Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Bowling for Columbine

(2002)

I can hardly express how much I hated this movie. I should first say where I’m coming from. I do not like firearms. I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve fired a shotgun once, and a .22 rifle once. I believe the Second Amendment provides for “a well-regulated militia,” not the right of every 9-year-old or psychotic yahoo to own artillery pieces. I am in favor of gun control; I believe we are the horror of the western world because of our absolutely insane insistence on Wild West laws in the 21st century. So I should love this movie, right? I loved Michael Moore when he did Roger & Me, but I began to admire him less as the years wore on. Why? because he lies, and lying, even in a good cause … especially in a good cause, is anathema. Moore has become the Ann “Treason” Coulter, the Michael Savage, the big fat lying hypocritical junkie crybaby Rush Limbaugh of the left. In Columbine he presents half a dozen mutually contradictory explanations for guns and gun violence, and for the whole atrocity of Columbine. He tries to tell me that people in Canada do not lock their doors. And he manages to make me feel sorry for Charlton Heston, a man I would not piss on if he were on fire. This is the man who went to Columbine the day after, brandished a rifle, and shouted “I’ll give up my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand!” But you do not ambush a man, even as poor an excuse for a man as Charlton Heston, in his own home. Not a man known to be suffering from Alzheimer’s. No, Michael. Shove your Oscar up your ass. Sideways.