Location:

The Counterfactual Documentary

The problem is, once you delve beneath the humor, it turns out [Moore's] "facts and hard-core analysis" are frequently inaccurate, contradictory and confused...Like many of the political celebrities increasingly filling our TV screens and bookstores, he is entertaining, explicitly partisan, and all too willing to twist facts to promote himself and his vision of the truth.1
- Spinsanity

Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" sheds light, but not over its given topic of gun violence in America. Rather, the movie is a disheartening illumination of how far misleading reporting, flawed analyses, and base demagoguery will get you.

For the movie is a runaway success. It was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was named the year's Best Documentary by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. The International Documentary Association has ranked the movie as the best documentary of all time. With such acclaim, "Bowling for Columbine" has easily become the highest grossing American documentary ever.

You might think that the admirers of such an important documentary - a political statement put to film - would take care to guarantee its accuracy, but the opposite is true. When confronted by Moore's misleading tactics and disingenuous statistics, his defenders respond with a knowing sigh. Yes, they acknowledge, Moore is not always perfectly accurate, but he is provoking thought about an important topic, and that is what matters. For example, one movie reviewer writes:

Regardless of how dubious its documentary tactics may be, Bowling for Columbine is powerful, thought-provoking, and, upon occasion, bitingly funny...Even those who disagree with Moore's politics will find themselves thinking during and after the movie. Whether you agree with the director's conclusions isn't the issue - it's that you recognize the problem.2

Provoking thought is a valuable service, but it does not trump all other values. Fundamentally, the problem is a simple one: Most viewers have neither the time to verify Moore's facts nor the inclination to investigate alternate viewpoints. Moore has not sparked thought in informed viewers - he has manipulated an audience of laymen.

Moore's audience is composed primarily of left-wingers, and it shows. The movie speaks to the ideological biases of the American left - anti-business, anti-NRA, and full of admiration for Canada - while putting on a show of objectivity. Like a sedative or a safety blanket, the movie hits its left-wing audience with just enough fudged statistics to bolster ideas they already believe - that America is a paranoid, racist, belligerent country.

Moore is not challenging his audience, and he is not promoting honest inquiry. He is preaching to the choir.

The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in "Bowling for Columbine" should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination.3
- The New York Times

We can't expect audiences to check the accuracy of the movies they see, which is why the failure of many critics and journalists to challenge Moore is so disappointing.

In some cases this is a failure of laziness, although surely critics should be alerted to Moore by now. His first movie, "Roger and Me," was denied an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary when it was discovered that the "chronology was significantly changed to fit the narrative,"4 and The New Republic, in its review of Moore's "Stupid White Men," declared that "A more irresponsible book on a more important topic would be impossible to write."5

But it is the biased critics, and not the lazy ones, who have truly failed their readers. The critics who write off Moore's fabrications and distortions because they agree with his ideology have not merely attached themselves to the dangerous idea that the ends justify the means, they have also lost sight of how a healthy body politic operates. A deceitful ideologue producing "documentaries" to inflame left-wing audiences, being given a free pass by journalists who think that left-wing ideas should be encouraged by any means necessary - in what sense is this healthy?

Imagine a documentary advocating oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve that fudged statistics on the amount of oil that could be tapped, made misleading arguments about the environmental costs of drilling, and generally ignored counterarguments to its case. Imagine further that the movie was made by a man who publicly chastised President Bush for being too liberal. Would we call this movie thought-provoking? Or would we say that it misled the public about an important issue?

There is nothing wrong with promoting left-wing ideas. But the truth must remain privileged above ideology. Otherwise, we reverse political logic - instead of accepting an ideology because of the facts and arguments that support it, we begin with the ideology and accept any facts and arguments that endorse it, true or not.

ONE OF THE MOSQUITO-BITE IRRITAtions of being on the left is finding your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore...Although he'd have made a crackerjack ad man, he's a slipshod filmmaker, and the movie quickly collapses, burying its subject beneath bumper-sticker rehashes of received ideas...At once punchy and incoherent -- Moore contradicts himself vividly every few minutes -- the film has the scattershot shapelessness of a concept album made by a singles band.

