Anti-Climacus

LINK: When Michael Moore starts getting hit from the Left, it's a fairly good sign he's in trouble. Kim's comments, among others, will be appreciated on this subject:

"Indeed, though Moore does note that gun violence is down, he doesn't get into the issue of why. For a movie that's supposed to be concerned with getting to the bottom of things, he is awfully unconcerned with telling his viewers about the reasons -- such as the waning crack epidemic, changing demographics, changes in policing, the economic boom and, of course, gun control laws -- that caused gun murders to drop from 18,253 in 1993 to their present number, or what we can learn from the experience of the last decade to make sure that this rate keeps dropping. A decline in murders in New York City alone -- from 1,927 in 1993 to 643 in 2001 -- had, for example, a considerable impact on the declining national rate. Not a lot of those killers or victims were the sort of sports-hunters or militiamen Moore goes out of his way to interview and make fun of.

That similar outcomes -- death by firearm -- may have different causes in different parts of the country is a fact Moore never considers in his quest for a grand theory of gun violence. But gun violence in fast-growing new communities such as Littleton may well stem from somewhat different influences and pressures than, say, the murders that routinely take place about a mile north of my Washington apartment."

"So I have a challenge for Mr. Moore: Bring your camera to Washington. I can show you the building on Girard Street where you can follow the path of a bullet from the front door to the neatly bored hole in the plasterboard 50 feet back, a relic from when a man was killed out front. The shrines to the recently dead that decorate certain neighborhoods, with their Moët bottles and teddy bears and giant Tweety Birds covered in indelible Magic Marker scrawls, will look great on the big screen.

Sure, it will be less glamorous to take on the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs over the more than 4,000 abandoned and neglected buildings that blight the city than it was to harass a stooped and elderly Charlton Heston at his Hollywood home. And it might not make you an international hero to challenge principals and teachers at persistently failing high schools -- you know, the kind where half the students drop out and the ones that graduate at, say, age 21, can barely read or do simple math. But in the end, it might make a hell of a lot more difference."