http://www.gunweek.com/2000/drama.html
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"Bowling for Columbine" is a movie about race and class relations in the United States.
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Really? It sound like you watched a different movie from the one I did.
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I think we watched it with different eyes.
I went to the theater expecting to see an anti-gun movie, and was surprised at what I found.
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Do you think the NRA's decision to have activities in Michigan shortly after [Kayla Rolland's] death was coincidence?
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"Shortly after"? What are you, a geologist?
I was sure that I remembered NRA activity shortly after the Kayla Rolland shooting, meaning within days or weeks. So I went to google to see what I could find. The rally by Charlton Heston in Flint did not occur until October, and it was a get out the vote rally for George Bush, seeking his first election. The shooting had happened in February.
What confused me was all of the media buzz immediately after the shooting. Especially here in Michigan, local NRA folks were talking a great deal, and were being interviewed a great deal. Meanwhile, the national media featured verbal sparring between President Clinton and Wayne LaPierre and Charlton Heston of the NRA.
One site, from Gun Week
http://www.gunweek.com/2000/drama.html,
described it this way, "The horrible schoolhouse shooting of a 6-year-old child by another youngster who brought the gun from the Flint, MI crack house in which he was living provided the launching pad for one of the year’s most lively debates. Clinton exploited the Kayla Rolland tragedy by immediately declaring on NBC’s Today show that, had his mandatory trigger lock legislation been enacted, the first-grader would never have been shot.
Clinton postulated that even a drug addict in a crack house would have used a trigger lock if he knew children were present. He further charged that other countries don’t have a gun problem because “other countries don’t have an NRA.â€
Reaction was swift and bare-knuckled. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, appearing a few days later on ABC’s This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, took the gloves off. He accused Clinton of having a willingness to accept a certain number of gun deaths to further his anti-gun agenda.
For the next three weeks, the red-hot rhetoric flamed across the nation’s airwaves, pitting LaPierre and NRA President Charlton Heston in a no-holds-barred battle of words with Clinton Administration spokesmen, and other gun control proponents.
NRA’s membership skyrocketed in the following weeks, as gunowners flooded NRA switchboards and talk radio telephones with calls of support for LaPierre and Heston."
Moore made it look in the movie like Heston flew to Michigan for a rally immediately after the shooting, which is not true. On the other hand, Heston, Lapierre, and the rest of the NRA did have immediate and vigorous response to it.
So, this was exactly what I asked for. It was a mischaracterization, perhaps even a lie, by Michael Moore. So, what was Moore's point, if not anti-gun?
There were two points. One of them I disagree with completely. The other I think is worth considering.
The first point was that the boy who committed the shooting had to be left in the "care" of a relative because the mean old welfare reformers had forced his mom, an unmarried woman, to get a job. And since there were no jobs she could find in Flint, she had to commute to Auburn Hills, some thirty miles away. This kept her away from her child. On this point, I have zero sympathy for the woman. But Moore was using this as an example of how extreme poverty and modifications to our social programs might have contributed to violence. I think poverty does contribute to violence, but I think forcing people to get jobs is a good thing. I even voted for John Engler, the governor whose major accomplishment in Michigan was exactly this sort of welfare reform.
The second point he makes is that the NRA and others used this incident as another way to instill fear in people. This was a case where a poor black child who lived with criminals showed up to school and shot an innocent white girl. This point was not lost in the least on local talk radio participants in our town. Note the language in the Gun Week article, "even a drug addict in a crack house ".
The thrust of the NRA's ad campaign to which the Gun Week article refers was that President Clinton had done a lousy job enforcing gun laws. Moore would say that this was more hype, telling people to fear THEM. The government isn't protecting you. You need weapons! I don't exactly agree with Moore on that point, either, but I think it is worth thinking about.
Do you seriously think that the NRA is using this as an example of where more guns would have helped?
They used this as an example of the hordes of criminals walking our streets, and the Democrats' failure to put them behind bars where they belong. For reference, find some web sites detailing Moore's lies in "Columbine". A lot of them include among the "lies" the sympathetic portrayal of the shooter. These web sites say this kid was rotten to the core. Try googling "Kayla Rolland" and "class thug". That characterization of the shooter, who is six years old, remember, seemed to show up repeatedly on those web sites.
