Talk:Bowling for Columbine

Had Moore corrected for population, though, his statistical argument would still represent a flawed analysis. It is also necessary to account for the larger number of guns, and/or gun owners, in the various countries. The statistic which would provide for the most meaningful comparison is homicides by firearm per 100,000 guns per 100,000 people.

This is a ludicrous argument. It is an impossible comparison to make, because there probably fewer than 10,000 legally held guns in the UK. Mintguy 12:48 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

I have to agree with Mintguy.

Statistics based on population, without any accounting for relative availability of guns, are essentially meaningless. To your couter-assertion, that the comparison would be impossible if we tried to account for gun availability, the answer is "Tough cookies". If it is impossible to estimate the availability of guns (both legal and illegal), then NO meaningful comparison is possible between the US and the UK. Substituting a meaningless statistic, for a potentially meaningful one for which information is not available, is cargo-cult science. (I used numbers, just like a real scientist--so why don't the meaningful conclusions start coming?) --Len.

The assertion is that you are dramatically more likely to be killed by a gun in the US than anywhere else, and this is clearly the case however you present it. Mintguy 23:31 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

Possibly so--but it would be WILDLY false to say "you are dramatically more likely to be murdered in the United States than anywhere else". Are you somehow suggesting that it's more pleasant to be killed with a machete than with a gun? The relevance to this article: Moore in fact begs the question whether the US is a more violent place.

I removed the following statement because it has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.

"Moore also did not address the claim that countries with stricter gun control might experience fewer "gun deaths", but more violent crime overall. Some researchers claim that violent crime in the UK is now higher than in the United States, and that a person is more likely to be assaulted or robbed in London, England than in New York, New York. Opponents of gun control argue that higher overall death rates, by weapons other than guns, result because guns are also less likely to be used defensively in countries where they are banned. Moore made no attempt to address or refute such claims."

Whoever wrote this must not have bothered to see the film, since Moore specifically stated that the amount of guns in a country does not have anything to do with gun deaths. In fact, he not only stated it, it was actually the key point behind the questions that he asked throughout the movie. I also corrected another statement in this article that seemed to suggest that Moore thought that countries with gun control necessarily have fewer murders. --soulpatch

Moore characterized the relative violence of various countries by comparing gun-related statistics only. In other words, if next year England had ZERO gun homicides, but 33% of the population died by bludgeoning, then according to Moore the US would be the more violent country. --Len.

Regardless, the fact is that Moore specifically did not say that the amount of guns in a country have anything to do with its murder rate, nor did it claim that gun control would make a country less violent. The paragraph I excised suggested otherwise. soulpatch

But he did ask "Why is America more violent than other countries?" This begs the question WHETHER America is more violent than other countries. He then equates "gun violence" with "violence", and uses some invalid statistics to "substantiate his claim".

I'm not going to argue with you over whether the US's abnormally high murder rate doesn't make it a more violent country. My concern is over the inaccurate statements that were made in this article about what Moore said in the movie. soulpatch

"Abnormally high murder rate"? That is itself highly questionable. But you seem opposed to any discussion of the statistical issues which illuminate whether or not it is legitimate to refer to "the abnormally high murder rate" in the first place. --Len.

No, what I object to is an attempt at turning this article into a discussion of issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the movie that it purportedly discusses. If you think the murder rate in the United States is not higher than it is in other countries, you are welcome to your opinion, bizarre thought it might be. That is neither here nor there. The problem I have is with attributing claims to Michael Moore that he never made, not to mention missing the forest for the trees. Moore never claimed that gun ownership was correlated with the murder rate in the United States. Trying to turn this article into polemic against claims that Moore never made is both POV and, to say the least, silly and illogical. soulpatch

You are again equating "murder rate" with "gun murder rate". This puts you in the ridiculous position of suggesting that Rwanda is a safer place than the US. But that's beside the point: the point is that you have completely misunderstood the nature of the statistical statement here. Moore claims that the US is more violent than other countries, and pretends to substantiate it--by COUNTING "gun deaths", but IGNORING levels of gun ownership! When one recalls that the US has >100,000,000 gun owners, while Britain has <10,000 gun owners, one observes that "more violent" is a highly debatable characterization. I'm afraid there is no room for debate on the point that his statistical "analysis" is deeply flawed. You have rejected my observations (which could use some cleanup, I'd admit) because you are convinced they are POV special-pleading. But that conviction proceeds from the fact that your own POV is so entrenched, that you can't seem to recognize a valid criticism of his method when presented with it.

Put differently, what are your credentials for pronouncing my criticism of his statistical method incorrect? I am not a statistician--I am only a PhD mathematician with enough knowledge of statistics to spot the very elementary flaw in his reasoning. --Len.

I am still curious if you actually saw the movie. Thusfar you haven't said if you did or not. The problem, which I keep repeating over and over again, but which thusfar you haven't addressed, is that all of this is irrelevant to the points that Moore was making in the movie. You are worrying about the forest when you shoulud be looking at the trees. Moore was not comparing the United States to Rwanda, but to other advanced industrialized nations. And, this is important: he was not arguing that the presence of guns correlate to murder rates. On the contrary, he was arguing the exact opposite! So you are focusing on a straw man. If you think that the murder rate in the United States is not higher than it is in the other industrialized countries like Japan, Canada, and the UK, then it is really hard to take you too seriously, but at the very least you should make some attempt to address what the thrust of Moore's film was about rather than arguing against things he never said. soulpatch

Some have criticized Moore for staging scenes to score rhetorical points. In one scene Moore opened an account at a bank, and walked out the door with a pistol in his hand. Guns were given as an incentive to new depositors. However, the bank has stated that it does not keep or directly give out handguns to new depositors; instead it gives the depositor a voucher, which may be redeemed at designated gun stores, upon successful completion of the mandatory FBI background check and after any applicable waiting periods.

