According to Michael Moore in his moving Bowling for Columbine, even though Canada and the United States are similar there are vast differences in their social policies such as healthcare, employment public assistance and criminal justice. Both countries have a large amount of people, diversity, violent movies, games, and music, yet the United States has thousands of shootings a year and Canada has very few. Bowling for Columbine looks at what is different and what is the same between the two countries and tries to find a correlation. One correlation could be the vast difference in their social policies. It is possible that the fact that Canada has a publicly funded healthcare system that is free for all citizens could have an effect on gun violence. Many people in the United States blame mental illness or drug and alcohol influence on a majority of the shootings that are reported. Many of these shootings may have been prevented with proper healthcare and treatment for these illnesses. It is possible that because it is easier to get treatment for these types of illnesses in Canada it could be a reason why there are less gun crimes. Unemployment may play a …show more content…
Canada and the United States both have a history with guns. People in either place growing up hunting and fishing, having wars and conflicts, but the people of Canada feel safe enough to leave their homes unlocked, unlike the United States. A Canadian man said, "If more guns made people safer ... then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It isn 't. It 's the opposite" (Bowling). A man that was interviewed said, "You think, as Americans, that the lock is keeping people out of your place. We as Canadians see it more as, uh... when we lock the door, we 're imprisoning ourselves inside"
Michael Moore’s documentary, “Bowling for Columbine,” attempts to expose the truth of gun violence in the United States of America. While his argument is persuasive, its impact is lessened with his use of logical fallacies, such as hasty generalization, post hoc, and appeal to doubtful authority. Moore’s film is thrillingly entertaining, but it is hard to look past the gaping holes in some of his logic.
Hysteria. Terror. Paranoia. All words used to describe feelings after a school disturbance. Reports of such emergencies from mainstream media outlets cause some to conclude extraordinary security breaches happen on an almost daily basis. However, schools are actually safeguarded; in recent years, protocols have been installed in schools across the United States to ensure safety. The catalyst: nationwide panic and suffering after an act of terror at a high school in Littleton, Colorado. Journalist and author Dave Cullen, in his book, Columbine, narrates the horror surrounding this shooting. Cullen’s purpose is to inform readers by captivating their attention utilizing emotional language. He establishes contrasting characters and alludes to significant
April 20th, 1999, Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, experienced a mass shooting. Thirteen people were injured and more than twenty were injured. Twelve were students and one was a teacher. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their high school for forty one minutes before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. School shootings are notorious for making headline news but in 1999, school shooting were not as prevalent as they are in the present day. The media blew up on the catastrophe that was Columbine and many questions were raised, who were these kids and why did they do this? Speculation arose about why they did it. Maybe they were bullied for being goth and social outcasts or maybe they
Unlike most of the country, I knew about Columbine High School on April 19, 1999. I knew that the Columbine Rebels had a good football team, I remembered how they beat Cherry Creek for the 1999 football championship. I knew what Columbine's building was like from when I was inside it in January for a debate tournament. I had friends that went to CHS. We had gone on a trip to Hawaii together to learn about biology. The rest of the country found out about Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. They didn't hear about their football team, the debate tournament they hosted, or my friends, though; they heard about two angry students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, that went on a killing rampage killing 12 other students, a teacher, and themselves. The nation, the media, the killers, my friends, and me all have their own view of what happened that day. Many people tried to understand how something so terrible could happen, while the killers thought that the killings were a wonderful thing, and still other students were trying to comprehend that this tragedy had actually happened so close to home.
The columbine massacre the day where no one is safe in school or out of school. The columbine massacre is about two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris both seniors 17 years old both two weeks before graduating they killed 12 students, one teacher, and 21 injured to their shooting on April 20, 1999. Both Dylan and Eric were some believe they were bullied by the sport teams in their school so they planned to kill the people who bullied them and other mostly anyone who gets in their way but that wasn’t really why the FBI he said that there target was everyone no one in pacify we will not get in to more details now. Dylan and Eric were both intelligent boys with solid parents and a good home and both had brothers younger than them. They played soccer, baseball, and both enjoyed to work on computers. Both boys were thinking on commit suicide on 1997 but instead started to plan a massacre in 1998 a year before it happened. Then the two boys had got into some trouble for breaking into a van on January 30, 1998 trying to steal some fuses and wires for bombs for them to make, but they got caught in trouble. So the court put them in a program called the juvenile diversion program, but even if they were there they were still planning the massacre and the court also put Eric in some angry management classes and people believe it worked but it didn’t he just did it to look like it work and both boys made it look like they were really sorry but they weren’t. Dylan and Eric both really hated everyone in their school and the court as well after they got caught breaking in to that van that’s when they really started to plan the massacre more and that’s when Harris started he’s journals no one really knows way but they didn’t hate a hand...
