"Bowling for Columbine" question.

[Joe]

More to the point, the War on Drugs is at fault. There were poor black neighborhoods in northern cities as early as thr 20's, and while the crime rate was higher than in rich areas, they weren't war zones like they are today.

Come on now, I've got no love for the drug war, but black neighborhoods sucked before the drug trade got big, and certainly before the drug war kicked into gear. The Drug War certainly didn't help in making it any better but the problem goes is a bit deeper than drug laws.

[RedImperator]

More to the point, the War on Drugs is at fault. There were poor black neighborhoods in northern cities as early as thr 20's, and while the crime rate was higher than in rich areas, they weren't war zones like they are today.

Come on now, I've got no love for the drug war, but black neighborhoods sucked before the drug trade got big, and certainly before the drug war kicked into gear. The Drug War certainly didn't help in making it any better but the problem goes is a bit deeper than drug laws.

They were lousy neighborhoods by the standards of the time, but they were functional ones. And they didn't have insanely high murder rates without drug money to fuel them.

Though I'm remiss for not mentioning the breakdown of the black family, which can't be blamed on the drug war, and that got started as far back as the early sixties. Plus suburbanization--but Canada went through suburbanization, too, and its cities never decayed like ours did, to my knowledge.

[Shaidar Haran]

They were lousy neighborhoods by the standards of the time, but they were functional ones. And they didn't have insanely high murder rates without drug money to fuel them.

If it wasn't drugs it would probably be something else, even just plain stupid rivalries. Drugs are far more a symptom than a cause. You quite simply can not have large populations of people with no real purpose, no real ambitions, and no hope and not have some degree of violence (at least not short of martial law).

Though I'm remiss for not mentioning the breakdown of the black family, which can't be blamed on the drug war, and that got started as far back as the early sixties. Plus suburbanization--but Canada went through suburbanization, too, and its cities never decayed like ours did, to my knowledge.

Largely because Canadian cities were always better developed. American cities tended to be largely industry towns and were focused on that so when they moved to the South or dried up entirely they lost their reason for being, a few obvious exceptions being New York, Chicago and Boston. They went through some tough times but they always remained relatively viable urban centers. Canadain cities, like European cities, have had the balance virtually since the beginning. While they lost a lot of people to suburbanization they still retained a viable core of people. Americas did not; and quite frankly a lot of them (Washington and Detroit being prime examples) were criminally mismanaged.

[Master of Ossus]

I am going to try to keep this brief. I just have two questions.

1. Are Moore's statistics on gun murder in the U.S. vs the rest of the industrialized world correct?

Kind of. They're in the right ballpark, anyway, except that they count killings in self defense as "homicides."

2. If so, WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY FUCKING GUN MURDERS HERE?

What do you think?

We have a society in which there are massive differences between the rich and the poor, with lots of truly bad neighborhoods. This has led to the rise of gangs, and the subsequent fallout in American culture within inner-city areas.

[Master of Ossus]

More to the point, the War on Drugs is at fault. There were poor black neighborhoods in northern cities as early as thr 20's, and while the crime rate was higher than in rich areas, they weren't war zones like they are today.

How come heavily-Latino areas aren't statistically as crime-ridden as heavily-black ones, then? The issue runs deeper than the war on drugs.

[Glocksman]

Bowling could have been a much better doco had it dug into the US homicide rate, broken it down by race, and explored why Blacks have a homicide rate of 22 per 100k versus a White homicide rate of 4 per 100k and perhaps present some possible solutions.


But I guess it was more important to take cheap shots at the NRA and Heston.

[Kuja]

More to the point, the War on Drugs is at fault. There were poor black neighborhoods in northern cities as early as thr 20's, and while the crime rate was higher than in rich areas, they weren't war zones like they are today.

How come heavily-Latino areas aren't statistically as crime-ridden as heavily-black ones, then? The issue runs deeper than the war on drugs.

Personally, I think most rap and the whole miasma surrounding it have made a large contribution.