Although Moore takes delight in thumping Cops and TV newscasts, he himself uses tabloid techniques and is guilty of manipulative heartlessness.6

- LA Weekly

We must not automatically discount "Bowling for Columbine" just because it was made by Michael Moore. Arguments should be judged by the strength of their analysis, not by the person making them. But being fair doesn't mean being stupid - we should approach the movie with skepticism, knowing that Moore is a left-wing ideologue with a tendency to mislead. We are not talking about Michael Kinsley or Bob Woodward here.

Kinsley would never have written a letter to Elian Gonzalez informing the six-year old that, "The truth is your mother and her boyfriend snatched you and put you on that death boat because they simply wanted to make more money."7 Elian's mother, you might recall, had recently died trying to join the hundreds of thousands of other Cubans who have also fled Cuba for the United States. Tact, surely, is not Moore's strong point.

If it were, he wouldn't compare the situation of the 3,000 Jewish retirees who accidently voted for Patrick Buchanan in the 2000 election to the Holocaust: "Sixty-two years ago tonight, the Holocaust began in full force on what was called Kristallnacht: A few [Jews] survived. I will not allow those who survived to come here to this 'land of the free' be abused again."8

As hard as it is to imagine, Moore's comments on 9/11 have been even more despicable. His first reaction to planes flying into the World Trade Center was to observe that, "if someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush."

Time has not toned down Moore's statements on 9/11. TheatreGuide London criticized his one-man show, "Michael Moore Live," for its

deeply offensive attack on the passengers of the September 11 planes for being cowardly and complacent middle-class wimps who wouldn't fight back - a tirade the audience meets with stunned silence, perhaps remembering, among other things, that the one plane that knew what was going on did just that. The sermon on complacency that follows drags on long enough for you to begin to wonder just what moral authority he possesses to whip us from.9

Fifteen months on, Moore is still peddling conspiracy theories about 9/11. Dismissing bin Laden as merely a sickly man running from cave to cave with a dialysis machine,10 Moore wonders, "Who did it? I'd like to know. I'd like justice to happen to those who did that. I don't believe it was 19 guys at some Florida dipshit flying school who figured out how to do this."11

Despite not knowing who perpetrated the attacks, Moore is not shy in explaining why the attacks were carried out. When asked for his theory on 9/11, he contemptuously answered, "Do I have to go through the whole next movie for you? There's a company called Unical. They wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan - the Taliban were meeting with them in Houston for a number of years in the late 90s."12

Were Moore's theories supported by a strong foundation of data and evidence, they might be more credible. But Moore seems incapable of getting his facts straight. Ben Fritz uncovered a number of glaring mistakes in "Stupid White Men":

Moore can't even get the facts straight about his own life. In an interview with the Australian newspaper Good Weekend, Moore claimed that "There has been a blackout on me since September 11. I've only been on two (American) TV shows, 90 per cent of the papers have not reviewed the book - yet I've sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in America this year." It does indeed sound like Moore has been blacklisted - until you do a quick Lexis-Nexis search and discover that Moore has in fact been on at least 21 national TV shows since 9/11.14

If Moore gets both his statistics on the Pentagon budget and his statistics about his personal life wrong by a factor of 10, we should be very careful in trusting the statistics he presents in "Bowling for Columbine."

His journalism, in short, on the subject of Canada and Canadians, is nothing short of shoddy, manipulative and untrue. The same can be said for his journalism on his own country, and indeed on the terrible and complicated issue he purports to adjudicate.15
- National Post (Canada)

And "Bowling for Columbine" justifies all our skepticism. Even on minor points, unessential to the thesis, the movie is misleading. Moore claims that Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton makes weapons of mass destruction, when it actually produces rockets to launch satellites.16 He says that the United States gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000 and 2001, when that money really went to non-governmental organizations and the UN to run aid programs in Afghanistan.17

He alters video of the infamous "Willie Horton" ad without informing his viewers.18

Makes it look like you go to the bank and get the gun, when in fact it normally takes 10 days, and Moore actually planned this "documentary" footage for days with the bank. It's not a reflection of reality...Moore splices two speeches together, heavily edits one of them. Implies the NRA showed no concern in Littleton, when in fact it cancelled many of its events. Implies the NRA showed no concern in Dearborn, MI, when in fact the rally occurred 8 months after that event!

