shoot Charlton Heston with a stolen gun. This is an attitude not unique to the gun prohibition crowd. Part of the reason stems from the constant drum beat of Hollywood and the liberal media that firearms and firearms owners are the cause of violent crime in America. Take for example the tragedy that occurred at the Appalachian School of Law on January 16, 2002. On that date a 42 year old student from Nigeria went on a bloody rampage when he was told he would be suspended for poor grades. With a handgun the deranged student shot and killed the dean, a professor, and a fellow student. Three other students were wounded in the shooting. The Washington Post, CBS News, and other mainstream media outlets reported that the attack ended when "Three students pounced on the gunman," "The students tackled the gunman," and "Students over powered the gunman." None of the major media networks noted that the reason the students were able to subdue the gunman was because one of them had retrieved his own handgun from his vehicle once he heard the shooting. Only 4 of 208 news stories on the killing spree mentioned that one of the students was able to stop the killer because he had a firearm (Bernard Goldberg, Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Liberal Elite, New York, N.Y., Warner Books, Inc, 2003, pp. 185-187). In part four I want to finish with some final examples that demonstrate Moore's deceit and fraud as represented by his film Bowling. Hopefully someone. can use this information to educate others but I fear some of my colleagues are a lost cause. A final observation on the Kayla Rolland shooting that Moore used so enthusiastically to flog Charlton Heston and the NRA. Bowling portrays Kayla's six year old murderer at Buell Elementary as a "sympathetic youngster from a struggling family who had found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school" ("Truth About Bowling For Columbine," at
www.hardylaw.net/Truth_AboutBowling.page7 0f 12).The fact is that Kayla's killer was a thug who had already been suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil and who had fought with Kayla the day before he shot her. Moore makes no mention of the fact that the killer's uncle was a felon who ran a neighborhood crackhouse......The gun had been stolen and obtained by the uncle in exchange for drugs. The young killer's father was serving time in prison for theft and drug offenses. Both his grandmother and aunt were also busted for narcotic sales. Moore blamed the murder on the handgun and later, President Clinton blamed the shooting on a lack of gunlocks (hardylaw.net, page 7-8 of 12).Liberals seem almost incapable of blaming people for the evil they do.
Across the screen of Moore's fraudumentary flash a statistical comparison of homicides among various countries (raw numbers not actual percentages). His count includes 165 for Canada, 381 in Germany, 65 in Australia, 39 in Japan, and 11,127 in the United States. Moore fails to provide a year for his figures. David Hardy's investigation revealed a big surprise. Moore's numbers don't add up for any year given. David Hardy's Google search for the numbers given by Moore revealed that most linked websites repeated Moore's statistics and cited the film Bowling as the source! Hardy discovered that in 1995 Germany had 1,995 homicides which was almost four times the number claimed by Moore. 168 of the homicides did involve a firearm. Australia averaged 64 to 173 homicides per year between 1980 and 1995 and in no year could Hardy find the number 65 cited by Moore. Homicides involving a firearm in the U.S. were as high as 10,729 (in 1997) but not the 11,127 claimed by Moore. By 2001 homicides involving firearms in America had declined to 8,719. Hardy states that the only way one can arrive at Moore's figure of 11,127 is by including homicides that were le gally justified, self defense in other words, and criminals legally shot by the police (Hardylaw.net, pp. 8-12). I wonder if Moore will include in upcoming films the number of people shot by the Communist dictators he seems so fond of in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Moore also attacked Canada in his fraudumentary.
Bowling portrays Moore buying ammunition at an Ontario Wal-mart without his having to provide identification. Canadian officials have pointed out that such a purchase was faked or illegal. Since 1988 Canadian law requires proper identification before anyone can purchase ammunition. Since 2001 non-Canadians must also present a firearms borrowing or importation license (Hardylaw.net, pp. 8-12).
With Bowling being such an obvious and intentional work of deceit and fiction, it is regrettable that so many Americans have been taken in by it. Because so many apparently have come to rely on the media and the silver screen for their education, it is the duty of all of us to try and educate them. Former Hillsdale College president George Roche, III observed that "liberal today has the opposite meaning that it held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It represents the belief that government should be used as a problem solving device and an absolutely necessary tool to save the citizens of the republic from the dangerous effects of excessive freedom" (George Roche III, Frederic Bastiat: A Man Alone, Hillsdale, Michigan, Hillsdale College Press & Arlington House, 1977, P-13).
Isn't that what the debate over the Second Amendment is really all about. The mindset of the "progressive" elites has never trusted the "common" people with freedom. The liberal elites cannot control or" manipulate nor force their vision of America on a populace that is educated, independent, and armed. This why the gun prohibitionists attack, mock, and slander decent law abiding citizens who own firearms rather than the vermin and criminal scum who prey on innocent people. Moore's obnoxious, abrasive, and hysterically conspiratorial brand of left-wing rant represents what so many in Hollywood and the liberal media believe about gun owners and Middle America in private but don't say in public. When we support the films and careers of those responsible for agit-prop like Bowling, we subsidize the destruction of our own freedom.