“Cassie Culpepper, 11, was in the back of a pickup truck with her brother and two other family members. Her brother was playing with the pistol his father lent him to scare coyotes with. Believing he had removed all the bullets, he pointed the pistol at his sister and squeezed the trigger. It fired and killed her on impact. (NY Times)” This is a true story that happened in the US because they allow personal firearms to everyday citizens. This could happen in Canada if we allow registration of personal guns to be abolished. Canada has a reputation as a safe and peaceful country. To keep this reputation and to keep Canadian citizens safe, Canada needs to maintain its strict gun control. Canada can stay a safer country without personal firearms because it causes homicides, suicides and accidental murders.
It is clear that the new firearms legislation is looking out only for the best interests of the citizens of Canada. Public safety and well-being undoubtedly takes precedence to a traditional gun culture. The argument by pro-gun advocates that licensing and registering firearms will turn them into criminals is invalid since guns have the potential to seriously injure and kill people and thus, should be treated with caution and special care.
Gun Ownership and Gun Control in Canada The Oscar-won documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’ has aroused people’s awareness of gun ownership and gun control issues. Should gun ownership be banned or should guns be controlled? Does gun ownership create a violent society? The answer is not measurable, however, from the firearm situation between America and Canada, the answer is more obvious.
Politicians from western provinces and rural areas are opposed to these stricter laws because there is a more widespread acceptance and use for guns around them. On the opposite side are politicians from urban areas where crime rates are higher, who embrace the new harsher gun control laws as one solution to violent crimes. There are many pros and cons to the recently passed Firearms Act to control guns in Canada. Severe gun control laws do not limit crime sufficiently enough and it is not worth the government money being spent on it. Government intervention in the licensing of firearms in Canada first took place in 1892.
As us Americans we are actually making the stereotype of we always carry guns around sound true to the rest of the world considering that, we are the “31% percent of all public mass shootings which at least four people are killed.” (TheWeek.com) But under a broader definition USA counted 346 mass shootings including shooting deaths of four or more victims in a 17- year period. The worst part about this information is this year we already have recorded 249 mass shootings in about 7 months close to the same amount USA counted over 17 years! This is a problem that must be solve for the safety in this country but also prevent more mass shooting from happening. “According to a Mother Jones study: Only 23 percent have been treated for mental illness.” ( Gallagher )
Second, we should ban the possession of handguns, because the homicide and robbery rate in the U.S. is much greater than in Canada where there are stricter handgun laws. From 1987 to 1996, 52% of all homicides in the U.S. involved handguns while only 14% of all homicides in Canada involved handguns. Also, between 1987 and 1996, firearm homicide rates increased by 2% in the United States but decreased by 7% in Canada. Furthermore, handgun homicide rates in the U.S. are 15.3 times higher than in Canada. Finally, firearm robbery rates in the U.S. are 3.5 times higher than in Canada.
Gun violence has been and continues to be one of the major problems in American. The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world and consequently the highest rate of gun violence and fatalities compared to other developed countries. In a study by the University of Sydney it is estimated that there are 270,000,000 to 310,000,000 guns in the United States. According to the same study in 2010 there were 31,672 fatalities caused by firearms and on the following year the number went up to 32,163. Homicides resulting from guns are high in the United States and they are claiming more than eleven thousand lives every year (Guns in the United States: Firearms, Armed Violence and Gun Law). According to Vision for Humanity, an initiative for the Economics and Peace, the United States is ranked 99 out of 162 countries in the 2013 global peace index, homicide rates and violent crimes are among the various criteria used to determine the ranking (Vision of Humanity). Mass shootings at work places, schools, shopping malls and places of worship are happening in an a...
Unfortunately, they are utilized in opposing ways, the majority of crimes are involved in gun shootings; this is an essential issue in America. Most agree that gun violence will have Countless individuals across the world are fighting for: freedom, religious convictions and more commonly for their children future. The devastating attack that had happened in Sandy Brook Elementary School in America that led to few deaths and injuries of youths. Which makes individuals question is educational institutes even a safe place for children. Additionally, there are more shootings in America compared to other nations as Gopink states “ United States has more gun violence than other countries because we have more guns and are willing to sell them to madmen who want to kill people.
The culture of Canada refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that are a representative of Canada and Canadians throughout Canada's history, its culture has been influenced by American culture because of a shared language, proximity, television and migration between the two countries. Overtime, Canadian-American relations have helped develop Canada’s identity during the years 1945-1982; thus introducing changing social norms , media and entertainment. In support of this, due to the United States being approximately 9.25 times larger in population and having the dominant cultural and economic influence it played a vital role in establishing Canada’s identity. With Canada being its neighbour, naturally, the United States would influence their way of life upon Canada. In other words,
On college campuses today, there is a lot of violence. Violence occurs for many reasons, its unfortunate but true. One of the main reasons that violence accurs is because 90 percent of violence on college campuses is alcohol related. That is one of the many reasons why violence occurs.