My expectations were only moderately high after having been disappointed by Moore’s under-researched Fahrenheit 9/11. Already during the first couple of minutes, you get the sense that Bowling for Columbine is a superbly crafted film.  The symbol of guns is so deeply embedded in the American psyche and the facts about gun violence in America are so well documented that Moore can use a simple technique: Let people from all walks of life talk about their views on the issue and what emerges is the material for an amazing picture of American society.  Moore in the best sense of the word directs peoples’ statements into a gripping tale about contemporary America. You are shocked, you learn, and you laugh. The Oscar 2003 Oscar for best documentary is well-deserved. The film is a masterpiece. As an aside: I watched this movie late at night at the gym on the Stairmaster. Toward the middle of the film a particularly funny scene made me laugh out loud. Not far from me an employee was cleaning up the gym. The five-foot one slender blond girl seemed to tell me something but I couldn’t hear what she was saying with my headphone on. I took them off and now could understand her words. “I thought you were laughing about me,” she says. “No, I am laughing about a scene in Bowling for Columbine. It is really funny,” I reply. “I hear that it is good but I don’t like its message,” she adds. “I grew up in Michigan with guns and I believe that everyone has a right to wear them.”  Over the next minutes, she utters the same justifications for guns that Moore captured on his film.  “Everyone has a right to defend oneself. It is in the constitution.  I am small 5 foot 1 woman. If someone tries to rob me in my car, I can only defend myself with a gun. And when people attack someone, they deserve to be shot.” I objected that shooting someone because they want to take $20 out of your wallet is perhaps a bit extreme. “ “No, I am allowed to defend myself with a gun.”  Michael Moore pointed his finger on why so many people pay dues to the National Rifle Association. They feel insecure and believe that a loaded gun in the house or the car is going to make them safer. But what I also realized in this conversation is that people are socialized into the belief that guns are an American right enshrined in the constitution.  Gunn ownership forms part of their self-identity. I presented the obvious objection to the belief that the constitution allows everyone to bear arms for self-defense (rather than to form a militia to protect the commonwealth): “So, you think I can bring into this gym my personal nuclear weapon in case some of the big guys over there try to beat me up or take my DVD player?” Then she said, “No, that would be too extreme.” What I realized at this moment is that when people like her insist on the constitutional right to bear arms, they insist on being able to do what they grew up with.  Since they did not grow up in a society in which everyone brought his or her little nuclear weapon to the gym, they don’t have difficulty prohibiting the right to bear nuclear arms. But since they are guided by emotions and not logic, they don’t understand that logically speaking this makes no sense.  The parents of the children who were killed at the Columbine High School believe that it is simply too extreme in an urban and modern society to allow kids to get easily get their hands on guns.

As an aside: I watched this movie late at night at the gym on the Stairmaster. Toward the middle of the film a particularly funny scene made me laugh out loud. Not far from me an employee was cleaning up the gym. The five-foot one slender blond girl seemed to tell me something but I couldn’t hear what she was saying with my headphone on. I took them off and now could understand her words.