If these were the only flaws in the movie, we could write them off as negligible mistakes, excusable within the larger scope of the movie. But Moore's main thesis is riddled with so many errors that it forces us to discount his whole movie.

Roughly put, Moore's argument is that because Canada has as many guns as we do, our gun violence problem can't be blamed on the accessibility of guns. The cause must lie elsewhere, and Moore points his finger at a sensationalist news media feeding a culture of violence and paranoia. In other words, Canadians and Americans both have guns, it's just that Americans are so scared of each other that we actually use them.

Moore is right that America has more gun violence than other industrialized nations. But even on this basic point - the premise of his movie - his presentation of the data is extremely misleading. Moore tells us that America has 11,127 gun murders a year while Canada has only 165 - 67.4 times as many! To start, Moore includes deaths caused by legal intervention (police action to stop crime) in the American statistics, but leaves them out of the Canadian statistics. Include legal intervention deaths in the Canadian statistics, and the American gun murder rate is 65.1 times as high as Canada's.19 Well, ok, 67.4, 65.1, not a big a difference.

Except Moore doesn't account for differences in population size either. Per capita, America's gun murder rate in 1999 was 6.5 times higher than Canada's.20 But it's worse than that. Why focus on gun murders, rather than tackling the murder rate over all? After all, it really doesn't matter whether murders are committed with boxing gloves or with cannons, what matters is how many people are being killed. But Moore doesn't want to let us know overall murder rate, because America's overall murder rate was just 3.23 times Canada's.21 (In 2000, America's murder rate dropped to 3.11 times Canada's.22). 3.23 times as high isn't as scary as 6.5 times as high, and it certainly isn't as shocking as 67 times as high.

Nevertheless, it is true that Canada does have a lower murder rate than America, even if the difference is much smaller than Moore implies. But is it true that Canada has a lower murder rate despite having similar patterns of gun ownership? Hardly. Yet this is the crux of Moore's case.

Moore rattles off that there are 7 million firearms for 10 million Canadian households, and this sounds pretty convincing. We have a lot of guns, they have a lot of guns. But again, Moore does not account for population size. When you do, you you find that there are 3.3 times as many firearms per capita in the United States as in Canada.23 "Firearm" is a broad term, though, covering a wide range of guns. Look just at handguns - the type of gun used in 81% of all firearm murders 24 - and you find that America has 7.1 times as many handguns per capita as Canada.

It should not surprise us that Canada has far fewer guns than the United States. Canada's gun laws are much tougher than America's. Handguns in Canada have been registered since 1934. Shotguns and rifles have been registered since 1995. Fully automatic weapons have been banned since 1977.25 Canadian government spokesmen say plainly that "you cannot have a handgun for self- protection,"26 while Canada's Supreme Court succintly ruled that

Guns cannot be divided neatly into two categories - those that are dangerous and those that are not dangerous. All guns are capable of being used in crime. All guns are capable of killing and maiming. It follows that all guns pose a threat to public safety. As such, their control falls within the criminal law power.27

When it comes to gun control, Canada and America are like night and day. Can you imagine an American government official stating that Americans could not own handguns for self-protection? Can you imagine the American Supreme Court making such a clear proclamation of the government's right to regulate guns?

There is a reason why the same gun that retails for $100 in the United States is being sold illegally in Canada for $500, and there is a reason why 75% of the guns used in crimes in Toronto are stolen or smuggled from America.28 The Canadian government has made it hard to get a gun legally, so criminals must acquire guns illegally, at higher prices.

If America had the same gun ownership rate as Canada, but more murders, then we could say that gun control is not the issue. But America has more murders than any other Western country and is also massively more armed, and Moore has shown us no reason why this correlation might not also be causation.

If you want about as clear a demonstration as you're likely to find of the difference between truth and politics, go see Eminem's 8 Mile...and then go see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine...Though Moore claims to have made a documentary, his examination of American gun culture presents viewers with a more heavily edited fiction than producer Brian Grazer's attempt to clean up Eminem. Whereas the rapper's movie reaches for the sort of truth mere facts cannot convey, Moore's film grabs viewers with the old demagogue's trick of using just as much factual information as is necessary to lead people toward false conclusions.29
- The American Prospect

Moore's search for an explanation of American violence comes to an end in Windsor, Ontario. Watching the TV news, Moore realizes that, "Night after night, the Canadians weren't being pumped full of fear." Sure enough, he discovers that Canadians don't lock their doors - it doesn't even occur to them! And essentially, there we have it. America is so afraid that we kill each other and bomb other countries, while our neighbors are crime-free domestically and peaceful actors on the international stage.

