Moses the Warlord

The other day I had the opportunity to watch some movies for the first time in quite awhile. Through some twist of fate, I ended up watching Lord of War and Bowling for Columbine one after another and on the same day.

I couldn’t believe how similar the messages were from these two movies and I could not get the images and statistics out of my head for days.

Columbine had a very America-centric and the general message was that of “guns are bad for society” and that “Charlton Heston is a prat”. I guess I have to agree. When Moses himself shows up in Denver with the line “from my cold dead hands” soon after the Columbine massacre and in Flint, after a 6 year old boy shot and killed a little girl it, I’d say it’s over the top. Lord of War has an equally appalling message with an international scope.

To make myself feel better about the whole Moses-is-a-gun-fiend thing, I’ve included a cathartic link where you can abuse Charlton’s face.

Gun stats:

• There are 600 million small arms on earth
• 250 million in the U.S.
• 84 million in Europe
• 30 million in sub-Sahara Africa

• Every hour in America, four people are killed by firearms. (Centers for Disease Control)
• A gun in your home makes it three times more likely that you or someone you care about will be murdered by a family member or intimate partner (Kellerman,New England Journal of Medicine v329, n.15 1993)
• Gun violence is the second-leading cause of injury-related fatalities in the US after car accidents. In Alaska, Maryland and Nevada as well as D.C., firearm death rates in 1998 exceeded those for car accidents. (CDC & Natnl. Vital Statistics Report, 1999)
• One million Americans have died in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings since 1962.
• Firearm deaths per 100,000 people (CDCP, Bureau Of Justice Statistics, 1998): 14.24 in the U.S., 4.31 in Canada, 0.7 in Holland, and only 0.41 in England (where not even police carry guns). Which means that if you live in the U.S., you are 40 times more likely to die of gunshots than if you live in Britain. Murders by handguns (1996): 15 in Japan, 30 in Britain, 211 in Germany, 9,390 in the United States. Which means if you live in the U.S., you are 300 times more likely to be murdered than in you live in Britain.
  

I feel better now….