Removed. This cannot be included without at least providing, in the body of the article, the name of the bank, a link to the bank's website, and a credible reference for this information on how the bank operates. Also, is the possibility that the bank did operate as depicted in the Moore film while Moore was filming? --Ryguasu

Now you're being ridiculous. It is just plain illegal to hand out guns over a bank counter, for one thing. There is no possibility that it operated that way. You are violating the recommended practice for Wikipedia of not reducing the information content of an article; it is legitimate to ask for further details, or to supply them yourself, but it is not legitimate to delete the paragraph. Your POV is showing. --Len.

Removed the following paragraph:

Had Moore corrected for population, though, his statistical argument would still represent a flawed analysis: it fails to take into account the number of guns present in the society. It is also necessary to account for the relative number of guns, and/or gun owners, in the various countries. For example, consider two hypothetical towns, each with a population of 100,000. Suppose further that in a given year, one town experiences 100 firearm-related deaths, and the other experiences 20. By Moore's reasoning, the first town would appear to be "5 times more violent" than the second town. But suppose further that the first town had 10,000 gun owners, and the second town had 100 gun owners. It turns out that a gun is actually 20 times more likely to be involved in a lethal incident in the second town. Calculating gun deaths per population, without any accounting at all for relative availability of firearms, produces essentially meaningless statistics.

Once again, the above paragraph clearly shows that the person who wrote it didn't bother to see the movie or paid no attention to what Moore was saying in the movie. soulpatch

Clarify. Moore argued that the US has more "violence", specifically more "gun violence", using invalid statistical method. Your POV is showing. --Len.

You seem to be so focused on using this article as a forum for your own anti-gun-control views that you don't seem to know that Moore was not arguing that the number of guns in a country correlate to the number of gun deaths in that same country. Do you or do you not understand that Moore was not arguing this point? Did you see the movie? soulpatch

It seems people are getting a bit too ambitious about the scope of this article. Might it not make more sense to move the the bulk of the discussion of violence to another article, say to gun politics? --Ryguasu

No objection here. --Len.

Here are the Michael Moore figures and the CIA stats, if you want to try to work them into the aritcle.

Michael Moore's stats: 
Germany, 381 gun murders. 
France, 255 gun murders. 
Canada, 165 gun murders. 
UK, 68 gun murders. 
Australia, 65 gun murders. 
Japan, 39 gun murders. 
U.S., 11,127 gun murders.

CIA World Factbook 2002 population stats:

Germany, 83,251,851 
France, 59,765,983 
Canada, 31,902,268 
U.K., 59,778,002 
Australia, 19,546,792 
Japan, 126,974,628 
U.S., 280,562,489

Mintguy 23:25 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

Currently, this article contains one paragraph that summarizes the movie, and two paragraphs that contain a pro-gun critique of a minor point within the the movie that is irrelevant to the essence of the film. This article is not NPOV, and needs some major revision. soulpatch

Soulpatch: do you know what NPOV means? The flaws in his statistical "analysis" are (1) relevant, (2) neither "pro-gun" nor "anti-gun", and (3) as stated, were NPOV. Your insertion badly violated NPOV because you (1) introduced a new argument foreign to Moore's own, and (2) made unsupported assertions of fact concerning murder rates in various countries. I intended to allow your highly POV pleading, but discuss the subject on talk...but you went from bad to worse, deleted the purely theoretical discussion of his statistical methods, and then worked your unsupported "facts" deeper into the article. If you can't tell NPOV from blatant pleading on the gun issue, then prepare for an edit war. --Len.

In case you aren't perfectly clear on this, Soulpatch, let me reiterate:

The flaws in his statistical method are on subject.
Pointing out that those flaws have been observed is NPOV.
In my discussion of his statistical errors, I made no claims whether a proper method would have supported or overturned his position.
In other words, I pointed out the flaws in his "statistics", but did not offer an alternative conclusions.

You, on the other hand:

dismissed several of the observed flaws in his method,
yet claimed that the observations had no merit.
Further, you offered completely unsubstantiated "facts" to back up your assertion. (Hint: If aggravated assault is included, your "facts" are blatantly false. If homicides only are considered, then your characterization of US homicide rates as "much higher" is also false.)
In addition, you offered the blatantly POV conclusion that Moore's conclusion is obviously true, even if the reasoning he offered was deeply flawed.

In sum, my observations were (1) correct, (2) relevant, (3) NPOV, and (4) DID NOT advance either a pro- or anti-gun position. Your reply was out-and-out POV pleading. So I repeat: learn what NPOV means, or prepare for an edit war. --Len

First of all, it is hard to take you even remotely seriously when you deny that the US has a higher homicide rate than the other industrialized nations of the world.

Second, since you have not denied not seeing the movie, you are not even qualified to discuss the film. Perhaps there are other feature length documentaries that you haven't seen that you would also like to work on in this encyclopedia?

Third, I simply reduced your long tirade about a minor and insignificant aspect of the major thrust of his film from two thirds of the article to a single sentence. This is an attempt at restoring balance to the article. If you don't understand why a one paragraph summary of the film, followed by a two-paragraph tirade that complains about a nit that is not germane to the thrust of the film, is not NPOV, then it is you, not me, who has a lot to learn about NPOV. soulpatch