There is a certain logic to this explanation. Fear is a powerful emotion, which can make individuals and societies act irrationally. But checking whether a few people in Toronto lock their doors is not a scientific survey, and watching one night of TV news in Windsow proves nothing.

It would have been nice, for example, if Moore had pointed out that the Canadian burglary rate is 12% higher than America's.30 Perhaps more Canadians should be locking their doors. In fact, according to the Fourth International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS), the United States falls into the middle-tier of industrialized countries when it comes to crime. That puts America ahead of Australia, England and Wales, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and in the same group as Scotland, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, France, and yes, Canada.31

Or, before drawing conclusions about the impact of sensationalist American news broadcasts after watching one night of TV in Windsor, Moore might have done a little more research. NPR did, and found that 50% more people in Windsor watch American news than watch Canadian news.32 Apparently a lot of Canadians are being "pumped full of fear" by the TV news just like Americans.

Moore may be right that Americans are being pumped full of fear by the TV news. Time and again, reviewers have highlighted the fact that there was a 600% increase in American TV coverage of murders while the murder rate declined by 20% as one of Moore's most convincing indictments of America. Yet I have yet to find a review which recognized that this statistic suggests exactly the opposite of what Moore claims. The correlation is not between rising fear and rising crime, but between rising fear and decreasing crime!

Once again, Moore makes a spurious argument, knowing that most of his audience will not be able to see through them.

Moore wraps up this argument out that TV coverage of murders went up 600% at the same time as the murder rate declined by 20%. Time and again, reviewers have repeated this statistic as a powerful indictment of America. But I have yet to find a reviewer who recognized that these numbers suggest exactly the opposite of Moore's claims: The correlation Moore has found is not between rising fear and rising crime, but between rising fear and decreasing crime!

A little research would have saved Moore a lot of errors. So would actually listening to the people he interviews. His interview of Charleton Heston makes for good theater, but is slanderous rather than informative.

Moore is eager to take down Heston, and he's done a pretty good job of it. After seeing the movie, one blogger wrote that Heston is the "leader of a racist paramilitary group," while another called Heston "the devil...not even the son of Satan, but the fucking devil himself."30 Moore encourages us to believe the worst about Heston, suggesting in the movie and in interviews since that Heston is a racist for his comment that American gun violence might be explained by the fact that America is "ethnically mixed."34

Heston certainly chose his words poorly. They do sound racist. But Moore might have let his audience know that Heston marched with Martin Luther King - not exactly the action of a racist. He also might have allowed Heston to explain himself, because with explanation, Heston's comment is neither racist nor farfetched.

African-Americans commit 54% of the murders in the United States35, despite making up just 12% of the population. So although the American murder rate is 3.6 times the Canadian murder rate, if you remove African-Americans from the equation, it drops to less than twice the Canadian murder rate. (Interestingly, if my calculations are correct, if you remove African-Americans from the equation, the American robbery rate is over 60% lower than Canada's.)

To observe that blacks commit approximately seven times as many murders as whites is not racist. William Julius Wilson, the acclaimed Professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard, explains that:

if you look at a recent longitudinal study conducted by my colleague at the University of Colorado -- we are doing a book together -- Delbert Elliot. He found, for example, that by the time white males and black males reached the late 20s, the violent crime ratio is 4 to 1 -- 4 black to 1 white. Much higher violent crime rate among black males. However, when he controlled for employment, there was no significant difference in the violent crime rate between white males and black males. No significant difference.36

Like so many others from both the left and right, Heston was using race as a shorthand for class. This does not make him a racist. It is a known sociological factor that groups that are poor, without hope, and unintegrated are more likely to commit crimes. Hispanics are also more likely to commit murders than whites, although not as not at as high a rate as African-Americans. Does this mean that Hispanics are somehow biologically more violent than whites, but African-Americans are genetically most violent of all? No. It simply means that Hispanics are less integrated into society than whites, but more integrated than blacks. No great surprise there.

