Traffic is very dangerous and today Michael Moore points out that every day at least 8 children gets killed by a gun in the US. Every day. Tick tock. 30 to 40 people are murdered every day. 40 to 50 people use a gun to kill themselves. Every day. Tick tock. What's the big deal with the sniper again? When almost a hundred people die from gunfire EVERY friggin' day! Please explain it to me, because I truly don't understand.
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 10:56:25 -0400
From: Michael Moore's Mailing List
Subject: "Your Children Are Not Safe." Yes, Indeed. "Your Children Are Not Safe." Yes,
October 23, 2002
Dear friends,
The note from the sniper could not have been more clear: "Your children are
not safe, anywhere at anytime." How did snipers get to be so smart? Have
truer words amidst such madness been spoken before? "Your children are not
safe."
And so the parents of the DC area are now in a state of holy terror. The
news media is at full throttle: "Keep your children home! Your child could
be next! The sniper is everywhere!"
And this morning, for the first time, there is talk that perhaps election
day in the Capital area should be postponed -- or at, the very least, the
polls must be manned by armed troops. Fear reigns. The democratic process
can wait. Our children are not safe.
Yes, our children ARE not safe. They have not been safe for some time.
Every single day in America, at least 8 children (19 yrs. old and younger)
are killed by gun violence in the United States. EVERY SINGLE DAY in
America between 30 and 40 people are murdered by someone using a gun. EVERY
SINGLE DAY in America another 40 to 50 people use a gun to kill themselves.
None of this has created a panic. These 80+ deaths a day by gunfire do not
lead off the evening news. We have, sitting in our homes, a quarter-BILLION
guns. And, yet, not one of those guns would have saved anyone shot by the
sniper. The sniper knows -- "Your children are not safe."
But it is not just because of his actions or the actions of those who
collaborate each day in his -- and our -- carnage that makes our children
unsafe.
Your children are not safe because we live in a country where we value
bombs and missiles more than we do textbooks and teachers.
Your children are not safe because we still will not provide them with the
most basic of human rights, one that nearly every other country on earth
has: that ALL children have a right to free health care should they get
sick.
Your children are not safe because we stuff them full of McDonald's and
Ritalin and then wonder why they have diabetes at 13 or shoot up the school
a week before graduation.
Your children are not safe because they saw us adults allow a man to steal
the White House, and then we did nothing about it. They learned that lying
and stealing are OK, but "one person, one vote" is a sham.
Your children are not safe because one in six of them live in poverty,
while Bush's friends and business partners make off with loot from the
pension funds and the stock market.
Yes, the sniper has got it figured out. The children have been targets for
some time, and the "snipers" who take their lives, ruin their lives, run
loose.
If you want to do something to make our children's lives a bit safer, one
thing you can do is to participate in one of the various demonstrations
taking place this Saturday around the country proing Bush's war against
Iraq (check out my website, www.michaelmoore.com
kids have died already in the last decade, thanks to our sanctions which
have starved them and our bombs which have killed them.
Now Bush the Sniper has a new message to the Iraqi people: "Your children
are not safe, anywhere at anytime."
Death in DC, death from DC. It is all too much, and it all has to stop. If
Bush and his NRA buddies hadn't prevented the formation of a national
database for ballistics fingerprinting, the police would have been able to
trace the sniper's bullets to the actual gun that he is using. He might
have been caught by now. But no -- we must protect the rights of the sniper
to make sure that his constitutionally-protected assault weapon is not
registered or on any kind of list anywhere, anytime.
I am sick and tired of the children not being safe. I want this insanity
ended now. Remove the Republicans and Republican-wannabes on November 5th,
pack the rallies this Saturday, and tell your children that we are sorry
that this is the world we have created for them and that we will now do
whatever we can to make it a safer place.
Yours,
Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com
PS. Sniper Porn -- a.k.a. nonstop news coverage that tells you nothing new
but titillates and scares the bejeepers out of you -- pre-empted the
hour-long Donahue show from Flint on Monday night. I've been told it may
air this Thursday night (Oct. 24) at 8pm/11pm ET/PT on MSNBC. It's a great
show, live from the Flint premiere of my film, with Phil and 300 mostly
Flint-area residents speaking their minds. The film continues to set
records and, on Monday night, it became the #1 film in the country in per
screen average at the box office! Thanks to everyone who has seen it. It
arrives in more cities this Friday.
I love when uninformed people like Michael Moore make statements as fact that are so far from reality as to be nonsensical:
"If Bush and his NRA buddies hadn't prevented the formation of a national database for ballistics fingerprinting, the police would have been able to trace the sniper's bullets to the actual gun that he is using."
Unless of course:
o The shooter has swapped out the barrel to completely alter the signature
o The barrel has undergone a LOT of firing (e.g. lots and lots of practice-firing) since it was "born and fingerprinted", which can and does alter the ballistic signature of the bullet
o ballistic-signatures are not really as unique as human fingerprints. There's really only so many ways that 6 grooves in a gun can line up against a bullet, and we don't have NEARLY large enough a "sample size" to know conclusively (as we do for fingerprints) about the uniqueness factor
It's also quite nice that Michael goes off on a rant about the sniper's "assault rifle" when nobody has yet come up with an actual fucking weapon yet. Reality check for Moore: There really are bolt-action .223 rifles out there, plenty of them, that would never be considered an "assault rifle". Just because some "assault rifles" (and I use that term loosely because it's a BS term not defined really anywhere, legally) might be in .223, the media has latched on and assumed this MUST be an assault weapon, even though there has yet to be anything that could remotely constitute "multiple shots". For all anyone knows, it could be an old single-shot .223 rifle.
Sometimes Moore is really funny. Sometimes he's just so stupid-sounding that it makes me weep.
hehe. Yes, I agree that Moore gets a bit carried away bashing Bush. Sometimes the end justifies the means. ;-)
The basic point, to me, is: Lots of people gets killed in sad ways every day; why doesn't the General Public and the media care about that *at all*.
Doesn't sell newspapers. Its hard to sensationalize a routine traffic accident that killed someone's third-cousin.
But it's not a (singular) routine traffic accident; it's enough to kill a thousand and injure sixtyfive thousand; every week. Oh well.
- ask (with no TV)
Well, it's not everyday that someone takes up target shooting in white affluent America especially since we are taught from a very young age that such things only happen to people in the wrong part of town. It makes for a media feeding frenzy. And make no mistake, the media doesn't really care about anything more than the story and the ratings.
The one really good part about Moore's new movie, Bowling for Columbine, is questioning the role the media plays in creating the culture of fear that so dominates the american culture. Moore did a good job of making the point that the guns aren't the root of the problem but the american culture. Starve education while giving people guns and a feed of fear on every media outlet and the results in the US are less surprising than other countries where there are as many guns but with more value placed on education and less fear mongering.