Our culture has been littered with gun violence. You hear about it almost every day--to the point where it's almost normal. I can still remember the days of the Sandy Hook Shootings and the Aurora Movie Theater Shootings. These types of events instill fear into the people and even produce more gun-lovers, ironically. Michael Moore satirically engaged in his own adventure to get to the bottom of this. It was neat how he made some of these people look like fools, yet they had no idea.
Michael Moore is storied for these types of documentaries and his fights against our wars overseas. He visited many places to see what their gun policies were compared to Americas. Interestingly enough, Canada had very similar gun policies to America. Guns were easily accessible, yet their gun deaths per year were less than 100. America's was over 11,000. Something must have been wrong with American society.
There is really no facts about why this is happening. Everybody watches the same movies, plays the same video games, and has the same amount of guns as us. There must be something that's going on in our society, a sense of instilled fear, that is driving unbelievable amounts of gun deaths up.
Jordan, nice response. The documentary went really deeply into the culture of fear in America as well, wouldn't you say? It's true that it also displayed the strange conundrum of mass shootings producing even more gun lovers (and haters, since this is an increasingly polarized issue). It just went a bit deeper than that.
ReplyDeleteI completely agreed with what you had to say Jordan. I thought you hit it spot on when you stated, “These types of events instill fear into the people and even produce more gun-lovers, ironically.” After these tragedies people feel the need to stockpile weapons, half of which should not even be allowed to be owned by citizens. As many people have stated, there is something wrong with American society, and completely concur. While Moore spends the whole documentary on this topic, as you mentioned, he never really finds a true definitive answer.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, great response and it is easy to say that we as Americans do have a very prominent culture of fear. But a big question regarding this is, where did it come from? As you said, all countries watch almost the exact same movies and plays the the same violent video games but for some reason our murder rate is way higher. I don't really think we will ever really know the exact answer to our questions, but it is time for a change.
ReplyDeleteThis called attention to some very crucial points, Jordan. The inherent fear that Americans feel often directly correlates to our media. “If it bleeds, it leads” often is true for American news stations. The effects reverberate around the country. I think that Michael Moore did a very smart thing when he used satire to approach this issue. Many people pay attention when they hear a funny line, and he used Horatian satire to poke fun at people without ever directly attacking them. He made the issue personal as well when he referenced his home state of Michigan. This conveyed an abstract sense of patriotism. He was trying to solve a problem that plagued his people. Hopefully the rest of America can get on board with him to extinguish this problem once and for all.
ReplyDeleteHey Jordan! I am equally confused on how America can have 11,000 gun related deaths compared to Canada having about 100. Where is the disconnect between our two societies that is cause for such a drastic difference? I wouldn't think we are all that different from Canadians. It seemed that part of the reason behind our gun violence is we are living in fear. Fear that seems to be confirmed by the endless amount of media coverage on murders, robberies, rapes, and other terrible crimes. Maybe this contributes to some of crimes, but there must be even more. Nice ideas!
ReplyDeleteI like how you added in the perspective that something is definitely causing the violence to seem “normal” is America. I also think that the violent video games may contribute to the fact that we are constantly exposed to a world full of virtual murders. While for some people it means nothing at all, and to those it is an outlet when angry. I constantly wonder who even creates such violent games and what their intentions must be. Whether games lead to violence in our world or not, we are exposed to much more than need be.
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