We can see the same factor at work in Europe, where second-generation immigrants "are massively over represented within the imprisoned population, and this to a degree comparable, nay in some places superior, to the 'racial disproportionality' that afflicts blacks in the United States."37 The difference between America and Europe is that America has twice as many immigrants as Europe, plus a large, historically oppressed black minority.

And although Canada has a larger immigrant population than America (17.4% verus 11.5%)37, blacks in Canada make up only 2.5% of the population38 of whom almost 90% are recent immigrants. By comparison, blacks make up 12% of the American population, and it is a community that has suffered 400 years history of oppression, leading to poverty, family breakdown, and lower education levels. In other words, slavery and racism created a violent urban underclass in America for which there is no parallel in Canada. Additionally, 31% of America's population is non-white39, versus only 14% of Canada's population.40

Again, this is not to claim that non-whites are inherently more violent than whites. But it is natural that unintegrated minorities, at a lower socioeconomic scale, are going to commit more crime. It just so happens that America is trying to integrate a lot more immigrants than Europe, and is more racially diverse than Canada.

America's immigrant population and racial diversity do not explain all of the disparity in murder rates, but they go a good deal farther towards explaining the problem than anything in "Bowling for Columbine."

Taking off from Barry Glassner's book The Culture of Fear, Moore attacks mainstream media for manipulating Americans' fears, notably of anarchy and poverty. But Glassner argues above all for clearheadedness. Moore uses scare tactics to lather up art-house audiences.41
- The Baltimore Sun

Gun violence is a complex issue. It is possible, for example, that once African-Americans are factored out, Americans' easy access to guns leads to both a murder rate that is twice as high as Canada's and a robbery rate that less than half of Canada's. In other words, Americans are more able to protect themselves, but also more likely to have a murder weapon around in a fit of anger.

But Moore is not interested in exploring complexity. He likes to find scapegoats - generally some mix of corporations, America, and "stupid white males" - and hammer them. To properly arouse anger at his scapegoats, he ignores nuance and subtlety, and misrepresents statistics. It is not enough to criticize the NRA - Moore needs to make Charleton Heston look like a racist. It is not enough to find out why other countries have a lower murder rate than the US - Moore needs to make the difference in murder rates sound 20 times as bad as it is. And God knows he can't admit that in other crime categories America is actually safer than other countries. Then people might actually take a balanced look at the US, instead of finding America despicable.

Moore is an extremely funny commentator, and he's a talented filmmaker. Often his observations about politics are bluntly true, and need saying. But he wastes his talent on hatchet jobs. An honest and thought-provoking documentary about violence in America would be extremely valuable. That Michael Moore is incapable of making such a movie is everyone's loss.

  1. Fritz, Ben. "Viewer beware," Spinsanity (19 Nov. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html
  2. Berardinelli, James. "Bowling for Columbine," Reelviews (7 Oct. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/b/bowling_columbine.html
  3. Scott, A.O. "Seeking a Smoking Gun in U.S. Violence," The New York Times (11 Oct. 2002): n.pag. Online.
  4. "On the Media," National Public Radio. 8 Dec. 2002.
  5. Wolfe, Alan. "Idiot Time," The New Republic (9 Jul. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020708&s=wolfe070802&c=1
  6. Powers, John. "A Man Escaped," LA Weekly (11-17 Oct. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/47/film-powers.php
  7. Page, Aaron. "Enter the Idiot," Cornell Daily Sun (3 Apr. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.cornelldailysun.com/articles/5173/
  8. Ibid.
  9. Berkowitz, Gerald. "Michael Moore," TheatreGuide London n.pag. Online. http://www.theatreguidelondon.co.uk/reviews/michaelmoore02.htm
  10. Crepeau, Richard C. "Michael Moore Live, and Kicking," Pop Politics n.pag. Online. http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2002-12-02-michaelmoore.shtml
  11. Collins, Andrew. "Michael Moore: part II," The Guardian n.pag. Online. http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,841086,00.html
  12. Ibid
  13. Fritz, Ben. "One Moore stupid white man," Spinsanity (3 Apr. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020403.html
    Pentagon budget data can be found at http://www.clw.org/milspend/dodbud01.html. Information about the Joint Strike Fighter available at http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1108-03.htm.
  14. Blair, Tim. http://timblair.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_timblair_archive.html#85345233
  15. Blatchford, Christie. "As usual, America takes the blame," National Post (22 Oct. 2002): n.pag. Online.
  16. Lyons, Daniel. "Bowl-o-Drama," Forbes (9 Dec. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1209/059.html
  17. Fritz, "Viewer beware."
  18. Ibid.
  19. The CDC gun murder statistics are available at "Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2000," Center for Disease Control. n.pag. Online. http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics statistics, which record a significantly lower number of murders than the CDC, are available at "Homicide trends in the U.S.: Weapons Used," Bureau of Justice Statistics (21 Nov. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/weaponstab.htm. That the Canadian statistics do not include legal intervention was confirmed for me in a personal communication with Statistics Canada.
  20. In the US, gun murders made up 78.5% of all murders in 1999 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/weaponstab.htm). Therefore, America had a gun murder rate of 3.51 - 5.7 homicides per 100,000 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm) times 0.785. In Canada, 31% of all murders are committed with guns (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/001018/d001018b.htm). Therefore Canada has a gun murder rate of 0.54 - 1.76 murders per 100,000 (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/001018/d001018b.htm) times 0.31. 3.51 divided by 0.54 gives us an American gun homicide rate 6.5 times high as Canada's.
  21. The US murder rate in 1999 was 5.7 per 100,000 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm). Canada's rate in 1999 was 1.76 per 100,000 (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/legal12b.htm). 5.7 divided by 1.76 gives us an American murder rate that is 3.23 times as high as Canada's.
  22. The US murder rate in 2000 was 5.5 per 100,000 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm). Canada's rate in 2000 was 1.77 per 100,000 (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/legal12b.htm). 5.5 divided by 1.77 gives us an American murder rate that is 3.11 times as high as Canada's.
  23. "Canada-US Comparison," http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/Cda-US.htm
  24. "Hot Guns," http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/more/facts.html
  25. "Gun Control in Canada," http://www.canadianembassy.org/government/guncontrol-en.asp
  26. "On the Media"
  27. "Gun Control in Canada"
  28. Barber, Brian and Jonathan Bloedow. "Study Claims Smuggling Real Culprit in Gun Deaths," Ottawa Times n.pag. Online. http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Misc/ott1.html.
  29. Franke-Ruta, Garance. "Moore's the Pity," The American Prospect (22 Nov. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/11/franke-ruta-g-11-22.html
  30. Englander, Chip. "More Gun Control Laws?" Michigan Review (6 Oct. 1999): n.pag. Online. http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/10-06-99/guns.html
  31. Kesteren, John van, Pat Mayhew, and Paul Nieuwbeerta. "Criminal Victimisation in Seventeen Industrialised Countries," http://www.minjust.nl/b_organ/wodc/publicaties/rapporten/pubrapp/ob187i.htm
  32. "On the Media"
  33. http://www.banksean.com/weblog/2002/10/29.html, http://www.blurty.com/talkread.bml?itemid=11260
  34. Williams, Walter E. "Black Community Must Rise Up Against Crime," Anchorage Daily News (13 Oct. 1997): n.pag. Online. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_anchdn-voice.htm
  35. "The Two Nations of Black America," http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/wilson.html
  36. Wacquant, Loïc. "'Suitable Enemies:' Foreigners and immigrants in the prisons of Europe," Punishment and Society (Oct. 1999): n.pag. Online. http://www.penalreform.org/english/article_wacquant2.htm
  37. "1996 Census of Canada," http://www.gov.ns.ca/finance/publish/CENSUS/CR003.PDF and "Immigration Numbers Continue to Climb," http://www.cis.org/circle.html
  38. "MG Statistics - Canada," http://www.imdiversity.com/Article_Detail.asp?Article_ID=149
  39. Kasindorf, Martin and Haya El Nasser. "Impact of Census' race data debated," USA Today (12 Mar. 2001): n.pag. Online. http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/2001-03-12-censusimpact.htm
  40. "MG-Statistics - Canada"
  41. Sragow, Michael. "Moore strikes out in 'Bowling'," Baltimore Sun (25 Oct. 2002): n.pag. Online. http://www.sunspot.net/entertainment/movies/bal-to.columbine25oct25,0,6026186.story?coll=bal%2Dartslife%2Dmovies
View document history